This Article represents the first empirical study of the effects of bad-faith laws on claims decisionmaking by insurance companies. One of the most notable and debated developments in the law of tort and insurance since the 1970s has been the recognition in many states of an extracontractual...

This article is based on my keynote address at the American Academy of Economic and Financial Experts conference in which I examined some of the implications for legal contexts of my book, Pricing Lives: Guideposts for a Safer Society. The value of a statistical life (VSL) provides an economic...

Non-economic damages (pain and suffering) are the most significant and variable components of liability. Our survey of 51 U.S. jurisdictions shows wide heterogeneity in whether attorneys may quantify damages as time-units of suffering (“per diem”) or demand a specific amount (“lump...

The German Environmental Liability Law (ELL) of 1991 has introduced far-reaching civil liability for environmental damages with the aim to increase firms? efforts to prevent accidents. Previous studies find poor evidence that this goal has actually been achieved. One and a half decades after the...

This paper investigates the incentive effects of automobile insurance, compulsory insurance laws, and no-fault liability laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. We analyze a panel of 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia from 1970-1998, a period in which many states adopted...

The correct value for the net discount rate has been a topic of controversy among forensic economists. Based on available historical period, use of “total offset” method yields a net discount rate close to zero. Visual inspection of the data suggests the net discount rate exhibits a shift in...

Games with asymmetric information play a prominent role in the theoretical literature of malpractice disputes. The common modeling framework in many papers is a game in extensive form which consists of two stages. In the first stage, one agent makes a settlement demand, and the other agent...

Patent decisions of european judges may have cross-border effect, either in actions for infringement or for revocation. The project of a community patent system foresee a single central court, with cross-border authority. This solution is wrong; there is no need of a centralized patent court

Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We investigate the behavior of judges, the conduct of whom...