{"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}
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.
{"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}
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.
{"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}
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).
对于有用的意见和建议，作者感谢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，之前的匿名审稿人，以及2012年由康奈尔法学院和伊利诺伊大学法学院主办的经验专利法会议，2012年知识产权学者会议的与会者。德克萨斯大学法学院的绘图板研讨会，纪念泰德·艾森伯格(特拉维夫大学，2015年)的会议，以及实证法律研究研讨会(特拉维夫大学，2015年)。作者感谢梅丽莎·伯恩斯坦、罗斯·麦克唐纳、格蕾丝·马修斯和简·奥康奈尔对研究的帮助。标题的第一部分是引号，因为它也是2005年《知识产权法律与商业》(Cohen 2005)杂志上一篇新闻报道标题的第一部分。
{"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}
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.
{"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}
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.
{"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}
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.
我们收集了特拉华州衡平法院(Delaware Court of Chancery) 2004年至2011年间涉及上市公司的1000多起案件的每一项诉讼记录的数据。特拉华州衡平法院是美国公司法纠纷的主要法院。我们使用这些数据来估计市场对特拉华州诉讼事件和特征的反应，如案件启动、程序动议、案件质量和法官身份。我们发现，负异常收益与衍生品和合同案件的提起有关，但我们观察到与平均合并挑战的提起有关的影响很小。当我们纳入案件质量的衡量标准时，我们看到，高质量的案件增加了衍生诉讼和合同诉讼对公司价值的预期影响。我们还发现证据表明，与多司法管辖区诉讼相关的策略与诉讼对公司价值的影响减弱有关。这一证据与另一个司法管辖区的诉讼允许辩护律师在和解谈判中压低原告律师竞争团体的信念是一致的。最后，我们表明异常收益与案件立案时的司法分配信息无关，也与案件解决时的法官身份无关。这些结果表明，在司法分配和案件终止时，司法对股东财富的影响太小，无法进行统计检测。
{"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}
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.
{"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}
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