Tort Law and Liability Insurance

Liability Insurance at the Tort-Crime Boundary

Tort law and medical malpractice insurance premiums.

This paper estimated the effects of tort law and insurer investment returns on physician malpractice insurance premiums. Data were collected on tort law from 1991 through 2004, and multivariate regression models, including fixed effects for state and year, were used to estimate the effect of changes in tort law on medical malpractice premiums. The premium consequences of national policy changes...

Assessing the Insurance Role of Tort Liability after Calabresi

In his landmark 1961 article, Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts, Judge Calabresi provides a theoretical framework for analyzing tort liability as a risk-spreading device that functions in a manner similar to insurance. In our article, we examine the insurance objective of tort liability from the standpoint of modern tort law. Since Calabresi’s foundational article, there h...

Punitive Liability: a New Paradigm of Efficiency in Tort Law

Tort Liability for Software Developers: a Law & Economics Perspective

This article explores the economic rationale for applying product liability law to computer software. As demonstrated below, a well-designed liability regime must place liability upon all parties who economically control the risks of accidents. Accordingly, this article finds that strict liability may be appropriate for certain types of “intrinsic” software, but not for other types of software ...