Law, economics and Calabresi on the future of law and economics

Alain Marciano and Giovanni Ramello ()

European Journal of Law and Economics, 2019, vol. 48, issue 1, No 5, 65-76

Abstract: Abstract There exists a distinction between ‘law and economics’ and the ‘economic analysis of law’. The former, corresponding to Coase’s approach, consists in taking legal rules into account insofar as they influence economic activities. The latter, associated to Posner’s name, consists in using economics to analyze legal problems. Methodologically speaking, if one admits that the economic analysis of law consists in using economic tools to analyze legal problems, Calabresi’s own work must be classified as such. However, Calabresi has always insisted that his own approach differs from Posner’s economic analysis of law. In this paper, we take the opportunity of Calabresi’s new book—The Future of Law and Economics—to revisit Calabresi’s approach to law and economics. In his book, Calabresi explains that the economic analysis of law is unsatisfactory because economics is too narrow. He insists on the need to amplify economic analysis by: first, adopting a more realistic approach à la Coase; second, taking merit goods into account; and third, including individuals’ propensity to be altruistic. We analyze these three aspects and show that it leads to a certain ambiguity in terms of the distinction between ‘law and economics’ and the ‘economic analysis of law’.

Keywords: Buchanan; Calabresi; Coase; Posner; Economic analysis of law; Law and economics; Merit goods; Altruism; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B2 B31 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10657-019-09619-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Law, economics and Calabresi on the future of law and economics (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:ejlwec:v:48:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10657-019-09619-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10657

DOI: 10.1007/s10657-019-09619-4

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Law and Economics is currently edited by Jürgen Georg Backhaus, Giovanni B. Ramello and Alain Marciano

More articles in European Journal of Law and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().