{"title":"Optimal Preventive Law Enforcement and Stopping Standards","authors":"Murat C Mungan","doi":"10.1093/aler/ahy003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahy003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mortgage Pricing and Race: Evidence from the Northeast","authors":"Kevin A. Clarke, L. Rothenberg","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHX021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHX021","url":null,"abstract":"The putative existence of race-based discrimination in mortgage pricing is both a scholarly and societal concern. Efforts to assess discrimination empirically, however, are typically plagued by omitted variables, which leave any evidence of discrimination open to interpretation. We take a two-pronged approach to the problem. First, we analyze a dataset comprising discretionary mortgage fees collected by brokers working for a brokerage company. Mortgage brokers are intermediaries between lenders and borrowers; they neither approve loans nor share in the risk of default. Variables that measure risk should therefore have no effect on these discretionary fees, and indeed, we show that default risk as measured by credit scores have no effect on discretionary pricing. Second, we perform a formal sensitivity analysis that quantifies the impact of potentially omitted variables. Our results suggest that minority borrowers pay more on average for mortgages than non-minorities, and that this effect persists even in the presence of unmeasured confounders.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"138-167"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHX021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44700539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Product Liability in Markets for Vertically Differentiated Products","authors":"F. Baumann, Tim Friehe, Alexander Rasch","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHX013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHX013","url":null,"abstract":"This article shows that shifting losses from consumers with heterogeneous harm levels to vertically differentiated duopolists increases product safety levels, while narrowing the degree of product differentiation. Our setup features observable (but possibly nonverifiable) product safety levels and firms subject to strict liability according to a parametric liability specification. Firms’ expected liability payments depend on both product safety and price levels which critically influences the repercussions of shifting losses to firms. From a social standpoint, shifting some losses to firms is always beneficial.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"46-81"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHX013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46537680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“From PI to IP”: Litigation Response to Tort Reform","authors":"R. Avraham, J. Golden","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHY001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHY001","url":null,"abstract":"For helpful comments and input, the authors thank David Abrams, Alma Cohen, Allan Ferrel, Michael Frakes, Mark Lemley, Jonathan Masur, Michael Meurer, Michael Risch, Pam Samuelson, David Schwartz, Ted Sichelman, Charles Silver, Matthew Spitzer, Melissa Wasserman, Heidi Williams, prior anonymous reviewers, and participants in the 2012 Empirical Patent Law Conference sponsored by Cornell Law School and the University of Illinois College of Law, the 2012 Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, the University of Texas School of Law’s Drawing Board workshop, a conference in memory of Ted Eisenberg (Tel Aviv Univ, 2015), and Empirical Legal Studies Workshop (Tel Aviv Univ, 2015). The authors thank Melissa Bernstein, Ross MacDonald, Grace Matthews, and Jane O’Connell for research assistance. The first part of the title is in quotation marks because it was also the first part of the title for a 2005 news story in the journal IP Law & Business (Cohen 2005).","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"168-213"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHY001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44102151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Variation in Boilerplate: Rational Design or Random Mutation?","authors":"Stephen Choi, Mitu G. Gulati, R. Scott","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2827189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2827189","url":null,"abstract":"Standard contract doctrine presumes that sophisticated contracting parties choose their terminology carefully because they want courts or counterparts to understand the precise meaning they intend to convey. The implication of this “rational design” model of commercial contracting behavior is that courts should pay close attention to the plain or ordinary meaning of the language in a standardized term and interpret observed changes in terminology as embodying new meaning that varies from the original formulation. Using a study of the sovereign bond market, we examine the rational design model as applied to standard-form contracting. In NML v. Argentina, federal courts in New York attached great weight to the precise phrasing of the boilerplate contract terms at issue. The industry promptly condemned the decision for endorsing a supposedly erroneous interpretation of a variant of a hoary boilerplate clause. Utilizing data on how contracting practices responded to the courts’ decisions, we ask whether the market response indicates that parties in fact intended the variations in their standard contract language to embody different meanings. The data support a model of evolution of boilerplate language that is closer to random mutation rather than rational design.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"20 1","pages":"1-45"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41448986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Empirical Analysis of the Signaling and Screening Models of Litigation","authors":"Paul Pecorino,Mark Van Boening","doi":"10.1093/aler/ahy002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahy002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"68 1","pages":"214-244"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138528743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Effect of Mandatory Insurer Reporting on Settlement Delay","authors":"Paul S. Heaton","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHAA010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHAA010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 To improve their fiscal position, Medicare and some state Medicaid programs have recently taken steps to mandate reporting of personal injury awards and thus facilitate subrogation against such awards. Participants in the tort system have argued these additional reporting requirements might delay settlement of claims, harming both plaintiffs and defendants. This article examines this problem empirically, using a rich, national data set of closed automobile bodily injury claims. Using a differences-in-differences research design that exploits the introduction of a new Medicare reporting requirement in 2011, it demonstrates that mandated reporting increased time to settlement by 19%, or an average of 58 days. Robustness checks using data from closed malpractice claims reveal a similar delay. Conservative calculations suggest such delays could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in waiting costs each year. Policymakers should be aware of and seek to avoid such costs as they assess whether and how to expand reporting of personal injury awards.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHAA010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45434788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Shareholder Wealth Effects of Delaware Litigation","authors":"Adam B. Badawi, Daniel L. Chen","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHX015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHX015","url":null,"abstract":"We collect data on the record of every action in over one thousand cases involving public companies from 2004 to 2011 in the Delaware Court of Chancery, which is the leading court for corporate law disputes in the United States. We use these data to estimate how markets respond to Delaware litigation events and characteristics such as case initiations, procedural motions, case quality, and judge identity. We find that negative abnormal returns are associated with the filing of derivative and contract cases, but we observe little effect associated with the filing of the average merger challenge. When we include measures of case quality, we see that higher quality cases increase the expected impact of derivative and contract litigation on firm value. We also develop evidence that tactics associated with multijurisdictional litigation are associated with a weakened impact of litigation on firm value. This evidence is consistent with the belief that the presence of litigation in another jurisdiction allows defense lawyers to bid down competing groups of plaintiffs’ lawyers during settlement negotiations. Finally, we show that abnormal returns are not associated with information on judicial assignment at the time of case filing, nor are they associated with judge identity at case resolution. These results suggest that the judicial impact on shareholder wealth at the time of judicial assignment and the time of case termination is too small to be statistically detected.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"287-326"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHX015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44545117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Erratum to “The Voting Behavior of Young Disenfranchised Felons: Would They Vote if They Could?”","authors":"Randi Hjalmarsson, M. López","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHX018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHX018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"504-504"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHX018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44045001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Process is the Punishment: Juror Demographics and Case Administration in State Courts","authors":"Jean N. Lee","doi":"10.1093/ALER/AHX010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ALER/AHX010","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1976 and 1999, twelve states passed laws requiring that lists of eligible jurors for state trials be created by selecting at random from publicly available sources, limiting the discretion of jury commissioners to exclude African Americans from jury service. A difference-in-difference analysis suggests these reforms led to a 5–6 percentage point drop in the share of new admissions to prison accounted for by African Americans and other minorities, and lower rates of exercise of the death penalty overall.","PeriodicalId":46133,"journal":{"name":"American Law and Economics Review","volume":"19 1","pages":"361-390"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/ALER/AHX010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48944731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}