IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(201403)1701_105rcvlc_2.0.tx_2-t.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rational Choice versus Lawful Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Leo Katz

Abstract

The legal and the economic perspective on a policy proposal are likely to differ far more fundamentally than is commonly appreciated. Economists will impose certain minimal requirements of rationality on the evaluation process, which lawyers routinely violate. Economists will expect the evaluation process to be coherent in the sense of not exhibiting any intransitivity, not violating the Pareto principle, and not being susceptible to framing effects. Lawyers will routinely run afoul all of these. This paper shows what is at the root of these seeming irrationalities and why they are not so irrational after all.

Suggested Citation

  • Leo Katz, 2014. "Rational Choice versus Lawful Choice," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(1), pages 105-121, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201403)170:1_105:rcvlc_2.0.tx_2-t
    DOI: 10.1628/093245613X13819084995207
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/rational-choice-versus-lawful-choice-101628093245614x13819084995207
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1628/093245613X13819084995207?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. Zamir, Eyal & Medina, Barak, 2010. "Law, Economics, and Morality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195372168.
    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. Mario J. Rizzo, 2019. "Inconsistency is not pathological: a pragmatic perspective," Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, Springer;Fondazione Rosselli, vol. 18(1), pages 77-85, June.
    2. Christoph Engel & Urs Schweizer, 2014. "What Makes Intervention Legitimate? 31st International Seminar on the New Institutional Economics June 12-15, 2013, Weimar, Germany," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(1), pages 1-4, March.
    3. Eyal Zamir, 2014. "Rational Choice versus Lawful Choice: On Law, Economics, and Morality," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(1), pages 129-136, March.
    4. A. Y. Klimenko, 2015. "Intransitivity in Theory and in the Real World," Papers 1507.03169, arXiv.org.

    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. Aurelien Portuese & Orla Gough & Joseph Tanega, 2017. "The principle of legal certainty as a principle of economic efficiency," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 131-156, August.
    2. Ross A. Tippit, 2014. "Modeling exogenous moral norms," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 8(1), November.
    3. Rosemary Lowry & Martin Peterson, 2012. "Cost-benefit analysis and non-utilitarian ethics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 11(3), pages 258-279, August.
    4. Greg Clydesdale, 2017. "The Growth of Knowledge as Grounds Against Paternalism," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 24(1), pages 49-73.
    5. Wolfgang Habla & Mitesh Kataria & Peter Martinsson & Kerstin Roeder, 2024. "Should it stay, or swerve? Trading off lives in dilemma situations involving autonomous cars," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 929-951, May.
    6. M. Bigoni & S. Bortolotti & F. Parisi & A. Porat, 2016. "Unbundling Efficient Breach: An Experiment," Working Papers wp1088, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    7. Marc A. Cohen & Dean Peterson, 2019. "The Implicit Morality of the Market and Joseph Heath’s Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 75-88, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    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:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201403)170:1_105:rcvlc_2.0.tx_2-t. 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: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    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.