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The Next Generation of Behavioural Law and Economics

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European Perspectives on Behavioural Law and Economics

Part of the book series: Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship ((EALELS,volume 2))

Abstract

The paper examines some of the important tasks awaiting the next generation of scholarship in behavioural law and economics. Some of these tasks reflect the need for expanding the breadth of the behavioural approach to law while others involve the mission of increasing its depth. The following sections examine each category in turn.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jolls et al. 1998; Korobkin and Ulen 2000; Tor 2008.

  2. 2.

    Ulen 2011.

  3. 3.

    Langevoort 1998; Zamir and Teichman 2014.

  4. 4.

    Google Scholar 2013a.

  5. 5.

    Google Scholar 2013b.

  6. 6.

    Shapiro and Pearce 2012, 1491.

  7. 7.

    Newmyer 2013.

  8. 8.

    Government of the United Kingdom Cabinet Office 2014. The unit’s website also states that “[i]n addition to working with almost every government department, we work with local authorities, charities, NGOs, private sector partners and foreign government, developing proposals and testing them empirically across the full spectrum of government policy.” (emphasis added).

  9. 9.

    Armstrong and Huck 2010; Bennett et al. 2010; Huck et al. 2011

  10. 10.

    European Commission 2010; 2012; Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development 2010. See also Van Bavel et al. 2013, 8.

  11. 11.

    Van Bavel et al. 2013.

  12. 12.

    See, e.g., Hazard 1998.

  13. 13.

    Guthrie et al. 2001; 2007; Wistrich et al. 2005. This is not to say, however, that civil law judges are expected to exhibit no anchoring effects, since behavioural studies show that even completely irrelevant anchors can still impact legal decisions.

  14. 14.

    Leung and Morris 2001; Lind et al. 1997; Tyler 2006.

  15. 15.

    Weber and Hsee 2000.

  16. 16.

    Henrich et al. 2005.

  17. 17.

    Tor and Oliar 2002.

  18. 18.

    Buccafusco and Sprigman 2010, 2011; Feldman 2006; Garcia 2014; Johnson 2012; Newman 2013; Sprigman et al. 2013.

  19. 19.

    Gerla 1985; Tor 2002.

  20. 20.

    Tor 2014a.

  21. 21.

    Tor 2008.

  22. 22.

    Tor 2008.

  23. 23.

    Marotta-Wurgler 2011; Marotta-Wurgler 2013.

  24. 24.

    Gazal-Ayal and Tor 2012.

  25. 25.

    Note there are other kinds of experiments that are not discussed here. See: Rosenthal and Rosnow 1991. Field experiments that study decision-making in the specific context of interest, for instance, seek to retain experimental control, while increasing the external validity of the subject pool. See, e.g., Feldman 2006.

  26. 26.

    Rosenthal and Rosnow 1991.

  27. 27.

    McAdams 1999.

  28. 28.

    Anderson et al. 1999; Camerer and Hogarth 1999; Tor 2008.

  29. 29.

    Camerer et al. 2004.

  30. 30.

    Tor 2007.

  31. 31.

    Rachlinski 2000; Tor 2007.

  32. 32.

    Camerer et al. 2003; Klick and Mitchell 2006; Rachlinski 2006; Sunstein and Thaler 2003; Thaler and Sunstein 2008; Zamir 1998.

  33. 33.

    Tor 2014a, b. Some aspects of this important issue have captured the attention of scholars in the narrower debate regarding the merits and demerits of a behavioural approach to competition law.

  34. 34.

    Mitchell 2002; Prentice 2003; Rachlinski 2006.

  35. 35.

    Mitchell 2002.

  36. 36.

    Tor 2014c.

  37. 37.

    Cokely and Kelley 2009; Stanovich and West 1998.

  38. 38.

    West et al. 2008.

  39. 39.

    Mahoney et al. 2011.

  40. 40.

    Lauriola and Levin 2001; Levin et al. 2002.

  41. 41.

    Appelt et al. 2011.

  42. 42.

    Tor 2002.

  43. 43.

    For a more systematic discussion of how market environments, for instance, can facilitate rationality or inhibit it, see Tor 2014a.

  44. 44.

    Camerer et al. 2003; Rachlinski 2006.

  45. 45.

    Hillman 2000

  46. 46.

    This is not to say, of course, that such a rule would be more efficient overall, only to illustrate the relative malleability of tradeoffs.

  47. 47.

    Jolls and Sunstein 2006; Thaler and Sunstein 2008.

  48. 48.

    Bubb and Pildes 2014.

  49. 49.

    Zamir and Ritov 2010.

  50. 50.

    Brickman 2003.

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Acknowledgements

This essay is based on my opening remarks at the third Law and Economics Conference in Lucerne on “Behavioural Law and Economics: American and European Perspectives” and benefited from the comments of conference participants. Christina Brunty and Dean Nickles provided excellent research assistance.

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  1. The Law School, University of Notre Dame, Eck Hall of Law 3163, 46556-0780, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Prof. Dr. Avishalom Tor

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Correspondence to Avishalom Tor .

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

    Klaus Mathis

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Tor, A. (2015). The Next Generation of Behavioural Law and Economics. In: Mathis, K. (eds) European Perspectives on Behavioural Law and Economics. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11635-8_2

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