An Economic Analysis of State and Individual Responsibility under International Law

The international law of state responsibility determines when states are liable for international law violations. States are generally liable when they have control over the actions of wrongdoers; thus, the actions of state officials can implicate state responsibility whereas the acts of private citizens usually do not. We argue that the rules of state responsibility have an economic logic similar to that of vicarious liability in domestic law: the law in both cases provides third parties with incentives to control the behavior of wrongdoers whom they can monitor and influence. We also discuss international legal remedies and individual liability under international criminal law

Efficient Breach of International Law: Optimal Remedies, \u27Legalized Noncompliance,\u27 and Related Issues

In much of the scholarly literature on international law, there is a tendency to condemn violations of the law and to leave it at that. If all violations of international law were indeed undesirable, this tendency would be unobjectionable. We argue in this Article, however that a variety of circumstances arise under which violations of international law are desirable from an economic standpoint. The reasons why are much the same as the reasons why nonperformance of private contracts is sometimes desirable- the concept of efficient breach, familiar to modern students of contract law, has direct applicability to international law. As in the case of private contracts, it is important for international law to devise remedial or other mechanisms that encourage compliance where appropriate and facilitate noncompliance where appropriate. To this end, violators ideally should internalize the costs that violations impose on other nations, but should not be punished beyond this level. We show that the (limited) international law of remedies, both at a general level and in certain subfields of international law, can be understood to be consistent with this principle. We also consider other mechanisms that may serve to legalize efficient deviation from international rules, as well as the possibility that breach of international obligations may facilitate efficient evolution of the underlying substantive law

International Law and the Limits of Macroeconomic Cooperation

The macroeconomic policies of states can produce significant costs and benefits for other states, yet international macroeconomic cooperation has been one of the weakest areas of international law. We ask why states have had such trouble cooperating over macroeconomic issues, when they have been relatively successful at cooperation over other economic matters such as international trade. We argue that although the theoretical benefits of macroeconomic cooperation are real, in practice it is difficult to sustain because optimal cooperative policies are often uncertain and time variant, making it exceedingly difficult to craft clear rules for cooperation in many areas. It is also often difficult or impossible to design credible self-enforcement mechanisms. Recent cooperation on bank capital standards, the history of exchange rate cooperation, the European monetary union, and the prospects for broader monetary and fiscal cooperation are all discussed. We contrast the reasons for successful cooperation on international trade policy

The Availability Heuristic, Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Climate Change

Because risks are on all sides of social situations, it is not possible to be “precautionary” in general. The availability heuristic ensures that some risks stand out as particularly salient, whatever their actual magnitude. Taken together with intuitive cost-benefit balancing, the availability heuristic helps to explain differences across groups, cultures, and even nations in the assessment of precautions to reduce the risks associated with climate change. There are complex links among availability, social processes for the spreading of information, and predispositions. If the United States is to take a stronger stand against climate change, it is likely to be a result of available incidents that seem to show that climate change produces serious and tangible harm