IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12879.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Behavioral Law and Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Christine Jolls

Abstract

Behavioral economics has been a growing force in many fields of applied economics, including public economics, labor economics, health economics, and law and economics. This paper describes and assesses the current state of behavioral law and economics. Law and economics had a critical (though underrecognized) early point of contact with behavioral economics through the foundational debate in both fields over the Coase theorem and the endowment effect. In law and economics today, both the endowment effect and other features of behavioral economics feature prominently and have been applied in many important legal domains. The paper concludes with reference to a new emphasis in behavioral law and economics on "debiasing through law" - using existing or proposed legal structures in an attempt to reduce people's departures from the traditional economic assumption of unbounded rationality.

Suggested Citation

  • Christine Jolls, 2007. "Behavioral Law and Economics," NBER Working Papers 12879, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12879
    Note: LE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12879.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Posner, Eric A, 1995. "Contract Law in the Welfare State: A Defense of the Unconscionablility Doctrine, Usury Laws, and Related Limitations on the Freedom to Contract," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(2), pages 283-319, June.
    2. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    3. Richard A. Easterlin, 1992. "Analysis," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 51-53, July.
    4. David H. Autor & Mark G. Duggan, 2003. "The Rise in the Disability Rolls and the Decline in Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 157-206.
    5. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    6. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1987. "Pareto efficient and optimal taxation and the new new welfare economics," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 991-1042, Elsevier.
    7. Schwab, Stewart, 1988. "A Coasean Experiment on Contract Presumptions," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 17(2), pages 237-268, June.
    8. Daron Acemoglu & Joshua D. Angrist, 2001. "Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 915-957, October.
    9. Paul Gompers & Joy Ishii & Andrew Metrick, 2003. "Corporate Governance and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 107-156.
    10. Loewenstein, George & Issacharoff, Samuel & Camerer, Colin & Babcock, Linda, 1993. "Self-Serving Assessments of Fairness and Pretrial Bargaining," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 135-159, January.
    11. Babcock, Linda, et al, 1995. "Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1337-1343, December.
    12. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard, 1986. "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 728-741, September.
    13. Christine Jolls & Cass R. Sunstein, 2006. "Debiasing through Law," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 199-242, January.
    14. Heckman, James J & Payner, Brook S, 1989. "Determining the Impact of Federal Antidiscrimination Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks: A Study of South Carolina," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 138-177, March.
    15. Cass R. Sunstein & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 48(Jun).
    16. Kaplow, Louis & Shavell, Steven, 1994. "Why the Legal System Is Less Efficient Than the Income Tax in Redistributing Income," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(2), pages 667-681, June.
    17. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    18. David M. Cutler & Jonathan Gruber, 1996. "Does Public Insurance Crowd out Private Insurance?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(2), pages 391-430.
    19. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    20. Christine Jolls, 2004. "Identifying the Effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act Using State-Law Variation: Preliminary Evidence on Educational Participation Effects," NBER Working Papers 10528, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Christine Jolls, 2004. "Identifying the Effects of the Americans with Disabilities Act Using State-Law Variation: Preliminary Evidence on Educational Participation Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 447-453, May.
    22. Linda Babcock & Xianghong Wang & George Loewenstein, 1996. "Choosing the Wrong Pond: Social Comparisons in Negotiations That Reflect a Self-Serving Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 1-19.
    23. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    24. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    25. Guth, Werner & Schmittberger, Rolf & Schwarze, Bernd, 1982. "An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 367-388, December.
    26. Richard J. Arnould & Henry Grabowski, 1981. "Auto Safety Regulation: An Analysis of Market Failure," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(1), pages 27-48, Spring.
    27. R. H. Strotz, 1955. "Myopia and Inconsistency in Dynamic Utility Maximization," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 23(3), pages 165-180.
    28. Donohue, John J, III & Heckman, James, 1991. "Continuous versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 1603-1643, December.
    29. Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein, 2023. "Libertarian paternalism," Chapters, in: Cass R. Sunstein & Lucia A. Reisch (ed.), Research Handbook on Nudges and Society, chapter 1, pages 10-16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    30. Charles R. Plott & Kathryn Zeiler, 2005. "The Willingness to Pay–Willingness to Accept Gap, the "Endowment Effect," Subject Misconceptions, and Experimental Procedures for Eliciting Valuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 530-545, June.
    31. Shavell, Steven, 1981. "A Note on Efficiency vs. Distributional Equity in Legal Rulemaking: Should Distributional Equity Matter Given Optimal Income Taxation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 414-418, May.
    32. Hoffman, Elizabeth & Spitzer, Matthew L, 1982. "The Coase Theorem: Some Experimental Tests," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 73-98, April.
    33. Gruber, Jonathan, 1994. "The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 622-641, June.
    34. Colin F. Camerer & Howard Kunreuther, 1989. "Decision processes for low probability events: Policy implications," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(4), pages 565-592.
    35. George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore, 2004. "When Ignorance Is Bliss: Information Exchange and Inefficiency in Bargaining," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 37-58, January.
    36. Jolls, Christine, 1997. "Contracts as Bilateral Commitments: A New Perspective on Contract Modification," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 203-237, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jay Weiser & Ronald Neath, 2016. "Private Ordering, Social Cohesion and Value: Residential Community Association Covenant Enforcement," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 19(1), pages 1-26.
    2. Yuval Feldman & Tom R. Tyler, 2012. "Mandated justice: The potential promise and possible pitfalls of mandating procedural justice in the workplace," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 46-65, March.
    3. Giovanni B. Ramello, 2016. "The past, present and future of comparative law and economics," Chapters, in: Theodore Eisenberg & Giovanni B. Ramello (ed.), Comparative Law and Economics, chapter 1, pages 3-22, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Bigoni, Maria & Le Coq, Chloé & Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2008. "Risk Aversion, Prospect Theory, and Strategic Risk in Law Enforcement: Evidence From an Antitrust Experiment," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 696, Stockholm School of Economics.
    5. Sophie Clot & Gilles Grolleau & Lisette Ibanez, 2016. "Do good deeds make bad people?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 491-513, December.
    6. Landeo, Claudia & Nikitin, Maxim & Izmalkov, Sergei, 2012. "Playing against an Apparent Opponent: Incentives for Care, Litigation, and Damage Caps under Self-Serving Bias," Working Papers 2012-15, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2012.
    7. Dimitrova-Grajzl Valentina & Grajzl Peter & Zajc Katarina & Sustersic Janez, 2012. "Judicial Incentives and Performance at Lower Courts: Evidence from Slovenian Judge-Level Data," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 215-252, August.
    8. Harel Alon & Procaccia Yuval & Ritov Ilana, 2017. "On the Economic Effects of Disobeyed Regulation in Employment Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-24, July.
    9. Emmanuel Laffort & Emmanuelle Cargnello-Charles, 2014. "Reducing the Risk of Fraud in Financial Market: Psychosocial Drivers and Enactment-Based Perspective," Post-Print hal-02010166, HAL.
    10. James Cooper & William Kovacic, 2012. "Behavioral economics: implications for regulatory behavior," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 41-58, February.
    11. Uwe Dulleck, 2019. "Financial Decisions and Financial Regulation: Three Concepts of Performance Based Regulation," CESifo Working Paper Series 8006, CESifo.
    12. Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir, 2012. "The Questionable Efficiency of the Efficient-Breach Doctrine," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 168(1), pages 5-26, March.
    13. Constanza Blanco Barón, 2019. "Discusiones contemporáneas del derecho económico. Serie de derecho Económico n.° 4," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 1117, October.
    14. Radygin Alexandr & Entov Revold & Apevalova E. & Shvetsov P., 2008. "Market Discipline and Contracts: Theory, Empiric Analysis, Law," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 117P.
    15. Kovac Mitja & Elkanawati Amira & Gjikolli Vita & Vandenberghe Ann-Sophie, 2020. "The Covid-19 pandemic: collective action and European public policy under stress," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 14(2), pages 47-59, December.
    16. C. Fritz Foley, 2008. "Welfare Payments and Crime," NBER Working Papers 14074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Cynthia L. Estlund & Michael L. Wachter, 2012. "Introduction: the economics of labor and employment law," Chapters, in: Cynthia L. Estlund & Michael L. Wachter (ed.), Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law, chapter 1, pages 3-19, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Nicolas Dufour & Emmanuel Laffort, 2016. "De la fraude en question à la question de la fraude. Un complément de revue de littérature," Post-Print hal-03335921, HAL.
    19. María del Pilar García Pachón, 2016. "Instrumentos Económicos Y Financieros Para La Gestión Ambiental," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 853, October.

