31519 - Game Theory and Law

Academic Year 2012/2013

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Economics (cod. 8408)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course student knows how to use game theory to analyse legal issues and is able to think strategically about legal settings involving several actors and fixed rules and is able to identify costs and benefits of alternative rules.

Course contents

  1. The tragedy of the anticommons. Buchanan and Yoon, Symmetric tragedies, JLE, 2000
    http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?JLEv43p1PDF, Eisenberg and Heller, Can patents deter innovation? ..., Science, 1998
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5364/698
  2. The property right theory of the firm: GHM. Hart, Firms, Contracts and Financial Structure, OUP, 1995, Ch. 2
    Hart and Moore, ''Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm,'' Journal of Political Economy, 1990.
    http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3808(199012)98:6%3C1119:PRATNO%3E2.0.CO;2-3
  3. Settlement and litigation. Miceli, The economic approach to law, Standford University Press, Ch. 8.
    Bebchuck, Litigation and settlement under imperfect information, Rand J.E. 1984.
    http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261(198423)15%3A3%3C404%3ALASUII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
  4. Law enforcement: the case of tax evasion. Franzoni Amnesties, settlement, and optimal tax enforcement, Economica 2000.

Additional references will be provided during the course.

Assessment methods

Written examination. 2 hours long.

Office hours

See the website of Luigi Alberto Franzoni