Law and Economics is a well-established discipline of legal thought in the United States that is gaining increasing academic and practical recognition in the United Kingdom and Europe. It encompasses a method of legal reasoning (both judicial and regulatory) that evaluates the costs and benefits associated with various legal principles. Those rules that achieve the greatest efficiency under such analysis are seen to underlie the familiar legal principles that inform much of the common law. The application of the economic principles that form the basis of market transactions suggests that laws should be structured to create incentives for individuals to minimize the costs of their actions to society.
In this course the key concepts of cost-benefit analysis, economic efficiency and incentivization are applied to seven primary topics: property, contract, tort, crime, civil procedure, environmental regulation and competition.
At City the Allen & Overy Prize in Law and Economics is awarded to the student with the best performance on the final exam each year. This is a cash prize as well as a place in one of Allen & Overy’s Open Days.
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