Behavioral Economics And The Law

Analyzes law with reference to new findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics.

'The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and Law' brings together leading scholars of law, psychology, and economics to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of this field of research, including its strengths and limitations as well as a forecast of its future development. Its twenty-nine chapters are organized into four parts.

In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality. While the findings on bounded rationality and heuristics and biases were initially perceived as antithetical to standard economic and legal-economic analysis, over time they have been largely integrated into mainstream economic analysis, including economic analysis of law. Moreover, the impact of behavioral insights has long since transcended purely economic analysis of law: in recent years, the behavioral movement has become one of the most influential developments in legal scholarship in general. Behavioral Law and Economics offers a state-of-the-art overview of the field. Eyal Zamir and Doron Teichman survey the entire body of psychological research that lies at the basis of behavioral analysis of law, and critically evaluate the core methodological questions of this area of research. Following this, the book discusses the fundamental normative questions stemming from the psychological findings on bounded rationality, and explores their implications for setting the law's goals and designing the means to attain them. The book then provides a systematic and critical examination of the contributions of behavioral studies to all major fields of law including: property, contracts, consumer protection, torts, corporate, securities regulation, antitrust, administrative, constitutional, international, criminal, and evidence law, as well as to the behavior of key players in the legal arena: litigants and judicial decision-makers.

In the last decade, behavioral economics, borrowing from psychology and sociology to explain decisions inconsistent with traditional economics, has revolutionized the way economists view the world. But despite this general success, behavioral thinking has fundamentally transformed only one field of applied economics-finance. Peter Diamond and Hannu Vartiainen's Behavioral Economics and Its Applications argues that behavioral economics can have a similar impact in other fields of economics. In this volume, some of the world's leading thinkers in behavioral economics and general economic theory make the case for a much greater use of behavioral ideas in six fields where these ideas have already proved useful but have not yet been fully incorporated--public economics, development, law and economics, health, wage determination, and organizational economics. The result is an attempt to set the agenda of an important development in economics--an agenda that will interest policymakers, sociologists, and psychologists as well as economists. Contributors include Ian Ayres, B. Douglas Bernheim, Truman F. Bewley, Colin F. Camerer, Anne Case, Michael D. Cohen, Peter Diamond, Christoph Engel, Richard G. Frank, Jacob Glazer, Seppo Honkapohja, Christine Jolls, Botond Koszegi, Ulrike Malmendier, Sendhil Mullainathan, Antonio Rangel, Emmanuel Saez, Eldar Shafir, Sir Nicholas Stern, Jean Tirole, Hannu Vartiainen, and Timothy D. Wilson.

The field of behavioral economics has contributed greatly to our understanding of human decision making by refining neoclassical assumptions and developing models that account for psychological, cognitive, and emotional forces. The field’s insights have important implications for law. This Research Handbook offers a variety of perspectives from renowned experts on a wide-ranging set of topics including punishment, finance, tort law, happiness, and the application of experimental literatures to law. It also includes analyses of conceptual foundations, cautions, limitations and proposals for ways forward.

Behavioral economics has potential to offer novel solutions to some of today's most pressing public health problems: How do we persuade people to eat healthy and lose weight? How can health professionals communicate health risks in a way that is heeded? How can food labeling be modified to inform healthy food choices? Behavioral Economics and Public Health is the first book to apply the groundbreaking insights of behavioral economics to the persisting problems of health behaviors and behavior change. In addition to providing a primer on the behavioral economics principles that are most relevant to public health, this book offers details on how these principles can be employed to mitigating the world's greatest health threats, including obesity, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and excessive drinking. With contributions from an international team of scholars from psychology, economics, marketing, public health, and medicine, this book is a trailblazing new approach to the most difficult and important problems of our time.

Zamzow, Richard J. Zeckhauser--Jon S. Vernick, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, coeditor of Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis "Springer Journal"

This book argues that overcoming people's inability to recognize their own wrongdoing is the most important but regrettably neglected area of the behavioral approach to law.

The past twenty years have witnessed a surge in behavioral studies of law and law-related issues. These studies have challenged the application of the rational-choice model to legal analysis and introduced a more accurate and empirically grounded model of human behavior. This integration of economics, psychology, and law is breaking exciting new ground in legal theory and the social sciences, shedding a new light on age-old legal questions as well as cutting edge policy issues. The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Economics and Law brings together leading scholars of law, psychology, and economics to provide an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of this field of research, including its strengths and limitations as well as a forecast of its future development. Its 29 chapters organized in four parts. The first part provides a general overview of behavioral economics. The second part comprises four chapters introducing and criticizing the contribution of behavioral economics to legal theory. The third part discusses specific behavioral phenomena, their ramifications for legal policymaking, and their reflection in extant law. Finally, the fourth part analyzes the contribution of behavioral economics to fifteen legal spheres ranging from core doctrinal areas such as contracts, torts and property to areas such as taxation and antitrust policy.

This textbook looks at decisions – how we make them, and what makes them good or bad. In this bestselling introduction, Erik Angner clearly lays out the theory of behavioral economics and explains the intuitions behind it. The book offers a rich tapestry of examples, exercises, and problems drawn from fields such as economics, management, marketing, political science, and public policy. It shows how to apply the principles of behavioral economics to improve your life and work – and to make the world a better place to boot. No advanced mathematics is required. This is an ideal textbook for students coming to behavioral economics from various fields. It can be used on its own in introductory courses, or in combination with other texts at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It is equally suitable for general readers who have been captivated by popular-science books on behavioral economics and want to know more about this intriguing subject. New to this Edition: - An updated chapter on behavioral policy and the nudge agenda. - Several new sections, for example on the economics of happiness. - Updated examples and exercises, with an expanded answer key - Refreshed ancillary resources make for a plug and play experience for instructors teaching behavioral economics for the first time.