IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/oplwec/qt9pq4m8ts.html

Commodifying Liability

Author

Listed:
  • Cooter, Robert D.

Abstract

In recent years, ingenious entrepreneurs have invented new commodities by bundling contingent claims and marketing them. A liability right can be viewed as a contingent claim and analyzed like stock options or commodity futures. Since law prohibits markets for liability rights, no one knows how they would work. I assume no legal impediments to unbundling, packaging, and selling liability rights. I then predict how a competitive market would price liability rights. I use such an ideal market to critique the actual system of tort liability. Competition can solve many of the problems attributed by courts to contracts that reallocate tort liability.

Suggested Citation

  • Cooter, Robert D., 1997. "Commodifying Liability," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt9pq4m8ts, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt9pq4m8ts
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9pq4m8ts.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip J. Cook & Daniel A. Graham, 1977. "The Demand for Insurance and Protection: The Case of Irreplaceable Commodities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 143-156.
    2. Francis M. Bator, 1958. "The Anatomy of Market Failure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 72(3), pages 351-379.
    3. Niskanen, William A, 1975. "Bureaucrats and Politicians," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 617-643, December.
    4. Robert D. Cooter, 1991. "Economic Theories of Legal Liability," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 11-30, Summer.
    5. Nash, John, 1950. "The Bargaining Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 18(2), pages 155-162, April.
    6. JohnE. Calfee & CLifford Winston, 1993. "The Consumer Welfare Effects of Liability for Pain and Suffering: An Exploratory Analysis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 24(1 Microec), pages 133-196.
    7. Cooter, Robert D., 1980. "How the law circumvents Starrett's nonconvexity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 499-504, June.
    8. A. Mitchell Polinsky & Yeon-Koo Che, 1991. "Decoupling Liability: Optimal Incentives for Care and Litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(4), pages 562-570, Winter.
    9. George L. Priest, 1991. "The Modern Expansion of Tort Liability: Its Sources, Its Effects, and Its Reform," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 31-50, Summer.
    10. Starrett, David A., 1972. "Fundamental nonconvexities in the theory of externalities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 180-199, April.
    11. Bernstein, Lisa, 1992. "Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 115-157, January.
    12. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    13. Cooter, Robert D & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1994. "An Economic Model of Legal Discovery," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 435-463, January.
    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. Fraser, Clive D., 1996. "On tort as an implicit insurance system with state-dependent utility: The case of child mortality risk," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 449-459, December.
    2. Jesse Bull, 2009. "Costly Evidence And Systems Of Fact‐Finding," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 103-125, April.
    3. Christian Bjørnskov & Axel Dreher & Justina Fischer, 2008. "Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 119-173, January.
    4. Sjur Didrik Flåm & Elmar G. Wolfstetter, 2015. "Liability Insurance and Choice of Cars: A Large Game Approach," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(6), pages 943-963, December.
    5. Olivier Compte & Philippe Jehiel, 2010. "Bargaining and Majority Rules: A Collective Search Perspective," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 189-221, April.
    6. Sofia Amaral-Garcia, 2015. "Non-economic Damages in Medical Malpractice Appeals: Does the Jurisdiction Make a Difference?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1506, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Larry Eubanks & Glenn L. Furton, 2024. "The institutional structure of pollution: large-scale externalities and the common law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 201(3), pages 429-450, December.
    8. repec:osf:socarx:8ukmr_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Garratt, Rod, 1999. "On Bargaining for an Indivisible Good," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 186-192, January.
    10. Gaël Giraud & Cécile Renouard, 2011. "In search of an alternative to shareholder value maximization," Post-Print hal-00609153, HAL.
    11. James Kau & Paul Rubin, 1981. "The size of government," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 261-274, January.
    12. Matsusaka, John G, 2000. "Fiscal Effects of the Voter Initiative in the First Half of the Twentieth Century," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 619-650, October.
    13. repec:jpe:journl:1320 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Jacek Lewkowicz & Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska, 2016. "De jure and de facto institutions – disentangling the interrelationships," Working Papers 2016-29, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    15. Yew‐Kwang Ng, 1981. "Bentham or Nash? On the Acceptable Form of Social Welfare Functions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 57(3), pages 238-250, September.
    16. Brendan Markey‐Towler, 2019. "The New Microeconomics: A Psychological, Institutional, and Evolutionary Paradigm with Neoclassical Economics as a Special Case," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(1), pages 95-135, January.
    17. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Bruno Lovat & Francesco Parisi, 2014. "Loss-Sharing between Nonnegligent Parties," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(4), pages 571-598, December.
    18. Sergey Sinelnikov & Pavel Kadochnikov & Ilya Trunin, 2008. "From Elections to Appointments of the Regional Governors: Major Challenges and Outcomes," Published Papers 2, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2008.
    19. John Bradbury & W. Crain, 2005. "Legislative district configurations and fiscal policy in American States," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 385-407, December.
    20. Cooter, Robert D., 1999. "Punitive Damages, Social Norms, and Economic Analysis," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt7h38w307, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    21. Glenn Furton & Adam Martin, 2019. "Beyond market failure and government failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 197-216, January.
    22. Randall, Alan, 1985. "Methodology, Id Ogy And The Economics Of Policy: Why Resource Economists Disagree," 1985 Annual Meeting, August 4-7, Ames, Iowa 278505, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).

    More about this item

    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:cdl:oplwec:qt9pq4m8ts. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lebrkus.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.