Law and Econ Project, Update VIII

Well, three months have passed since I last recorded my progress to date and proclaimed my intended next steps. I have been busy with some other projects -- a trip abroad, moving house, being ill -- that have crowded out, to some extent, Law and Econ. The goals I previously set looking one week forward, however...

(1) to finish reading Museums Matter, by James Cuno; (2) to revise the first two chapters of the L&E manuscript; and (3) to produce a new version of "The Museum of Law and Economics"...

 ....have been accomplished, if not in one week, at least within three months. I managed to read, as hoped, The Upside of Irrationality, by Dan Ariely. I also wrote a new Conclusions section to the L&E manuscript, and have upgraded Chapter Five (on behavioral law and econ, essentially), along with slight revisions to the rest of the manuscript.

The next couple of months will involve producing a draft of a paper on Behavioral Economics and Drug Policy, so that also will cut into Law and Econ time. (I am thinking of reviving predecessor blog Five Drafts for the purpose of producing the new paper.) What I would like to do pretty soon, however (recall that the manuscript is supposed to be in continuous improvement mode), is to revise the Kaldor-Hicks and Wealth Maximization stuff in Chapter One in a pretty serious way, to think about revising the material on organ markets in light of Michael Sandel's book, What Money Can't Buy, and to print out a new, complete version of the manuscript. Not sure I have any Law and Econ reading I want to commit to, but I do hope to spend lots of time with Kaplow and Shavell's Fairness Versus Welfare -- a book that will help guide me, I think, in those envisioned Wealth Maximization changes in Chapter One.

Law and Econ Project, Update VII

Now my worries, that in the absence of an externally-imposed deadline this commitment blog isn't a big help, are growing. But we press on. April 4 brought a new, bound version of the manuscript, this one even with a (half-baked) "Conclusions" chapter. The Table of Contents has not (otherwise) changed, though there was some upgrading of all of the chapters. Still haven't heard back from that university press that I sent the even worse draft to -- not a good sign.

I did indeed give the related talk on April 1, and that went pretty well. Afterwards, I wrote up a short talk (maybe 15 minutes) entitled "The Museum of Law of Economics," which I have had fun with. I hope to move that talk, as well as the new draft, into the "continuous improvement" mode. I don't much care for the current "Conclusions" to the draft manuscript, and may start that afresh as part of the improvement. For that matter, I don't like the Conclusions to the Museum talk, either. Conclusions are the bane of my existence.

Finished reading Willpower, which was easy reading and helpful for my Behavioral Econ class. Intended reading that I hope will be helpful for the L&E project includes Museums Matter, by James Cuno; How Judges Think, by Richard Posner; The Upside of Irrationality, by Dan Ariely (more for Behavioral Econ than for L&E); and possibly Loot, by Sharon Waxman. I have started reading all of them, but only Cuno and Ariely are on the front burners right now.

So, what to promise in a not-very-committed way? Next week, to have: (1) finished reading Museums Matter; (2) revised the first two chapters of the L&E manuscript; and (3) to have produced a new version of "The Museum of Law and Economics." Onwards...

Law and Econ Project, Table of Contents

As promised....

Oh, Work in Progress has the temporary title Law and Economics: A Guide for the Curious. My guess is that the title will change a few more times.

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 Wealth?

                        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

            Contracts

                        Efficiency When?

            Expectation Damages and Efficient Breach

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

            Accidents

            Strict Liability

            Negligence

            Crime

Chapter 2: 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?

            Intellectual Property: What’s Done Can Be Done Repeatedly

                        Public Goods

            Nabokov and Existence Value

Chapter 3: Squeezing a balloon

            Using the Law to Serve Distributional Goals

            The Peltzman Effect

            Art Again: Resale Rights, or Droit de Suite

            Squeezing Copyright

                        Creative Commons

            The De Facto Liberalization of the Copyright Regime

            A World Without Copyright

                        Copyright Vacuums

                                    Fashion Design

                                    Comedy

Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

            Squeezing Newspapers

                        Hyperlocal News

            Deflating Subsidies

Chapter 4: 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

            Organ Markets

                        The Iranian Kidney Transplant Program

            The Parthenon Marbles and Cultural Property

                        Statutes of Limitation

            Standards of Proof

           

Chapter 5: Crooked timber

             Enforcing Contracts

            Lochner v. New York (1905)

            Dealing with Uncertainty

            Unconscionability

            The Endowment Effect

            Default Rules

            Organ Donations, Reprise

            Vice, Rationality, and Defaults

            Attractive Nuisance for Adults?

Conclusions (unwritten)

 

Glossary (unwritten)

 

References

Law and Econ Project, Update VI

Hmmm, well, there was a December 11 deadline....

I missed the deadline, but progress has been made, oh yes. The current draft is in the continuous revision phase. There is still no draft of the Conclusions, and no draft of the Glossary. The next revisions are slated for Chapters 4 and 5. I will shortly post the draft Table of Contents so we can see where things stand.

I prepared a prospectus and e-mailed it to a university press. The editor responded enthusiastically, and asked for the entire manuscript. I sent it, but haven't heard back - maybe the draft needs some more of that "continuous revision" before it is ready for distribution?

As for my reading plan, I managed to finish Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson -- it is superb. I abandoned for the nonce This is Your Country on Drugs, by Ryan Grim (2010), and managed to read only small portions of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, by William J. Stuntz (2011). The Daniel Kahneman book, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), filled my time, and helped me decide to offer a course in behavioral economics next quarter. My current reading plan centers on Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney -- should be useful for that behavioral econ class.

