IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usi/depfid/1310.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Cognitive Approach to Law and Economics: Hayek’s Legacy

Author

Listed:
  • Angela Ambrosino

Abstract

Hayek’s contribution to the analysis of law has been widely criticized and disputed. This paper shares with a recent assessment by Beaulier, Boettke and Coyne the opinion that the significance of Hayek’s legal writings and their relevance to law and economics can only be completely understood by jointly analyzing his economic theory and his legal theory. Moreover it will be argued that both theories must be reconsidered in light of Hayek’s theory of mind. This theory, in fact, represents the key element in understanding Hayek’s thought in that it gives insight into the complexity of the cognitive and psychological determinants involved in coordination processes. The latter are the main phenomena that Hayek studied, and they are also essential for understanding the emergence of customs and social institutions as described in his legal theory. From this perspective, Hayek’s legal theory is of close relevance to current research in law. His contribution suggests a different methodological approach to developing legal theory in which the analysis of the micro-foundations of human behavior is of central importance. The paper argues that inquiry of this kind can contribute to legal theory by explaining perception in decision-making processes, and it may be the first essential step toward a normative legal theory that reduces errors in legal contexts like the one currently being sought by behavioral law and economics scholars.

Suggested Citation

  • Angela Ambrosino, 2010. "A Cognitive Approach to Law and Economics: Hayek’s Legacy," Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID) University of Siena 1310, Department of Economic Policy, Finance and Development (DEPFID), University of Siena.
    • Handle: RePEc:usi:depfid:1310
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.deps.unisi.it/depfid/text1310.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Shinji Teraji, 2017. "Understanding coevolution of mind and society: institutions-as-rules and institutions-as-equilibria," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 16(1), pages 95-112, November.
    2. Angela Ambrosino & Magda Fontana & Anna Azzurra Gigante, 2018. "Shifting Boundaries In Economics: The Institutional Cognitive Strand And The Future Of Institutional Economics," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 767-791, July.
    3. Ambrosino, Angela & Fontana, Magda & Gigante, Anna Azzurra, 2015. "Shifting Boundaries in Economics: the Institutional Cognitive Strand," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201544, University of Turin.
    4. Angela Ambrosino, 2017. "The Role of Agents’ Propensity toward Conformity and Independence in the Process of Institutional Change," STOREPapers 1_2017, Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica - StorEP.
    5. A. Davola & I. Querci & S. Romani, 2023. "No Consumer Is an Island—Relational Disclosure as a Regulatory Strategy to Advance Consumer Protection Against Microtargeting," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 1-25, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    law and economics; congitive economics; neuroeconomics; Hayek; Posner.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B1 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;
    • B53 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Austrian
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact

    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:usi:depfid:1310. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Carlo Zappia (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpsieit.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.