2024-03-29T12:00:22Zhttp://open-archive.highwire.org/handler
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj001v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Information, Litigation, and Common Law Evolution
Hylton, Keith N.
Article
It is common in the legal academy to describe judicial decision trends leading to new common law rules as resulting from conscious judicial effort. Evolutionary models of litigation, in contrast, treat common law as resulting from pressure applied by litigants. One apparent difficulty in the theory of litigation is explaining how trends in judicial decisions favoring one litigant, and biasing the legal standard, could occur. This article presents a model in which an apparent bias in the legal standard can occur in the absence of any effort toward this end on the part of judges. Trends can develop favoring the better-informed litigant whose case is also meritorious. Although the model does not suggest an unambiguous trend toward efficient legal rules, it does show how private information from litigants becomes embodied in common law, an important part of the theory of efficient legal rules.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-09 07:57:10.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj001v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj001
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj002v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Playing It Safe with Low Conditional Fees versus Being Insured by High Contingent Fees
Emons, Winand
Article
Under contingent fees the attorney gets a share of the judgment; under conditional fees he gets an upscale premium if the case is won, a premium unrelated, however, to the adjudicated amount. This article compares conditional and contingent fees in a framework where lawyers choose between a safe and a risky litigation strategy. Under conditional fees lawyers prefer the safe strategy; under contingent fess, the risky one. Risk-averse plaintiffs prefer conditional fees over contingent fees when lawyering costs are low and vice-versa for high lawyering costs.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-17 13:44:16.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj002v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj002
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj003v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Pensions, Politics, and Judicial Tenure: An Empirical Study of Federal Judges, 1869-2002
Yoon, Albert
Article
When Article III judges conclude active service, they effectively abdicate their seat and enable the president and Senate to select a successor. Some judicial scholars have concluded that political factors--both within and across institutions--largely influence this decision. Analyzing judicial turnover, year by year, this article finds that judges have increasingly synchronized their departure from active service with qualifying for their judicial pension. By comparison, political and institutional factors appear to have little influence on turnover rates. These findings contradict much of the existing scholarship on judicial turnover and also offer more viable alternatives for judicial reform.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-17 13:44:17.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj003v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj003
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj004v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Statistics of Legal Infrastructures: A Review of the Law and Finance Literature
Georgakopoulos, Nicholas L.
Article
Two books on law and development and the law-and-finance literature have produced a major opening for the field of international statistical comparisons of legal systems. This review provides some background from microstructure to help the understanding of the effects the statistical comparisons demonstrate and points out opportunities for further research.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-09 07:57:12.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj004v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj004
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj005v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Does the Threat of the Death Penalty Affect Plea Bargaining in Murder Cases? Evidence from New York's 1995 Reinstatement of Capital Punishment
Kuziemko, Ilyana
Article
This article investigates whether the death penalty encourages defendants charged with potentially capital crimes to plead guilty in exchange for lesser sentences. I exploit a natural experiment in New York State: the 1995 reinstatement of capital punishment, coupled with the public refusal of some prosecutors to pursue death sentences (N.Y. Penal Law § 125.25 [McKinney 1975]). Using individual-level data on all felony arrests in the state between 1985 and 1998, I find the death penalty leads defendants to accept plea bargains with harsher terms, but does not increase defendants’ overall propensity to plead guilty. A differences-in-differences analysis of a national cross-section of homicide defendants confirms these results.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-17 13:44:17.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj005v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj005
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj006v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
The Duel of Honor: Screening For Unobservable Social Capital
Allen, Douglas W.
Reed, Clyde G.
Article
Oxford University Press
2006-03-27 10:32:54.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj006v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj006
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahj007v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Corporation and Contract
Hansmann, Henry
Article
Publicly traded corporations rarely use the nearly absolute freedom afforded them to draft charters that deviate from the default terms of state corporation law. Conventional explanations for this phenomenon are unconvincing. A more promising explanation lies in the lack of any feasible amendment mechanism that will assure efficient adaptation of charter terms as changing circumstances dictate during the long expected lifetime of a public corporation. In effect, by adopting state law default terms, corporations delegate to the state the process of amending charter provisions over time.
Oxford University Press
2006-03-17 13:44:18.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahj007v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahj007
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl001v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Evaluating the Role of Brown v. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans
Ashenfelter, Orley
Collins, William J.
