Law and economics is the study of the economic effects of legal rules, regulations, and enforcement. The field encompasses both criminal and civil law, and includes theoretical and empirical approaches. The combination of legal theory and economic reasoning offers new ways of evaluating the properties of legal regimes; and the combination of legal experience as captured in data and the empirical methods of economics offers important new ways to draw insights from legal practice.
Faculty in the Field
Primary Appointment within the Economics Department
Primary Appointment outside the Economics Department
Law School
Law School
Law School
Law School & Department of Economics (courtesy)
Recent Graduate Student Placement Locations
Cornell Law School
University of Richmond Law School
University of Michigan Law School
Northwestern University Law School
Seminars, Reading Groups, Lunches, etc.
None currently.
Selected Recent Publications
Heller, “Predicting and Preventing Gun Violence: Experimental Results from READI Chicago” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024. (Joint with Monica Bhatt, Max Kapustin, Marianne Bertrand & Chris Blattman.)
Heller, “When Scale and Replication Work: Learning from Summer Youth Employment Experiments” Journal of Public Economics, 2022.
Prescott, "Contracting on Litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, 2019. (Joint with Spier.)
