Very Like a Law Professor: An Essay in Honor of Tom Ulen

This Essay explores the future of law and economics. The author begins by reviewing Tom Ulen’s attempts at predicting the field’s future in 1997 at his lecture “Very Like a Whale.” He then follows Tom Ulen’s idea that law and economics scholars might do well to engage in more “controlled experiments” to make his own set of predictions. His first prediction is that law and economics scholars during the next decade will exploit regression discontinuity to tease out the causal impact of legal rules. Next, he predicts that law and economics scholars will exploit unintended experiments to tease out causal impacts of the law. Finally, the author predicts that law and economics scholars will, with the help of government officials, conduct intentional experiments to tease out causal impacts of the law.