IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/revaec/v25y2012i3p185-198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Austrian approach to law and economics, with special reference to superstition

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Leeson

Abstract

This paper has two purposes. First, it considers what the components of an “Austrian” law and economics might consist of. I argue that Ronald Coase’s conception of law and economics precludes the economic analysis of legal institutions and, in particular, the beliefs that support them. In doing so, Coase’s conception precludes an Austrian law and economics. In contrast, Richard Posner’s conception of law and economics makes such analysis the core of its study. In doing so, Posner’s conception provides a productive foundation for an Austrian law and economics. Second, to illustrate what some aspects of an Austrian law and economics might look like in practice, I consider several examples of the economic analysis of beliefs of import for the law. I focus on objectively false beliefs, or superstitions, and argue that some such beliefs are socially productive. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Leeson, 2012. "An Austrian approach to law and economics, with special reference to superstition," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(3), pages 185-198, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:25:y:2012:i:3:p:185-198
    DOI: 10.1007/s11138-012-0179-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11138-012-0179-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11138-012-0179-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Douglass C. North & John Joseph Wallis & Barry R. Weingast, 2006. "A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History," NBER Working Papers 12795, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Peter T. Leeson, 2014. ""God Damn": The Law and Economics of Monastic Malediction," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 193-216.
    3. Posner, Richard A, 1993. "Gary Becker's Contributions to Law and Economics," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 211-215, June.
    4. Posner, Richard A, 1980. "A Theory of Primitive Society, with Special Reference to Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 1-53, April.
    5. Harnay, Sophie & Marciano, Alain, 2009. "Posner, Economics And The Law: From “Law And Economics” To An Economic Analysis Of Law," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 215-232, June.
    6. Ronald H. Coase, 2000. "The new institutional economics," Chapters, in: Claude Ménard (ed.), Institutions, Contracts and Organizations, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Coase, R H, 1993. "Law and Economics at Chicago," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 239-254, April.
    8. Coase, R H, 1996. "Law and Economics and A. W. Brian Simpson," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 103-119, January.
    9. Peter J. Boettke (ed.), 2010. "Handbook on Contemporary Austrian Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12822.
    10. Stigler, George J & Becker, Gary S, 1977. "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 76-90, March.
    11. Posner, Richard A, 1987. "The Law and Economics Movement," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(2), pages 1-13, May.
    12. von Mises, Ludwig, 1957. "Theory and History," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, edition 1, number mises1957.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Fink, 2015. "Governance without a state? Policies and politics in areas of limited statehood meets positive political economy of anarchy: A review essay," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 28(1), pages 93-105, March.
    2. Vladimir Vladimirovich Maltsev, 2020. "Economics of the Sacramental Bread Ordeal in the Russian Princedoms Period," Journal of Economics, Management and Religion (JEMAR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Peter Leeson, 2014. "Pirates, prisoners, and preliterates: anarchic context and the private enforcement of law," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 365-379, June.
    4. Todd J. Zywicki & Edward P. Stringham, 2017. "Austrian law and economics and efficiency in the common law," Chapters, in: Todd J. Zywicki & Peter J. Boettke (ed.), Research Handbook on Austrian Law and Economics, chapter 9, pages 192-208, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Vladimir Vladimirovich Maltsev & Andrei Yurievich Yudanov, 2023. "Toward a Demsetzian Knowledge Theory," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 14(2), pages 1371-1385, June.
    6. Peter T. Leeson & Paola A. Suarez, 2015. "Superstition and Self-Governance," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: New Thinking in Austrian Political Economy, volume 19, pages 47-66, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    7. Faiz Ur Rehman, 2019. "The Production of Terrorism in Pakistan: A Religious Market Explanation," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 58(3), pages 283-305.
    8. repec:zbw:bofitp:2015_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Ennio E. Piano & Louis Rouanet, 2020. "Economic calculation and the organization of markets," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(3), pages 331-348, September.
    10. Peter Jacobsen & Louis Rouanet, 2022. "Economists versus engineers: Two approaches to environmental problems," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 359-381, September.
