The Austrian contribution to the development of law and economics is the study of endogenous rule formation, or the spontaneous evolution of social institutions, which can be traced to the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger. While Menger's emphasis on spontaneous institutional analysis...

Is the common law efficient? Neoclassical economists debate whether our inherited systems of judge-made law maximize wealth whereas Austrian economists typically adopt much different standards. The article reviews neoclassical and Austrian arguments about efficiency in the common law. After...

This Essay examines Richard Posner's critique of F.A. Hayek's legal theory and contrasts the two thinkers' very different views of the nature of law, knowledge, and the rule of law. Posner conceives of law as a series of disparate rules and as purposive. He believes that a judge should examine...

This article was prepared as a contribution to the Chapman Law Review's symposium on “Libertarian Legal Theory.” While libertarian legal theory and law and economics share many affinities there are places in which both the method of the common law and the substantive rules of the common law...

This article is the edited transcript of remarks provided in November 2013 on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the George Mason Law and Economics Center and the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the George Mason Journal of Law, Economics & Policy. The title of the conference was “The...

Behavioral Law & Economics (BLE) has loudly proclaimed its victory over traditional law & economics methodologies. Nowhere has this proclamation been so loud or self-certain as with respect to claims about consumer financial decision-making. Drawing on a set of casual observations styled as...