Law and Econ Project, Update XIII

Well, in at least one dimension, the recent plan has been fulfilled: I made it all the way through the nutshell series book on Law and Economics. Enjoyed it, too. The seemingly more pressing matter of completing my own book also has been accomplished, more or less, though not according to the detailed plan. Nonetheless, everything (except the Acknowledgements) is about ready to go. There will be some frantic last minute revising over the next week or two -- so I won't adopt any deadlines for reading -- but the final version should look pretty much like the current one. Not sure whether that is good or bad news.

I'll append the Table of Contents.  When I compare it with the version from 2.5 years ago, well, yes, changes (I hope improvements) have been made, but the similarities seem to dominate the differences. (Chapters 3, 4, and 5, largely are intact -- I wonder how much those intact sections themselves have been revised?) Hmmm. For my own edification, I'll put asterisks next to new or perhaps massively altered sections.

Concepts in Law and Economics: A Guide for the Curious

Jim Leitzel

Table of Contents

 

Introduction

             The Original of Laura

            Choice in the Shadow of the Law

 

Chapter 1: E pluribus unum

             Robin

            Efficiency

                        Jeremy Bentham

            The Art of the Deal

            Willingness-to-pay

            Why Maximize Aggregate Wellbeing?

                        *Just Compensation

            Common Law and Civil Law

            The Coase Theorem

            Establishing a Market to Erode Rent Controls

            The Coase Corollary

            More on Property Rights and Efficiency: The Tragedy of the Commons

            The Reverse of the Medal: Property Rights and the Anticommons

                        *An Aside on View Blocking

            *What Happens When a Property Right is Infringed?

 Chapter 2: Efficiency pluribus unum

 *The Sixty Minute Law School

*Property, Mostly a Reprise

            *Who Owns Meteorites?

            Contracts

            Expectation Damages and Efficient Breach

                        Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., on Bad Men and the Law

            Accidents

            Strict Liability

            Negligence

            Crime

            *Purposes of Punishing Crime

Efficiency When?

            *Retribution?

Standards of Proof

 Chapter 3: What’s done is done?

             Bart and Lance

            Chicago Dibs

            Patents

                        Advance Market Commitments

            Preventive and Punitory Measures

            Firearm Regulation

                        John Stuart Mill

            Low Probability, High Punishment Regimes

            Destruction of Property: What’s Done Cannot Be Undone?

            Moral Rights: What’s Done Cannot Be Redone?

                        *Defacing or Improving?

            Intellectual Property: What’s Done Can Be Done Repeatedly

                        Public Goods

            Nabokov and Existence Value

 Chapter 4: Squeezing a balloon

             The Peltzman Effect

                        *Endangered Species

            Art Again: Resale Rights, or Droit de Suite

Using the Law to Serve Distributional Goals

            Squeezing Copyright

                        Creative Commons and Open Access

            The De Facto Liberalization of the Copyright Regime

            A World Without Copyright

Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

            Copyright Vacuums

                        Fashion Design

                        Comedy

            Squeezing Newspapers

                        Hyperlocal News

            Deflating Subsidies

 Chapter 5: Deorum injuriae Diis curae

             Low-cost Avoider or Insurer

            Products Liability

            Comparative Negligence

                        Foreseeable Misuse and Attractive Nuisance

            Mill and the Harm Principle

                        Pecuniary Externalities

            Blocked Exchanges

            Kidney Markets

                        The Iranian Kidney Transplant Program

            The Parthenon Marbles and Cultural Property

                        Statutes of Limitation and Adverse Possession

 

Chapter 6: Crooked timber

             Enforcing Contracts

                        Lochner v. New York (1905)

            Dealing with Uncertainty

            Unconscionability

            *Willpower Lapses

            The Endowment Effect

            Default Rules

            Organ Donations, Reprise

            *Selling Kidneys

            Vice, Rationality, and Defaults

            *Re-legalizing Drugs

                        *An Option to Commit to Opting Out: Self-Exclusion

            *Preventive and Punitory Measures, Again

            *A Happy Ending?