As for LandE revisions, I intend to input some upgrades to Chapters 4 and 5 in the nest week or so. Hoping to get those Conclusions under way, too. I intend another bound version at that point. Scheduled to give a talk related to the manuscript on April 1, so want to prepare something for that, too.

Law and Econ Project, Update V

Almost one month since the previous update, and less than a month to go before the due date of what I now will call the polished draft of my Law and Econ manuscript. Uh oh.

My plan from one month ago involved rewriting the Preface, and printing out and binding an entire working draft. These tasks have been completed. Note, however, that I have cannily omitted mentioning another part of the plan, which was to draft a section of conclusions -- no progress there, as you might suspect from my attempt to censor discussion.

I also planned to finish reading Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson (2010) -- more failure. But I now have completed 213 of 284 pages of text, and I am keeping up with the endnotes as I go along. So I still have hopes of finishing this book, from which I am learning quite a bit. My other goal was to make some progress on reading This is Your Country on Drugs, by Ryan Grim (2010), and little has been achieved in this regard: I have read 32 of 252 pages. Hmmm. For December 11, let me toss one more book into the pile, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, by William J. Stuntz (2011). (Wow, in providing the Amazon link I read a review, which indicates that the author of this recently-published book has passed away. I hadn't heard this sad news before, though now I see that one of the blurbs on the back cover refers to the author's work in the past tense. Sad news indeed.) I have assigned one chapter of the Stuntz book to my Law and Econ class, too.

So what is left, writing-wise, for December 11? A full revision of the L&E manuscript, along with the preparation of the conclusions. Earlier I thought I might print out and bind an intermediate version before December 11, but now I am not so sure. Aiming for that polished draft, though....

Law and Econ Project, Update IV

Today's update is approximately two weeks late. This makes me question how effective a commitment device nDrafts is. Nonetheless, I will persevere.

At least some progress has been made in the last three weeks. I finished reading two books that I had committed to finishing, We Have Met the Enemy by Daniel Akst (2011), and American Property by Stuart Banner (2011). I assigned Banner's chapter on owning life (including body parts, corpses, and segments of the human genome) to my Law and Econ class; I think it offers a nice case study, of sorts, of how property rights regimes can respond to changes in costs and benefits.

As for my plans for my Law and Econ manuscript, I intended to digitize the edits to Chapter 5 -- done! (I have suffered a major computer breakdown, so I take more pride than usual at meeting this minimal goal.) The other goal was to send out a few chapters to canny (potential) readers for comment. Here, well, limited success. I am glad that I did send Chapter One to one very canny potential reader, but more chapters and maybe an additional reader or two might have been a good idea.

My commitment for the next update is to rewrite the Preface, merging in the Nabokov material (one day I will explain!) that currently resides in Chapter 2. I also would like to make a go at a Conclusions section -- these tend to present a roadblock for me. Most importantly, I want to print out (and maybe bind) the entire manuscript in its current form. After that, I will take a few weeks to produce (and print and bind) a revised draft, with yet one more (and final?) draft, as the nDrafts reader knows, being slated for printing and binding on December 11.

Two other books have been lingering in my "to read soon" pile. One is This is Your Country on Drugs, by Ryan Grim (2010), and I will renew my intention and aim to make some progress this week. The second is Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson (2010); I have read the first 100 pages of this great book, and hope to finish it in the next week or two.

Law and Econ Project, Update III

Back in Chicago again, after a trip that included the stimulating vice symposium. Have to revise the vice paper in the next few months, but it is not yet pressing. Time to see how I did with my last plan, and to plan afresh.

I had a few goals in mind (and on blog) for the vice symposium. I was supposed to read the five other papers for the symposium, and I read 4.5 of them. They contained a good deal of philosophy and law that was outside my ken, but they were fun reads and I learned a lot. I was supposed to read Legalising Drugs by Philip Bean (2010), and I managed to do that. I found the book to be disappointing, though I appreciated the extensive information about drug-related crime and prostitution. The book has a tendency, I think, to cite rather uninspiring legalization advocates (though the steady Transform receives a lot of attention), and to hold their shortcomings against legalization regimes in general. The problem of how to maintain a post-legalization ban on sales to minors is conducted as if alcohol and tobacco don't already face that problem, and as if it represents a near-fatal inconsistency in legalization programs. The bar for legalization seems to be set too high, where it cannot be experimented with unless it is known in advance that it will be an improvement on prohibition. Legalising Drugs did make me think that my paper and related efforts have value, however, because they can allay some of the fears that permeate Bean's book.

I also was supposed to read We Have Met the Enemy by Daniel Akst (2011). I didn't do this, but I have made it to page 224 (out of 278), so I hope to complete it soon. The book is full of interesting information on self-control, though at this point, it doesn't quite come together for me. Sort of less than the sum of its parts. Still, I am enjoying it. I mentioned the possibility of reading This is Your Country on Drugs, by Ryan Grim (2010), but this book still lies in the future for me.

On Law and Econ, I had modest goals, but failed to meet them. I wanted to "convert the hard-copy changes for Chapters 4 and 5 to e-format." I managed to do this for Chapter 4 -- and to write a brief new section on John Stuart Mill -- but have only begun on Chapter 5. So completing the Chapter 5 edits is my first L&E goal for the coming week. Other goals include sending out drafts of some chapters to a few unlucky individuals. (I already distributed earlier drafts of Chapters one and two to a few folks.) I must get the syllabus together for my L&E class, too. I'll try to check back in to nDrafts in eight days or so, after I have taught the first week of L&E.

A neglected earlier L&E goal was to read American Property, by Stuart Banner. I will revive that goal at this point; so far, I am to page 204 of 291. Following Banner, I hope to read Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, by Nicholas Phillipson; this is both out of general interest and to help with my teaching of Smith this quarter.