Behavioral Law and Economics (Cambridge Series on Judgment and Decision Making)

Cambridge University Press, 3/28/2000
EAN 9780521661355, ISBN10: 0521661358

Hardcover, 448 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This exciting volume marks the birth of a new field, one which attempts to study law with reference to an accurate understanding of human behavior. It reports new findings in cognitive psychology which show that people are frequently both unselfish and over-optimistic; that people have limited willpower and limited self-control; and that people are 'boundedly' rational, in the sense that they have limited information-processing powers, and frequently rely on mental short-cuts and rules of thumb. Understanding this behavior has large-scale implications for the analysis of law, in areas including environmental protection, taxation, constitutional law, voting behavior, punitive damages for civil rights violations, labor negotiations, and corporate finance. With a better knowledge of human behavior, it is possible to predict the actual effects of law, to see how law can promote society's goals, and to reassess the questions of what law should be doing.

Introduction Cass R. Sunstein
Part I. Overviews and Prospects
1. A behavioral approach to law and economics Christine Jolls, Cass R. Sunstein and Richard Thaler
Part II. Heuristics and Biases
Shortcuts, Errors and Legal Decisions
2. Context-dependence in legal decision making Mark Kelman, Yuval Rottenstreich and Amos Tversky
3. A positive psychological theory of judging in hindsight Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
4. Behavioral economics, contract formation, and contract law Russell Korobkin
5. Organized illusions
a behavioral theory of why corporations mislead stock market investors (and cause other social harms) Donald C. Langevoort
6. Reluctance to vaccinate
omission bias and ambiguity Ilana Ritov and Jonathan Baron
7. Second-order decisions Cass R. Sunstein and Edna Ullmann-Margalit
Part III. Valuation
Values and Dollars in the Legal System
8. Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the cause theorem Daniel J. Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch and Richard H. Thaler
9. Assessing punitive damages (with notes on cognition and valuation in law) Cass R. Sunstein, Daniel J. Kahneman and David Schkade
10. Framing the jury
cognitive perspective on pain and suffering award Edward J. McCaffery, Daniel J. Kahneman and Matthew L. Spitzer
11. Behavioral economic analysis of redistributive legal rules Christine Jolls
12. Do parties to nuisance cases bargain after judgment? A glimpse inside the cathedral Ward Fransworth
Part IV. The Demand for Law
Why Law Is As It Is
13. Some implications of cognitive psychology for risk regulation Roger G. Noll and James E. Krier
14. Explaining bargaining impasse
the role of self-serving biases Linda Babcock and George Loewenstein
15. Controlling availability cascades Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein
16. Cognitive theory and tax Edward J. McCaffery.