| The first essay, Informed Courts, Uniformed Actors and the Economics of Judicial Hindsight, examines the optimal amount of information that courts should employ, in setting standards of due action. When individuals are uninformed about some factors that determine the optimal levels of behavior, society may be better-off if courts were to ignore this information. Since individuals cannot meet the perfect-information standards, the ex post utilization of all available information would only spoil their incentives. Better incentives are provided if standards of due action incorporate only the information that individuals had, ex ante. In addition, the essay examines the incentives of individuals to acquire better information, and derives the condition under which perfect-information standards lead to desirable acquisition of information.;The third essay, "Blaming the Victim": Optimal Incentives for Private Precautions Against Crime, studies the role of crime victims in taking precautions and deterring crime. It identifies distortions in victims' incentives to take precautions. To correct the victims' incentives, the paper examines an incentive mechanism labeled "contributory fault". Under this mechanism, the sanction to an offender would be reduced whenever his victim deviated from the socially optimal enforcement effort. In order to guarantee himself the sanction-generated protection, a victim may be led to engage in optimal precautions. This is accomplished without sacrificing deterrence. The paper suggests that some criminal law doctrines incorporate notions of contributory fault.;The second essay, Liability Rules and the Informational Content of Victims' Protection Measures, studies the incentives to take precautions against accidents when the potential harm is private information of victims. The essay studies a model in which the magnitude of liability can depend only on the individuals' levels of care, not on victims' harm. It demonstrates that a negligence regime can be designed to screen victims of different harm types through their choice of care, while a strict liability regime fails to do so. However, only second-best levels of care can be implemented. The analysis leads to a new economic rationale for the comparative negligence doctrine. |