    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. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2017. "Richard H. Thaler: Integrating Economics with Psychology," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2017-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    2. Eduard Marinov, 2017. "The 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 117-159.
    3. Floris Heukelom, 2007. "Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-020/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Dohmen, Thomas, 2014. "Behavioral labor economics: Advances and future directions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 71-85.
    5. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.
    6. Upravitelev, A., 2023. "Neoclassical roots of behavioral economics," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 110-140.
    7. Christine Jolls, 2007. "Employment Law and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 13230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    9. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2018. "Incentives," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2018-01, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    10. Maria Alessandra Antonelli & Valeria De Bonis & Angelo Castaldo & Alessandrao Gandolfo, 2022. "Sin goods taxation: an encompassing model," Public Finance Research Papers 52, Istituto di Economia e Finanza, DSGE, Sapienza University of Rome.
    11. James Konow, 2000. "Fair Shares: Accountability and Cognitive Dissonance in Allocation Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1072-1091, September.
    12. Christine Jolls & Cass R. Sunstein, 2006. "Debiasing through Law," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 199-242, January.
    13. Oren Bar-Gill & Christoph Engel, 2018. "How to Protect Entitlements: An Experiment," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(3), pages 525-553.
    14. Döring Thomas, 2013. "John Maynard Keynes als Verhaltensökonom – illustriert anhand seiner Analyse des Versailler Vertrags / John Maynard Keynes as Behavioral Economist – Represented by his Analysis of the Treaty of Versai," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 64(1), pages 27-52, January.
    15. Oliver Hart & John Moore, 2008. "Contracts as Reference Points," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 1-48.
    16. Elisabeth Gsottbauer & Jeroen Bergh, 2011. "Environmental Policy Theory Given Bounded Rationality and Other-regarding Preferences," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 49(2), pages 263-304, June.
    17. Thomas Wagner, 1998. "Reciprocity And Efficiency," Rationality and Society, , vol. 10(3), pages 347-375, August.
    18. Konow, James, 1996. "A positive theory of economic fairness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 13-35, October.
    19. Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2006. "Behavioral Economics Comes of Age," Levine's Bibliography 321307000000000038, UCLA Department of Economics.
    20. Jacobs Martin, 2016. "Accounting for Changing Tastes: Approaches to Explaining Unstable Individual Preferences," Review of Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 67(2), pages 121-183, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B00 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - General - - - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches
    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
    • K13 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Tort Law and Product Liability; Forensic Economics
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nbr:nberwo:12879. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.