Economic Analysis of Accident Law

Steven Shavell ()

No 9694, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Accident law is the body of legal rules governing the ability of victims of harm to sue and to collect payments from those who injured them. This paper contains the chapters on accident law from a general, forthcoming book, Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2003). The analysis is first concerned (chapters 2-4) with the influence of liability rules on incentives to reduce accident risks. Then consideration of accident law is broadened (chapter 5) to reflect the effect of liability rules on compensation of victims and the allocation of risk. In this regard a central issue is the roles of victims' insurance and of liability insurance, and how they alter the incentives inherent in liability rules. Finally, the administrative costs of the liability system, namely, the private and public legal costs of litigation, are examined (chapter 6). These costs are significant and thus bear importantly on whether use of accident law is socially desirable. It is emphasized that social intervention -- either to curtail use of the legal system or to encourage it -- may well be needed because the private incentives to use the system are generally different from the socially desirable incentives to do so.

JEL-codes: D00 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
Note: LE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9694.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Analysis of Accident Law (2003)
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:nbr:nberwo:9694

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w9694

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().