IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/bellje/v6y1975iautumnp487-516.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Assignment of Liability: The Uniform Case

Author

Listed:
  • Peter A. Diamond
  • James A. Mirrlees

Abstract

It is feasible in some competitive equilibria with externalities to shift some externality costs among different agents in the economy. However, simply shifting costs will not, in general, result in efficient allocation decisions by all agents, since the magnitude of externality costs depends on the decisions of several agents. Comparing different resource allocations arising from two different patterns of cost bearing is thus a comparison of two inefficient equilibria. This paper explores several sets of assumptions which are sufficient to determine which allocation is more efficient. These assumptions help to identify the agent Calabresi has called the cheapest cost avoider.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter A. Diamond & James A. Mirrlees, 1975. "On the Assignment of Liability: The Uniform Case," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(2), pages 487-516, Autumn.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:bellje:v:6:y:1975:i:autumn:p:487-516
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-915X%28197523%296%3A2%3C487%3AOTAOLT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jens Gudmundsson & Jens Leth Hougaard & Chiu Yu Ko, 2022. "Sharing sequentially triggered losses: Automatic conflict resolution through smart contracts," IFRO Working Paper 2020/05, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    2. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci & Gerrit De Geest, 2005. "The Filtering Effect of Sharing Rules," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 207-237, January.
    3. Nuno Garoupa, 2009. "Least-Cost Avoidance: The Tragedy of Common Safety," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 235-261, May.
    4. Jens Gudmundsson & Jens Leth Hougaard & Chiu Yu Ko, 2020. "Sharing sequentially triggered losses," IFRO Working Paper 2020/05, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    5. C. Chu, 2003. "Precedent Externality, Network Effect, and the Possible Inefficiency of the Evolution of Laws," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 187-198, September.
    6. Jens Gudmundsson & Jens Leth Hougaard & Jay Sethuraman, 2024. "Managing cascading disruptions through optimal liability assignment," Papers 2408.07361, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    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:rje:bellje:v:6:y:1975:i:autumn:p:487-516. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

    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.