Precaution Incentives in Accident Settings

Law and economics has been established as an important sub-discipline of economics. Looking at the ?eld, it is undisputed that the economics of tort law has been the subject of much study early on and continues to be. The analysis in that realm is centered on the internalization of external e?ects by the means of liability law, i.e. the allocation of a liability burden possibly depending on the behavior of parties involved in an accident. In the by now standard framework, introduced by path-breaking contributions such as Calabresi (1970) and Brown (1973), the outcome with regard to care-taking (and possibly the level of activity) under several liability rules, which are actually observed in practice, is compared to what is socially desirable. The objective of society usually is assumed to be wealth maximization. The set of results which may be called the central theory show that liability rules can indeed induce ?rst-best behavior by parties, as long as several core assumptions hold. After the central theory of the economics of tort law had been settled, contributors to the literature started to test the robustness of the conclusions obtained when these core assumptions are varied. The existent literature on the economics of tort law is rich and diverse. Yet, without doubt, there are still numerous questions in the ?eld which need to be answered and therefore require scholarly attention. The present book rightfully goes along that path. In a collection of chapters, di?erent subjects are examined from a theoretical standpoint.