Yoon, Albert
Article
The public profile of the <I>Brown v. Board of Education</I> decision tends to overshadow the well-established fact that racial disparities in school resources in the South began narrowing 20 years <I>before</I> the Brown decision and that school desegregation did not begin on a large scale in the Deep South until ten years <I>after</I> the <I>Brown</I> decision. We instead view <I>Brown</I> as a highly visible marker of public policy’s mid-century reversal on matters of race. When we examine the labor market outcomes of male workers in 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who would have finished their schooling just before effective desegregation occurred in the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks who followed behind them in school by just a few years, relative to northern-born blacks in same age cohorts.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-13 13:33:02.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl001v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl001
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl002v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Federal Oversight, Local Control, and the Specter of "Resegregation" in Southern Schools
Clotfelter, Charles T.
Vigdor, Jacob L.
Ladd, Helen F.
Article
Analyzing data for the 100 largest districts in the South and Border states, we ask whether there is evidence of "resegregation" of school districts and whether levels of segregation can be linked to judicial decisions. We distinguish segregation measures based on racial isolation from those based on racial imbalance. Only one measure of racial isolation suggests that districts in these regions experienced resegregation between 1994 and 2004, and changes in this measure appear to be driven largely by the rising nonwhite percentage in the student population rather than by district policies. Although we find no time trend in racial imbalance over this period, we find that variations in racial imbalance across districts are nonetheless associated with judicial declarations of unitary status, suggesting that segregation in schools might have declined had it not been for the actions of federal courts.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-28 18:56:22.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl002v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl002
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl003v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
The Black-White Test Score Gap Through Third Grade
Fryer, Roland G.
Levitt, Steven D.
Article
This article describes basic facts regarding the Black-White test score gap over the first four years of school. Black children enter school substantially behind their White counterparts in reading and math, but including a small number of covariates erases the gap. Over the first four years of school, however, Blacks lose substantial ground relative to other races; averaging 0.10 standard deviations per school year. By the end of third grade, there is a large Black-White test score gap that cannot be explained by observable characteristics. Blacks are falling behind in virtually all categories of skills tested, except the most basic. None of the explanations we examine, including systematic differences in school quality across races, convincingly explain the divergent academic trajectory of Black students.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-25 17:37:52.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl003v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl003
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl004v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: Evaluating Justice O'Connor's Conjecture
Krueger, Alan
Rothstein, Jesse
Turner, Sarah
Article
In <I>Grutter v. Bollinger</I>, Justice O’Connor conjectured that in 25 years affirmative action in college admissions will be unnecessary. We project the test score distribution of black and white college applicants 25 years from now, focusing on the role of black-white family income gaps. Economic progress alone is unlikely to narrow the achievement gap enough in 25 years to produce today’s racial diversity levels with race-blind admissions. A return to the rapid black-white test score convergence of the 1980s could plausibly cause black representation to approach current levels at moderately selective schools, but not at the most selective schools.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-25 17:37:52.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl004v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl004
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl004v22015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: Evaluating Justice O'Connor's Conjecture
Krueger, Alan
Rothstein, Jesse
Turner, Sarah
Article
In <I>Grutter v. Bollinger</I>, Justice O’Connor conjectured that in 25 years affirmative action in college admissions will be unnecessary. We project the test score distribution of black and white college applicants 25 years from now, focusing on the role of black-white family income gaps. Economic progress alone is unlikely to narrow the achievement gap enough in 25 years to produce today’s racial diversity levels with race-blind admissions. A return to the rapid black-white test score convergence of the 1980s could plausibly cause black representation to approach current levels at moderately selective schools, but not at the most selective schools.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-28 13:42:01.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl004v2
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl004
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl004v32015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: Evaluating Justice O'Connor's Conjecture
Krueger, Alan
Rothstein, Jesse
Turner, Sarah
Article
In <I>Grutter v. Bollinger</I>, Justice O’Connor conjectured that in 25 years affirmative action in college admissions will be unnecessary. We project the test score distribution of black and white college applicants 25 years from now, focusing on the role of black-white family income gaps. Economic progress alone is unlikely to narrow the achievement gap enough in 25 years to produce today’s racial diversity levels with race-blind admissions. A return to the rapid black-white test score convergence of the 1980s could plausibly cause black representation to approach current levels at moderately selective schools, but not at the most selective schools.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-31 11:07:12.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl004v3
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl004
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl005v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Social Background and Academic Performance Differentials: White and Minority Students at Selective Colleges
Massey, Douglas S.
