Besides deterring people, laws may affect behavior by changing preferences or beliefs. A law may elicit intrinsic motivation by framing an act as wrong. Alternatively, it may coordinate the behavior of different people by changing their beliefs about what others will do. We investigate framing...

This paper explores the conditions under which compliance with a social contract establishes an equilibrium in a society. It is assumed that society consists of two groups, one of which has a comparative advantage in using violence, whereas the other one has a comparative advantage in producing...

Ius Commune describes the spontaneous development of a european contract law by adaptive behavior of contracting parties to competing law systems and their interpretations by jursidiction. The idea of spontaneous law harmonization is appealing, since its result is independent of centraized...