My research is focused on problems of legal design in market democracies. I am currently working on rational choice models to analyze the phenomenon and characteristics of legal order and how to integrate these models with normative theories of law and politics. I continue to work on questions of how the markets for law, lawyers and dispute resolution affect the production of law. This involves questions not only of the price and quality of legal services but also of innovation in the provision of legal goods and services and the provision of the 'soft infrastructure' that supports innovative economic activity. I am particularly interested in thinking about how the existing regulatory structure for law inhibits innovation in law to meet the needs of the new economy and the potential for more market-based methods of providing legal inputs to support economic activity.
Unpublished Papers
Attorney-Client Confidentiality (with Shmuel Leshem), Encyclopedia of Law and Economics (2nd ed.), Vol 10: Procedural Law and Economics (C. Sanchirico, ed.) (2012)
The protection of information generated and shared in attorney-client relationships is a fundamental attribute of...
Endogenous Institutions: Law as a Coordinating Device (with Barry R. Weingast) (2011)
Scholars widely agree that long-term economic growth requires a legal system providing for rule of...
Collective Punishment: A Coordination Account of Legal Order (with Barry R. Weingast) (2011)
Although most economic and positive political theory presumes the existence of an effective legal regime...
Rational Reasonableness: Toward a Positive Theory of Public Reason (with Stephen Macedo) (2011)
Why is it important for people to agree on and articulate shared reasons for just...
What is Law? A Coordination Account of the Characteristics of Legal Order (with Barry R. Weingast) (2011)
Legal philosophers have long debated the question, what is law? But few in social science...
Articles
Equipping the Garage Guys in Law, Maryland Law Review (2011)
The twin structural changes of the last few decades—globalization and the emergence of a web-based...
Higher Demand, Lower Supply? A Comparative Assessment of the Legal Landscape for Ordinary Americans, Fordham Urban Law Journal (2010)
In this paper I review the small amount of available data on the extent to...
The Dynamic Quality of Law: The Role of Judicial Incentives and Legal Human Capital in the Adaptation of Law, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2010)
Much of the existing literature investigating the relationship between legal regimes and economic growth focuses...
The Strategy of Methodology: The Virtues of Being Reductionist for Comparative Law, University of Toronto Law Journal (2009)
In this comment I respond to three comments by comparative legal scholars on my paper...
Framing the Choice between Cash and Courthouse: Experiences with the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Law and Society Review (2008)
In this paper I report the results of a quantitative and qualitative empirical study of...
Contributions to Books
Producing Law for Innovation, Rules for Growth (2011)
In this contribution to the forthcoming Rules for Growth prepared by the Kauffman Task Force...
The Role of International Law Firms and Multijural Legal Human Capital in the Harmonization of Legal Regimes, Multijuralism: Manifestations, Causes and Consequences (2009)
The problem of harmonizing legal rules across multiple overlapping legal orders is, in part, a...
The Public and the Private in the Provision of Law for Global Transactions, .) Contractual Certainty in International Trade: Empirical Studies and Theoretical Debates on Institutional Support for Global Economic Exchanges (2009)
In this essay, I revisit the public/private divide in order to explore more fully the...
The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund: "An Unprecedented Experiment in American Democracy", The Future of Terrorism Risk Insurance (2005)
One of the profound ironies of September 11 is that an attack widely perceived to...
The Many Legal Institutions that Support Contractual Commitment, Handbook of New Institutional Economics (2004)
One of the fundamental contributions of transaction cost theory and institutional economics has been to...