IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/nzecpp/v41y2007i1p91-108.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ex ante liability rules in New Zealand's health and safety in employment act: A law and economics analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Gordon
  • Alan Woodfield

Abstract

New Zealand's health and safety legislation imposes penalties for breaches of duty even where accidents have not occurred. We argue that ex post liability as implemented provides inadequate incentives for safety precautions due to weak penalties and significant uncertainty surrounding courts' required standard of care. Merely adding ex ante liability with even weaker penalties and low inspection probabilities is unlikely to fully compensate for these deficiencies, but may be a worthwhile complement. More strict ex ante standards than socially optimal precaution levels may even be desirable, providing some justification for observed relatively stringent safety regulations and required standards of precaution.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Gordon & Alan Woodfield, 2007. "Ex ante liability rules in New Zealand's health and safety in employment act: A law and economics analysis," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(1), pages 91-108.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:41:y:2007:i:1:p:91-108
    DOI: 10.1080/00779950709558500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00779950709558500
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00779950709558500?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Gordon & Alan E. Woodfield, 2006. "Incentives and the Changing Structure of Penalties in New Zealand's Health and Safety in Employment Act," Working Papers in Economics 06/03, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    2. Craswell, Richard & Calfee, John E, 1986. "Deterrence and Uncertain Legal Standards," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 2(2), pages 279-303, Fall.
    3. Kolstad, Charles D & Ulen, Thomas S & Johnson, Gary V, 1990. "Ex Post Liability for Harm vs. Ex Ante Safety Regulation: Substitutes or Complements?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 888-901, September.
    4. Steven Shavell, 1984. "A Model of the Optimal Use of Liability and Safety Regulation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 271-280, Summer.
    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. Paul Gordon & Alan E. Woodfield, 2006. "Incentives and the Changing Structure of Penalties in New Zealand's Health and Safety in Employment Act," Working Papers in Economics 06/03, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    2. Andrea Menclova & Alan Woodfield, 2013. "The Composition of Health and Safety in Employment Sentences in New Zealand: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers in Economics 13/13, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.

    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. Gérard Mondello, 2013. "Ambiguous Beliefs on Damages and Civil Liability Theories"," Post-Print halshs-00929948, HAL.
    2. Innes, Robert, 1999. "Optimal liability with stochastic harms, judgement-proof injurers, and asymmetric information1," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 181-203, June.
    3. Bartsch, Elga, 1997. "Environmental liability, imperfect information, and multidimensional pollution control," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 139-146, March.
    4. Bartsch, Elga, 1996. "Enforcement of environmental liability in the case of uncertain causality and asymmetric information," Kiel Working Papers 755, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    5. Innes, Robert, 2004. "Enforcement costs, optimal sanctions, and the choice between ex-post liability and ex-ante regulation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 29-48, March.
    6. 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.
    7. Gérard Mondello, 2015. "Civil liability, Knight's UnCertainty and non-diCtatorial regUlator Documents de travail GREDEG GREDEG Working Papers Series," Working Papers hal-01251437, HAL.
    8. Donatella Porrini, 2005. "Environmental Policies Choice as an Issue of Informational Efficiency," Chapters, in: Jürgen G. Backhaus (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Second Edition, chapter 23, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Guiseppe Dari Mattiaci & F. Parisi, 2003. "The Economics of Tort Law: A Précis," Working Papers 03-13, Utrecht School of Economics.
    10. Marion Desquilbet & Sylvaine Poret, 2014. "How do GM/non GM coexistence regulations affect markets and welfare?," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 51-82, February.
    11. Suurmond, Guido, 2007. "The effects of the enforcement strategy," MPRA Paper 21142, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Friehe, Tim & Langlais, Eric, 2015. "On the political economy of public safety investments," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 7-16.
    13. Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "An Activity-Generating Theory of Regulation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(1), pages 1-38.
    14. Marion Desquilbet & Sylvaine Poret, 2015. "How do GM / non GM coexistence regulations affect markets and welfare?," Working Papers hal-00956039, HAL.
    15. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2021. "Organizing Data Analytics," CEPR Discussion Papers 16768, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Andrzej Baniak & Peter Grajzl, 2014. "Controlling Product Risks when Consumers are Heterogeneously Overconfident: Producer Liability vs. Minimum Quality Standard Regulation," CESifo Working Paper Series 5003, CESifo.
    17. Gérard Mondello, 2022. "Strict liability, scarce generic input and duopoly competition," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 369-404, December.
    18. Sébastien Pouliot & Daniel A. Sumner, 2008. "Traceability, Liability, and Incentives for Food Safety and Quality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(1), pages 15-27.
    19. Marcel Boyer & Donatella Porrini, 2010. "Optimal liability sharing and court errors: an exploratory analysis," Working Papers hal-00463913, HAL.
    20. Venus, Thomas & Punt, Maarten & Wesseler, Justus, 2015. "Influence of voluntary GMO-free production standards on the reputation and flexibility of agricultural value chains," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211920, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Safety precautions; ex ante liability;

    JEL classification:

    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law

    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:taf:nzecpp:v:41:y:2007:i:1:p:91-108. 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: http://www.tandfonline.com/RNZP20 .

    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.