ECONOMICS 126

ECONOMICS & LAW

The purpose of the course is to explore the economic ramifications of various legal rules, doctrines,
precedents, alternatives, etc. We will concentrate on the common law areas of property, contract, tort
(accident law). The analysis will be microeconomic and at a level accessible to any student who has taken
Econ 012.

I am not a lawyer and this will not be a course in law per se. That is, I do not intend to provide you with a
catalogue of legal rules and precedent, such as might be done in a business law course. Rather we shall
examine selected legal rules in the light of economic analysis: What, if anything, is their economic
rationale? How do they affect the market environment (wealth, prices, costs, competition, risk allocation,
etc.)? How can they be expected to alter the behavior of economic decision makers?

View the current syllabus for this course.

View sample questions from past exams.

Go to the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics website.  There you can find literature reviews on topics in law and economics, bibliographies related to those and other topics, and a guide to web resources related to law and economics.

Go to the online version of David Friedman's, Law's Order

Exam questions on Friedman's Law's Order: first midterm questions, second midterm questions, final exam questions