The article examines the issue of free speech in a law and economics perspective. The property rights approach is contrasted with the common law and constitutional standpoints. Consequentialist and market efficiency may not provide adequate criteria for judging limitations to freedom of speech....

The article examines the issue of free speech in a law and economics perspective. The property rights approach is contrasted with the common law and constitutional standpoints. Consequentialist and market efficiency may not provide adequate criteria for judging limitations to freedom of speech....

Although Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations is often cited as marking the birth of economics, it was really not until after the second world war that economics became the distinctive, more or less unified, and largely separate discipline summarised in the textbooks of today. Even a mere...