The Core of Pure Economic Loss

Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci and Hans-Bernd Schäfer ()

No 06-068/1, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: Should loss of earnings be compensated? The established law and economics wisdom considers pure economic loss as a transfer of wealth from the victim to a third party, whose earnings increase as a consequence of the accident. Such transfers do not amount to a social loss and, hence, should not be compensated. We revisit these arguments and show that the social loss should be calculated by taking into account that: (a) pure economic loss often involves impairment costs resulting from the fact that valuable resources cannot be temporarily used; and (b) the third-party earnings come at the cost of increased capacity. This increased capacity mitigates the expected harm and, hence, is a form of precaution. By taking into account these factors, we show that most pure economic loss cases do result in a socially relevant loss. In addition, we argue that the absence of a social loss is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the denial of compensation. The victim (or a third party) may have actually paid for protection against purely private losses. Thus, compensation should be awarded irrespective of whether national law treats the case under tort or contract (where compensation is undisputed). Finally, we offer considerations on the optimal design of liability rules.

Keywords: economic loss; financial loss; tort; damage; compensation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-08-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/06068.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The core of pure economic loss (2007)
Working Paper: THE CORE OF PURE ECONOMIC LOSS
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:tin:wpaper:20060068

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 ().