This is a survey of the economic principles that underlie antitrust law and how those principles relate to competition policy. We address four core subject areas: market power, collusion, mergers between competitors, and monopolization. In each area, we select the most relevant portions of...

This chapter reviews and synthesizes the work of economists and law and economics scholars in the field of public international law. The bulk of that work has been in the area of international trade, but many of the ideas in the trade literature have implications for other subfields. Recent...

This Handbook entry presents a conceptual, normative overview of the subject of taxation. It emphasizes the relationships among the main functions of taxation--notably, raising revenue, redistributing income, and correcting externalities--and the mapping between these functions and various forms...

This chapter reviews empirical studies of criminal punishment and the criminal justice system by economists. Since the modern exposition of the economic model of criminal behavior, empirical economists have tested its predictions using variation in expected criminal punishments. In the past...

Everyone realizes the importance of social norms as guides to behavior and substitutes for law, but coming up with a paradigm for analyzing norms has been surprisingly difficult, as has systematic empirical study. In this chapter we survey the topic.

This chapter surveys literature on experimental law and economics. Long the domain of legally minded psychologists and criminologists, experimental methods are gaining significant popularity among economists interested in exploring positive and normative aspects of law. Because this literature...

In the 1980s scholars began applying Positive Political Theory (PPT) to study public law. This chapter summarizes that body of research and its relationship to other schools of legal thought. Like Law and Economics, PPT of Law uses sequential game theory to examine how rules and procedures shape...

This chapter reviews the empirical literature, especially the event study literature, as it relates to corporate and securities law. Event studies are among the most successful uses of econometrics in policy analysis. By providing an anchor for measuring the impact of events on investor wealth,...

This chapter provides a comprehensive survey of the burgeoning literature on the law and economics of intellectual property. It is organized around the two principal objectives of intellectual property law: promoting innovation and aesthetic creativity (focusing on patent, trade secret, and...

This chapter surveys the theoretical and empirical research on the main mechanisms of corporate law and governance, discusses the main legal and regulatory institutions in different countries, and examines the comparative governance literature. Corporate governance is concerned with the...