Law and economics, or economic analysis of law, is the application of microeconomic theory to the analysis of law. The field emerged in the United States during the early 1960s, primarily from the work of scholars from the Chicago school of economics such as Aaron Director, George Stigler, and Ronald Coase. The field uses economics concepts to explain the effects of laws, assess which legal rules are economically efficient, and predict which legal rules will be promulgated. There are two major branches of law and economics; one based on the application of the methods and theories of neoclassical economics to the positive and normative analysis of the law, and a second branch which focuses on an institutional analysis of law and legal institutions, with a broader focus on economic, political, and social outcomes, and overlapping with analyses of the institutions of politics and governance.
The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles. Milton Friedman and George Stigler are considered the leading scholars of the Chicago school.
The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It employs more than 180 full-time and part-time faculty and hosts more than 600 students in its Juris Doctor program, while also offering the Master of Laws, Master of Studies in Law and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees in law.
The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals. There are some 23,000 members.
David Edward Card is a Canadian-American labour economist and the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been since 1997. He was awarded half of the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", with Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens jointly awarded the other half.
William M. Landes is an American economist who has written about the economic analysis of law and an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which cited him for his work in the field. He is among the most cited law professors in American law reviews. Landes also is the original founder of Lexecon, a legal and economic consulting firm.
Eric Andrew Posner is an American lawyer and legal scholar. As a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner has taught international law, contract law, and bankruptcy, among other areas. He is the son of retired Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner.
Economic discrimination is discrimination based on economic factors. These factors can include job availability, wages, the prices and/or availability of goods and services, and the amount of capital investment funding available to minorities for business. This can include discrimination against workers, consumers, and minority-owned businesses.
Orley Clark Ashenfelter is an American economist and the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University. His areas of specialization include labor economics, econometrics, and law and economics. He was influential in contributing to the applied turn in economics.
Richard Emeric Quandt is a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning economist who analyzed the results of the Judgment of Paris wine tasting event with Orley Ashenfelter.
The Foundation for Teaching Economics(FTE) is an organization founded in 1975 that promotes economics education by hosting workshops for high school students and teachers, and by providing educational resources to teachers.
The University of Chicago Law Review is the flagship law journal published by the University of Chicago Law School. Up until 2020, it utilized a different citation system than most law journals—the Maroonbook rather than the Bluebook. The Law Review has announced, however, that it will be switching to the more commonly used Bluebook. It is published quarterly in print and also has an online companion, The University of Chicago Law Review Online.
The American Law and Economics Association (ALEA), a United States organization founded in 1991, is focused on the advancement of economic understanding of law, and related areas of public policy and regulation. It promotes research in law and economics. The organization's official journal is the American Law and Economics Review, established in 1999.
Richard Allen Posner is an American legal scholar and retired federal judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Posner was identified by The Journal of Legal Studies as the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century. As of 2021, he is also the most-cited legal scholar of all time. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States.
The American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) is a non-profit, educational organization based in New York City.
Michael Greenstone is an American economist and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He serves as director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), director of the Becker Friedman Institute, and co-chair of the Energy and Environment sector at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Under the first Obama administration, he served as chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisors. His research interests focus on the nexus between development economics and environmental economics.
The Princeton University Department of Economics is an academic department of Princeton University, an Ivy League institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. The department is renowned as one of the premier programs worldwide for the study of economics. The university offers undergraduate A.B. degrees, as well as graduate degrees at the Ph.D. level. It is often considered one of the "big five" schools in the field, along with the faculties at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, Stanford University, and MIT. According to the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report, its graduate department is ranked as the joint No. 4 in the field of economics, in a four-way tie between it, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert John LaLonde (1958–2018) was an American economist who specialized in the fields of labor economics and econometrics. He grew up in Syracuse, NY and attended Westhill High School. He received his A.B. degree from the University of Chicago in 1980. He then attended Princeton University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1985 under the supervision of Orley Ashenfelter. His own Ph.D. students included Brian Jacob. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1985 as Associate Professor of Industrial Relations at the Graduate School of Business and was a Visiting Associate Professor of The Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies from 1994-1995. In 1995, LaLonde joined Michigan State University as an Associate Professor of Economics for three years. In 1999, he went on to spend the remainder of his professional career at the University of Chicago, where he was professor and director of the Ph.D. program in the Harris School of Public Policy. In addition to his academic appointments, he was a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1986, and was a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers from 1987 to 1988. He joined the IZA Institute of Labor Economics as a research fellow in 2001. He was honored with a conference held by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in 2018. He died on January 17, 2018, after a long illness.
Ariel Porat is the president of Tel Aviv University (TAU), a full professor and former dean at TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law. Until his appointment as president, he was a distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, incumbent of the Alain Poher Chair in Private Law at TAU, and recipient of The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture for Legal Research.
The 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was divided one half awarded to the American-Canadian David Card "for his empirical contributions to labour economics", the other half jointly to Israeli-American Joshua Angrist and Dutch-American Guido W. Imbens "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships." The Nobel Committee stated their reason behind the decision, saying:
"This year's Laureates – David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens – have shown that natural experiments can be used to answer central questions for society, such as how minimum wages and immigration affect the labour market. They have also clarified exactly which conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn using this research approach. Together, they have revolutionised empirical research in the economic sciences."