Article
This article uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF) to study the continuing consequences of segregation. Data show that minority students from segregated backgrounds attended substandard schools, received lower quality instruction, were exposed to higher levels of disorder and violence, and were less prepared socially for campus life. Minority students also experience higher levels of stress within their social networks while at college. Operating through these intervening variables, segregation significantly depresses minority academic achievement.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-12 17:57:03.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl005v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl005
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl006v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Capitalizing on Segregation, Pretending Neutrality: College Admissions and the Texas Top 10% Law
Tienda, Marta
Niu, Sunny Xinchun
Article
In response to the judicial ban on the use of race-sensitive admissions, the seventy-fifth Texas legislature passed H.B. 588, which guarantees admission to any Texas public college or university for all seniors graduating in the top decile of their class. We show that high levels of residential and school segregation facilitate minority enrollment at selective public institutions under the uniform admission law because black and Hispanic students who rank at the top of their class disproportionately hail from minority-dominant schools. However, qualifying minority students’ lower likelihood of college enrollment at the flagships reflects concentrated disadvantage rather than segregation per se.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-13 13:33:01.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl006v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl006
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl007v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
School Quality, Neighborhoods, and Housing Prices
Kane, Thomas J.
Riegg, Stephanie K.
Staiger, Douglas O.
Article
We study the relationship between school characteristics and housing prices in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, between 1994 and 2001. During this period, the school district was operating under a court-imposed desegregation order and drew school boundaries so that students living in the same neighborhoods were often sent to very different schools in terms of racial mix and average test scores of the students. We use differences in housing prices along assignment zone boundaries to disentangle the effect of schools and other neighborhood characteristics. We find systematic differences in house prices along school boundaries although the impact of schools is only one-quarter as large as the naive cross-sectional estimates would imply. Part of the impact of school assignments is mediated by differences in the characteristics of the population and the quality of the housing stock that have arisen on either side of the school assignment boundary.
Oxford University Press
2006-08-09 11:29:07.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl007v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl007
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl009v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Diversity and Discontent: The Relationship Between School Desegregation and Perceptions of Racial Justice
Brooks, Richard R. W.
Article
A number of recent studies have explored the consequences of interracial peer effects on the academic and social performance of minority students. This article contributes to that discussion, focusing, however, on perceptions rather than behaviors. The analysis suggests that exposure to white peers is associated with declining perceptions of racial justice among black and Latino high school students. While cautioning against causal interpretations of this finding, the article suggests that the integrationist aims of <I>Brown v. Board of Education</I> will not be satisfied without more thoughtful and vigorous desegregation efforts.
Oxford University Press
2006-08-23 08:00:01.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl009v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl009
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl010v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Prefatory Note
Rouse, Cecilia Elena
Article
Oxford University Press
2006-07-19 15:55:51.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl010v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl010
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl011v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Incomplete Contracts with Asymmetric Information: Exclusive Versus Optional Remedies
Avraham, Ronen
Liu, Zhiyong
Article
Scholars have been debating for years the comparative advantage of damages and specific performance. Yet, most work has compared a single remedy contract to another single remedy contract. But contract law provides the non-breaching party with a variety of <I>optional</I> remedies to choose from in case of a breach, and parties themselves regularly write contracts which provide such options. In this article, we start filling this gap by studying multi-remedy contracts. Specifically, we compare a contract that grants the non-breaching party an option to choose between liquidated damages and specific performance with an exclusive remedy contract, which restricts the non-breaching party’s remedy to liquidated damages only.
