IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_625.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Accident Law: An Excessive Standard May Be Efficient

Author

Listed:
  • Laszlo Goerke

Abstract

In a world with risk-neutral agents, liability rules will only induce efficient behaviour if these rules impose the full (marginal) costs of an action on the parties. However, institutional restrictions or bilateral activity choices can prevent the full internalisation of costs. A mechanism is proposed which guarantees an efficient outcome: monetary fines which are not related to the occurrence of an accident. Such a mechanism requires individuals to violate the standard of care in order to trigger fine payments. Hence, efficiency needs an excessive standard.

Suggested Citation

  • Laszlo Goerke, 2001. "Accident Law: An Excessive Standard May Be Efficient," CESifo Working Paper Series 625, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_625
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo_wp625.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven Shavell & A. Mitchell Polinsky, 2000. "The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 45-76, March.
    2. Tullock, Gordon, 1981. "Negligence again," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 51-62, June.
    3. Hindley, Brian & Bishop, Bill, 1983. "Accident liability rules and externality," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 59-68, June.
    4. Jerry Green, 1976. "On the Optimal Structure of Liability Laws," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 7(2), pages 553-574, Autumn.
    5. Shavell, Steven, 1993. "The Optimal Structure of Law Enforcement," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 255-287, April.
    6. Arlen, Jennifer H., 1990. "Re-examining liability rules when injurers as well as victims suffer losses," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 233-239, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laszlo Goerke, 2002. "Accident Law: Efficiency May Require an Inefficient Standard," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 3(1), pages 43-51, February.
    2. Suurmond, Guido, 2007. "The effects of the enforcement strategy," MPRA Paper 21142, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Lampach, Nicolas & Wijtvliet, Wessel & Dyevre, Arthur, 2020. "Merchant hubs and spatial disparities in the private enforcement of international trade regimes," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Germani, Anna Rita & Morone, Andrea & Morone, Piergiuseppe, 2009. "Investigating Discretionary Environmental Enforcement: a pilot experiment," MPRA Paper 12735, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Bonaventura, Luigi & Orlando, Danilo, 2007. "Enforcement of Regulation, Irregular Sector, and Firm Performance," MPRA Paper 14686, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Germani, Anna Rita & Morone, Andrea & Morone, Piergiuseppe & Scaramozzino, Pasquale, 2013. "Discretionary enforcement and strategic interactions between firms, regulatory agency and justice department: a theoretical and empirical investigation," MPRA Paper 51369, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Feess, Eberhard & Sarel, Roee, 2022. "Optimal fine reductions for self-reporting: The impact of loss aversion," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    8. Garoupa, Nuno, 2001. "Optimal magnitude and probability of fines," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(9), pages 1765-1771, October.
    9. Frédéric Marty & Thierry Kirat, 2006. "La mise en oeuvre de la réglementation : une lecture économico-juridique du secteur électrique et des marchés publics," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 175(4), pages 101-116.
    10. Kai Huschelrath & Sebastian Peyer, 2013. "Public and Private Enforcement of Competition Law A Differentiated Approach," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2013-05, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    11. Mohamed Jellal & Nuno Garoupa, 1999. "Dynamic optimal law enforcement with learning," Economics Working Papers 402, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    12. Iljoong Kim, 2008. "Securities laws ‘facilitating’ private enforcement," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 17-38, February.
    13. Ram Mudambi & Pietro Navarra & Andrew Delios, 2013. "Government regulation, corruption, and FDI," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 487-511, June.
    14. Ram Singh, 2006. "On the Existence and Efficiency of Equilibria under Liability Rules," Working papers 150, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    15. Dhammika Dharmapala & Sandra A. Hoffmann, 2005. "Bilateral Accidents with Intrinsically Interdependent Costs of Precaution," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 239-272, January.
    16. Nuno Garoupa & Mohamed Jellal, 2002. "A Note on Optimal Law Enforcement under Asymmetric Information," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 5-13, July.
    17. Bowles, Roger & Faure, Michael & Garoupa, Nuno, 2000. "Economic analysis of the removal of illegal gains," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 537-549, December.
    18. Giovanni Immordino & Marco Pagano, 2010. "Legal Standards, Enforcement, and Corruption," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(5), pages 1104-1132, September.
    19. Christian Growitsch & Nicole Nulsch & Margarethe Rammerstorfer, 2012. "Preventing innovative cooperations: the legal exemptions unintended side effect," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 1-22, February.
    20. Mohamed Jellal & Nuno Garoupa, 1999. "Optimal law enforcement under asymmetric information," Economics Working Papers 401, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_625. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.