The paper, by providing example of an efficient liability assignment rule under which liabilities of interacting parties for accidental losses is not always coupled, demonstrates that decoupling is not entirely inconsistent with efficient assignment of liabilities

This paper provides a partial characterization of efficient liability assignment rules. The main result of the paper implies that the assignment of liabilities under an efficient rule has to be coupled only when one party is negligent and the other is not and hence decoupling liability is not...

In this paper we consider a very general class of rules called simple liability assignment rules under which the assignment of liabilities can be coupled for some combinations of the levels of nonnegligence of the interacting parties and decoupled for other combinations, and explore the...

The paper, by providing example of an efficient liability assignment rule under which liabilities of interacting parties for accidental losses is not always coupled, demonstrates that decoupling is not inconsistent with efficient assignment of liabilities