    11. Palagashvili,Liya & Piano,Ennio & Skarbek,David, 2017. "The Decline and Rise of Institutions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781316649176, September.
    12. Alain Marciano, 2012. "How far an Austrian law and economics should be Posnerian?," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 351-354, December.
    13. Mark Koyama, 2019. "Peter T. Leeson, WTF?!: An economic tour of the weird," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 32(1), pages 81-84, March.
    14. Libman, Alexander & Vollan, Björn, 2015. "Anti-Western conspiracy thinking and expectations of collusion: Evidence from Russia and China," BOFIT Discussion Papers 14/2015, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    15. Peter Leeson, 2012. "The irrelevance of normative considerations for founding an Austrian law and economics: Reply to Marciano," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 355-357, December.
    16. Vladimir Vladimirovich Maltsev & Andrei Yurievich Yudanov, 2022. "Self-immolation," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 35(2), pages 193-203, June.
    17. Josef Šíma, 2019. "Austrian School Identity and Unavoidable Trade-offs in its Long-term Progress," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: Assessing Austrian Economics, volume 24, pages 61-68, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    18. Peter T. Leeson & Joshua Pierson, 2017. "Economic origins of the no-fault divorce revolution," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 419-439, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alain Marciano, 2007. "Value and exchange in law and economics: Buchanan versus posner," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 187-200, September.
    2. Sophie Harnay & Alain Marciano, 2009. "Should I help my neighbor? Self-interest, altruism and economic analyses of rescue laws," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 103-131, October.
    3. Harnay, Sophie & Marciano, Alain, 2009. "Posner, Economics And The Law: From “Law And Economics” To An Economic Analysis Of Law," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 215-232, June.
    4. Alain Marciano & Giovanni Battista Ramello, 2019. "Law, economics and Calabresi on the future of law and economics," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 65-76, August.
    5. Wang Ning, 2018. "Law and the Economy: An Introduction to Coasian Law and Economics," Man and the Economy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-13, December.
    6. Marciano, Alain & Melcarne, Alessandro & Ramello, Giovanni B., 2020. "Justice Without Romance: The History Of The Economic Analyses Of Judges’ Behavior, 1960–1993," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 261-282, June.
    7. Alain Marciano, 2019. "Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013)," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Robert A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to LSE Economics, chapter 0, pages 555-577, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Elodie Bertrand, 2014. "‘The fugitive’: The figure of the judge in Coase's economics," Post-Print hal-03481745, HAL.
    9. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.
    10. Marciano, Alain, 2012. "Guido Calabresi's economic analysis of law, Coase and the Coase theorem," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 110-118.
    11. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2022. "Methodological Individualism and the Foundations of the "Law and Economics" movement," Post-Print hal-03820441, HAL.
    12. Michael Hechter, 1994. "The Role of Values in Rational Choice Theory," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(3), pages 318-333, July.
    13. Randall G. Holcombe, 2020. "Progressive Democracy: the ideology of the modern predatory state," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 287-301, March.
    14. Yalcintas, Altug, 2010. "The ‘Coase Theorem’ vs. Coase theorem proper: How an error emerged and why it remained uncorrected so long," MPRA Paper 37936, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Peter T. Leeson & Jacob W. Russ, 2018. "Witch Trials," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(613), pages 2066-2105, August.
    16. Alain Marciano, 2010. "Calabresi, "law and economics" and the Coase theorem," ICER Working Papers 26-2010, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    17. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269, December.
    18. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2022. "Richard A. Posner (1939–)," Springer Books, in: Robert A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics, chapter 35, pages 901-923, Springer.
    19. Gershman, Boris, 2015. "The economic origins of the evil eye belief," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 119-144.
    20. Anetta Čaplánová & Marcel Novák, 2015. "Transakčné náklady, vlastnícke práva a externality - k vedeckému odkazu R. H. Coasea [Transaction Costs, Property Rights and Externalities - on the Contribution of R. H. Coase to Economic]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2015(2), pages 244-257.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Austrian-Chicago synthesis; law and economics; Coase; Posner; Superstition; Beliefs; Economic analysis of law; B53; D8; K00; K49; Z12;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B53 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Austrian
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K49 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Other
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:revaec:v:25:y:2012:i:3:p:185-198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.