*Conclusions

References

*Glossary

Law and Econ Project, Update XII

The schedule for revisions to the Law and Econ manuscript now looks like this. (I have to intersperse them with my work on a new kidney paper.) By the end of July, I want to have new versions of each of the Chapters. I am working on Chapter Two now. (This is a different Chapter Two from two years ago, as the end bits of Chapter One were siphoned off to form the basis of the new Chapter Two. So now there are six chapters.) I also want to complete the Glossary, which I currently am only about one-third of the way through. I want to print the end of July version, and then, by August 15, have produced a new complete draft. Finally, at the end of August, a third version should appear, one that I hope to submit to the unnamed university press publisher as the "final" version. Did I mention that the working title has evolved into Concepts in Law and Economics: A Guide for the Curious?

As for book reading related to the Law and Econ project, I have made lots of progress but not finished the nutshell series book on Law and Economics mentioned in the previous post. One book I did finish and found both helpful and fascinating is Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Philip Schofield, though the similarity of our subtitles is a coincidence. This book motivated me to visit Jeremy in person a couple weeks ago.

In early August I am slated to deliver two lectures related to the material in the book. I already am getting nervous over the prospect of preparing Power Point slides. I usually don't employ such slides, but the audience will involve some non-native English speakers, and I have found slides to be useful in similar settings in the past. But preparing the lectures might help me revise the manuscript, too, or at least I can hope.

Law and Econ Project, Update XI, and a Contract

Well, here's some news: unnamed university press would like to publish the Law and Econ tome. And as I would like them to publish it, we have a meeting of the minds, and a signed contract. My goal is to send the "final" version, one I am happy with, on September 1, 2014 -- no snickering from those who recall some past (passed) deadlines. Lots of revisions to go, and as I mentioned before, I will start with the suggestions of the four reviewers. As I am looking over the current version, I see some holes that require completely new material, and that always takes some time. So I have a hard time laying out a schedule of revisions. But first I will go through the manuscript, without referencing the review comments (though even I remember some of them). Then I will start making the changes that I have identified, in concert with trying to address the reviewers' concerns. I have already looked over about 40% of the manuscript, and I hope to complete this first step, the remaining 60%, this week, let's say, by Saturday, April 19. Then, just two weeks or so later, on Sunday, May 4, I would like to have a new draft, with reviewer comments accounted for, in hand.Oh, here's a thought, I will have that version bound, to ease the next round of reading and revising.

In committing to reading, hmmm, well, I have never read the nutshell series book on Law and Economics, though I have started it. Now seems like a good time to take that on!

Law and Econ Project, Update X, etc.

OK, there has been a 16-month hiatus in posting. Does that mean there has been a 16-month hiatus in progress on the Law and Econ draft? Discriminating folks like myself are unwilling to reveal that sort of sensitive information.

But where do things stand? Well, I sent a revised -- yes, so there, there was "progress," I knew you would get it out of me -- manuscript to unnamed university press in October of 2013, and have received back three helpful sets of comments, with a fourth one in the pipeline, it seems. Irrespective of the manuscript's fate at unnamed university press, I feel like a few months of revisions are ahead of me -- even with my low standards, the manuscript isn't quite where I would like it to be right now. As for the nature of those revisions, I think for the first pass I will follow the advice of the anonymous reviewers. The hope is that the "continuous improvement" project will result in a tighter, more coherent manuscript. Right now I am happy with many of the individual sections, but not with the overall package. Perhaps I'll save more details for a follow-up post.

One part of the LandE project that has been upgraded, I think, is that concerning selling kidneys -- actually, multiple sections of the manuscript involve kidney sales, oddly enough. These revisions owe a lot to my friend Randy Beard, an expert on organ procurement, who kindly co-authored a symposium paper with me; a less-than-final version of the paper is here, in pdf format.

Back when this blog was "active" I used it to mention books that I was intending to read -- books both related and unrelated to the Law and Econ project. I am happy to report that in 2012 I really did finish reading The Knockoff Economy by Raustiala and Sprigman. Subsequently, I read three of the Oxford Introductions to American Law (Contracts, Property, and Torts, in that order -- I liked Torts the best), though I could do with a refresher on much (or all) of the material. The books that are in the pipeline by and large I am not willing to commit to reading at this point, even to the limited extent to which mentioning them on a blog is committing. Some of my reading continues to be devoted to behavioral economics, which I am slated to teach for the third time in the spring.

Today's return to nDrafts was motivated by a return to Five Drafts, a return that was itself motivated by a need to produce a vice policy paper in the next couple of months. And I have other blog projects that require attention, oh yes they do...

Well, it is good to be back with my online to-do list, even though it is hard to say why.