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CRADLE Law and Economics Papers

CRADLE's open-access paper series covers various fields of law and economics, with an emphasis on international development and governance, digital technology, and behavioral economics.

Priority Topics

  1. Law and economics of international development and governance invites papers on new laws, charters, and conventions needed for a globalized world. As nations are increasingly linked through trade, capital and labor flows, and supply chains across multiple national boundaries, we need to think creatively about laws for this new world.
  2. Law and economics of digital technology invites tech-related submissions, including antitrust law, intellectual property, intermediary liability, content moderation, privacy, cybercrimes, and regulation of blockchains and AI, as laws and regulations influence the new digital economy. 

  3. Behavioral economics and the law invites papers focusing on research in this newer field of economics that draws on psychological research to understand how norms impact economic development and growth and the need to be sensitive to these if we want our laws to be fair and effective.

Recent Papers

Ariel Rubinstein and Michele Piccione
This paper deals with a complex problem, that of aggregating conditionally independent signals to reach a final opinion. The authors show how people have a propensity not to realize that two weak positive signals of a rare event can constitute strong evidence for the event having occurred. This seemingly abstract problem spills over, in important ways, into the court room and has implications for decisions taken by judges and jury.

Ajit Mishra and Andrew Samuel
This paper studies the self-control problem of a morally committed bureaucrat in choosing the optimal level of discretion. They show a novel tradeoff in the official’s moral commitment: more discretion allows the official to lower red-tape which is socially beneficial, but it also makes bribery more tempting.

Pengfei Zhang and Ji Li
In this paper, the authors argue that Section 512(c) notice-and-takedown regime provides a natural setting to study the signaling aspect of pretrial bargaining. A strong signal is short, easy to read, and more specific. Interestingly, how the lawyers draft a notice may compromise the settlement effect of legal representation. Lawyers prefer long sentences, big words, and more terminology, whereas an effective notice is much more concise.

Robert Hockett
This paper is an attempt to demystify Keynes and give concrete shape to some expressions that Keynes used when writing about investment and capital without adequate explanation. The paper brings together positive axioms and normative imperatives under a unifying conceptual umbrella, referred to as a “Capital Commons” model. The model suggests a pathway to socialize investment while being attentive to private sector and public sector advantages.

Christophe Bravard, Jacques Durieu, Sudipta Sarangi, and Corinne Touati
This paper explores the competition between a designer who shapes interaction patterns and influences agents and an adversary who counters this influence. The influenced agents who are embedded in a network take into account the actions of the designer and the adversary, as well as the opinions of their neighbors, before casting their vote. The paper shows that optimal strategies depend on costs incurred by the players, influence technology advantage, and network structures.


Editorial Team

Editors: Kaushik Basu, Robert Hockett, Rachel Reidl, Pengfei Zhang (managing editor)

Editorial Advisory Board: Aviv Caspi, Lili Yan Ing, Ajit Mishra, Ory Okolloh, Sudipta Sarangi, Edward Stiglitz, Josh Teitelbaum, Tea Trumbic

Submitted papers undergo a brief review process and post upon acceptance. Authors retain the right to publish the paper in a journal or book. To foster diversity and inclusion within our intellectual community, we are particularly interested in receiving submissions from developing nations, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

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