Oxford University Press
2006-07-28 18:56:22.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl011v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl011
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl012v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
The Economic Consequences of Accounting Fraud in Product Markets: Theory and a Case from the U.S. Telecommunications Industry (WorldCom)
Sadka, Gil
Article
This article studies the effects of accounting fraud on the product market. The model presented in this article relies on the idea that a firm’s financial statements and actions must be consistent with each other. If the firm is behaving fraudulently, insofar as its financial statements portray it as relatively efficient, the firm must act accordingly, that is, increase its market share and/or reduce its prices. If the firm does not behave in keeping with its fraudulent financials, the market would be able to identify the fraud. As such, the manager will take actions and make pricing decisions that are not optimal. These actions can have a significant adverse effect on social welfare. This article utilizes the WorldCom case to illustrate the implications of such fraudulent behavior and its economic significance in product markets.
Oxford University Press
2006-09-13 11:26:45.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl012v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl012
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl013v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law
Maurer, Stephen M.
Scotchmer, Suzanne
Article
We address the patent/antitrust conflict in licensing and develop three guiding principles for deciding acceptable terms of license. <I>Profit neutrality</I> holds that patent rewards should not depend on the rightholder’s ability to work the patent himself. <I>Derived reward</I> holds that the patentholder’s profits should be earned, if at all, from the social value created by the invention. <I>Minimalism</I> holds that licenses should not be more restrictive than necessary to achieve neutrality. We argue that these principles are economically sound and rationalize some key decisions of the twentieth century such as <I>General Electric</I> and <I>Line Material</I>.
Oxford University Press
2006-12-05 08:06:35.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl013v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl013
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl014v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Freakonomics: Scholarship in the Service of Storytelling
DiNardo, John
Article
<I>Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything</I> by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is certainly popular. Indeed, my search for something comparable took me back more than 120 years. Even with the uncertainty about what constitutes a best seller, it is clear that the book has reached a huge audience, especially for a book about "economics." As I write this, it has been on the <I>New York Times</I> best-seller list for 46 weeks, and having started on the <I>Publisher’s Weekly</I> Hardcover Nonfiction best-seller list in the 12th position on April 25, 2005, it has hovered in the top ten thereafter. Moreover, as reported on the Freakonomics web site, the book has garnered a large international audience, and the book is on various "best of" lists. Levitt and Dubner have sought a broad and diverse audience for their collection of stories: Levitt has been on "The 700 Club" (a talk show by conservative businessman and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson) and "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" (a center-left parody of the news and news reporting) among other places. Both the authors write a column for the <I>New York Times Magazine</I> as well as participate in an active blog (just navigate from the book’s web site to the URL http://www.freakonomics.com, where, among other things, they respond to a large number of readers’ inquiries). The book comes complete with more than 20(!) pages of references and citations as diverse as a radio talk show caller’s unverified claim that her niece was named ‘"Shithead" (pronounced SHUH-teed) as well as Kenneth Arrow’s "A Theory of Discrimination" and includes a two-and-a-half page tabulation of average years of mother’s education by child’s first name. The extensive footnotes should not mislead: <I>Freakonomics</I> does not take its subjects very seriously. In <I>Freakonomics</I>, Levitt’s scholarship and the scholarship of others are put in the service of telling a "good story" rather than the other way around. Indeed, if the many reviews of the book are any guide, many find the book "entertaining" even if they felt that "Levitt’s only real message is to encourage confrontational questions" (Berg, 2005). One reviewer found the stories so compelling that he went so far as to suggest that "criticizing <I>Freakonomics</I> would be like criticizing a hot fudge sundae" (Landsburg, 2005).
Oxford University Press
2006-10-26 10:26:19.0
TEXT
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http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl014v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl014
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association
oai:open-archive.highwire.org:aler:ahl015v12015-05-20HighWireOUPaler:0:2006
Uncovering Discrimination: A Comparison of the Methods Used by Scholars and Civil Rights Enforcement Officials
Ross, Stephen L.
Yinger, John
Article
The responsibility for uncovering discrimination falls on both scholars and civil rights enforcement officials. Scholars ask whether discrimination exists and why it arises; enforcement officials ask whether particular firms are discriminating. This article investigates the points of commonality and divergence in these two lines of inquiry. We demonstrate a need for more research focusing on discrimination as defined by the law and for more enforcement building on the methodological lessons in the research literature. We also show that disparate-impact discrimination cannot be identified with current enforcement tools but could be identified with methods in the scholarly literature.
Oxford University Press
2006-12-05 08:06:36.0
TEXT
text/html
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ahl015v1
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahl015
en
Copyright (C) 2006, American Law and Economics Association