Comparing third party financing of litigation versus legal expenses insurance

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Special insurance systems for motor vehicle liability

Automobile insurance is a compulsory purchase for most drivers in Europe and the United States. Obviously, this obligation raises concerns about affordability and availability. To mitigate such problems, in most legal systems special facilities have been created, either by policymakers or by insurance companies, to deal with risks that are very difficult to insure or are even considered uninsurable on the commercial market. We (1) provide an overview of special schemes in several European countries, (2) examine the potential advantages of reducing the number of uninsured drivers and investigate the influence of the special schemes on the decision of individuals to drive (un)insured, (3) examine the consequences of these schemes for the incentives of drivers and (4) discuss the social costs of the special schemes

The scope of criminal law and criminal sanctions: An economic view and policy implications

This paper considers why some harm-generating activities are controlled by criminal law and criminal sanctions while others are subject to some other mechanism such as civil law, administrative law, regulation or the tax system. It looks at the question from the perspective of the law and economics approach. We seek to identify the comparative benefits of using the criminal law relative to other enforcement mechanisms and – more broadly – why certain specific behaviours are criminalized. The paper argues that an economic approach emphasizing the relative merits of alternative legal instruments for bringing about harm reduction can provide an explanation for a number of recent legal developments. It argues also that the willingness of legislators to combine the use of sanctions traditionally used in one area of the law with sanctions from other areas is more readily explicable in economic terms than in other terms.

Attribution of Liability: An Economic Analysis of Various Cases

In many cases liability is attributed in a different way than through the clear cut situation where one tortfeasor causes harm to one single victim. Those cases of complicated attributions in tort law are analyzed in this article from an economic perspective. After briefly sketching the economic starting points in section II, the way in which multiple tortfeasors are dealt with in the law is analyzed in section III. Section IV analyzes the perspective of multiple tortfeasors in law and economics, distinguishing between the situations of full solvency, insolvency and insurability of more particularly joint and several liability. The article then shifts attention to one particular phenomenon, channeling of liability, whereby the legislature exclusively attributes liability to one (of many possible) tortfeasor(s). Section V analyzes this phenomenon from an economic as well as an insurability perspective. Finally, section VI examines the situation where someone other than the original tortfeasor may be held liable—the case of vicarious liability. In all cases the question is addressed whether these deviations from the original attribution make sense from an economic and insurability perspective. The crucial question is obviously to what extent the legal rules found in various legal systems correspond with the idea of providing all parties who could prevent an accident appropriate incentives to effectively do so