Browsing by Author "Shavell, Steven"

Now showing items 1-20 of 33

    • Accuracy in the Assessment of Damages 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
      Assessment of damages is a principal issue in litigation and, in light of this, we consider the social justification for, and the private benefits of, accurate measurement of harm. Greater accuracy induces injurers to ...

    • Accuracy in the Determination of Liability 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
      No abstract provided.

    • Any Non-welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
      The public at large, many policymakers, and a number of economists hold views of social welfare that are non‐welfarist. That is, they attach some importance to factors other than the effects of policies on individuals’ ...

    • Any Non‐welfarist Method of Policy Assessment Violates the Pareto Principle: Reply 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
      No abstract provided.

    • The Appeals Process and Adjudicator Incentives 

      Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
      The appeals process—whereby litigants can have decisions of adjudicators reviewed by a higher authority—is a general feature of formal legal systems (and of many private decision‐making procedures). The appeals process ...

    • Contractual Holdup and Legal Intervention 

      Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
      This article develops the point that incentive and risk‐bearing problems associated with contractual holdup may justify legal intervention. Contractual holdup is considered both for fresh contracts and for modifications ...

    • The Corrective Tax Versus Liability As Solutions to the Problem of Harmful Externalities 

      Shavell, Steven (2010)
      Although the corrective tax has long been viewed by economists as a theoretically desirable remedy for the problem of harmful externalities, its actual use has been limited, mainly to the domain of pollution. Liability, ...

    • Costly litigation and optimal damages 

      Polinsky, A. Mitchell; Shavell, Steven (Elsevier BV, 2014)
      A basic principle of law is that damages paid by a liable party should equal the harm caused by that party. However, this principle is not correct when account is taken of litigation costs, because they too are part of the ...

    • Do Excessive Legal Standards Discourage Desirable Activity? 

      Shavell, Steven (Elsevier, 2007)
      Overly strict legal standards are commonly thought to discourage parties from engaging in socially desirable activities. It is explained here, however, that excessive legal standards cannot lead to undesirable curtailment ...

    • Economic Analysis of Threats and Their Illegality: Blackmail, Extortion, and Robbery 

      Shavell, Steven (University of Pennsylvania, 1993)

    • Fairness Versus Welfare 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (Harvard Law School, 2001)
      The thesis of this Article is that the assessment of legal policies should depend exclusively on their effects on individuals'welfare. In particular, in the evaluation of legal policies, no independent weight should be ...

    • Fairness versus Welfare: Notes on the Pareto Principle, Preferences, and Distributive Justice 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
      In Fairness versus Welfare, we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed entirely on the basis of their effects on individuals’ well‐being. This thesis implies that no independent weight should be accorded ...

    • A Fundamental Enforcement Cost Advantage of the Negligence Rule over Regulation 

      Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
      Regulation and the negligence rule are both designed to obtain compliance with desired standards of behavior, but they differ in a primary respect: compliance with regulation is ordinarily assessed independently of the ...

    • A General Rationale for a Governmental Role in the Relief of Large Risks 

      Shavell, Steven (2014)
      The government often provides relief against large risks, such as disasters. A simple, general rationale for this role of government is considered here that applies even when private contracting to share risks is not subject ...

    • Is Breach of Contract Immoral? 

      Shavell, Steven (Emory Law Journal, 2006)
      When, and why, might it be thought immoral to commit a breach of contract? The answer to this fundamental question is not obvious, because, as is stressed, and as has been overlooked in addressing the question, contracts ...

    • Moral Rules, the Moral Sentiments, and Behavior: Toward a Theory of an Optimal Moral System 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
      How should moral sanctions and moral rewards—the moral sentiments involving feelings of guilt and of virtue—be employed to govern individuals’ behavior if the objective is to maximize social welfare? In the model that we ...

    • On the Writing and the Interpretation of Contracts 

      Shavell, Steven (Yale University Press, 2006)
      The major theme of this article is that the interpretation of contracts is in the interests of contracting parties. The general reasons are (a) that interpretation may improve on otherwise imperfect contracts; and (b) that ...

    • Optimal Discretion in the Application of Rules 

      Shavell, Steven (Oxford University Press, 2007)
      Discretion is examined as a feature of the design of rule-guided systems. That is, given that rules have to be administered by some group of persons, called adjudicators, and given that their goals may be different from ...

    • Optimal Law Enforcement with Self-Reporting of Behavior 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
      Self-reporting--the reporting by parties of their own behavior to an enforcement authority--is a commonly observed aspect of law enforcement, such as in the context of environmental and safety regulation. We add self-reporting ...

    • Property Rules Versus Liability Rules: An Economic Analysis 

      Kaplow, Louis; Shavell, Steven (Harvard Law School, 1996)
      Should property rights be protected absolutely -- by property rules -- or instead by the requirement that infringing parties pay for harm done--that is, by liability rules? In this article, we present a systematic economic ...