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Distinguished by brevity, lucid writing, and well-chosen examples, An Introduction to Law and Economics, now in its Fifth Edition, focuses on a set of core topics that include property, contracts, torts, criminal law, and litigation. Avoiding specialized jargon and mathematics, Polinsky teaches students how to think like an economist and understand legal issues from an economic perspective.
New to the Fifth Edition:
A streamlining of the products liability chapter
A revised discussion of the redistributive effects of legal rules to reflect more recent scholarship on this topic
The addition of several other refinements in the text and in new footnotes
An updated bibliography
Professors and students will benefit from:
Solid coverage of relevant economic principles
A normative approach that illustrates how to assess legal rules and policies in terms of economic and social goals
Clear explanations of concepts
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About the authors
A. Mitchell Polinsky
A pioneering American figure in the applications of economic theory to law, A. Mitchell Polinsky is a prolific scholar, producing work on the economic analysis of a wide variety of legal issues, from property to contract law to liability and punitive damages. He has written major articles on the economic efficiency of various forms of legal sanctions in achieving deterrence across a range of problems, including criminal law, contract, and tort disputes. Professor Polinsky is the founder and director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics at Stanford Law School. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a president of the American Law and Economics Association, and is currently a research associate in the Law and Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a member of the faculty at Harvard University.