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.