Economic Models of Legal Complexity and Liability Rules

经济方面的考虑决定了诉讼的轮廓，并可能对疏忽行为起到威慑作用，而疏忽行为又可能导致诉讼。对收益大小和可能性的估计可能会影响律师对特定法律理论复杂性水平的偏好。这种估计还通过责任规则来影响谨慎避免事故的动机。具体来说，怀特博士专注于法律和经济学交叉领域的两个主题：1)对法律理论的复杂程度进行建模；2)重新审视美国法律中的主导责任规则，事故法中的比较过失规则，并使用加州汽车事故的数据集对过失规则的应用进行实证分析。对法律复杂性模型的调查，以及它如何影响律师和诉讼当事人的行为和案件结果，包括考虑律师的不同支付模式的影响，以及涉及税法的案件，其中原告总是国税局。它有两个目标，一是通过审计或诉讼最大限度地征收未缴税款，二是首先最大限度地减少纳税人逃税的动机。此外，该研究对实体法律复杂性和程序法律复杂性作出了重要区分。在具体说明责任规则对避免事故激励的影响的模型时，考虑到双方都可能认为自己是受害者的可能性，法院在确定责任时犯错误的可能性，法院用来确定责任的适当注意标准在不同的案件中可能差别很大。司机自己也可能会犯错。对这些主题的理论和实证分析有望阐明我们对经济效率和法律无效率的存在及其影响的理解。大多数对法律理论复杂性的研究都假定它是给定的。相比之下，本研究的一部分侧重于法律复杂性作为律师作为立法者和法官角色可操纵的因素，并对律师作为诉讼人的角色产生影响。它检查的复杂程度和诉讼的预测结果之间的关系模式。该项目有可能增加我们对法律复杂性的经济和社会影响的认识，特别是通过开发一个规范模型，该模型考虑是否有任何社会收益，即通过采用超过最低限度复杂性的法律目标来增加准确判决的可能性。在重新考虑避免事故的激励结构的背景下，本项目对过失规则应用的实证分析将有助于我们理解在无法事先确定谁是加害人、谁是受害者的情况下的责任。

Economic considerations shape the contours of litigation and may serve as deterrents to negligent behavior which in turn could lead to litigation. Estimates of the magnitude and probability of gain may be expected to shape lawyers' preferences for a given level of complexity of legal doctrines. Such estimates also operate through liability rules to affect incentives to take care to avoid accidents. Specifically, Dr. White focuses on two topics in the area where law and economics intersect: 1) modeling the level of complexity of legal doctrines and 2) re-examining the dominant liability rule in U. S. law, the comparative negligence rule in accident law, and conducting empirical analysis of the application of negligence rules using a data set of automobile accidents in Calfornia. The investigation of the model of legal complexity and how it affects the behavior of lawyers and litigants and the outcome of cases includes consideration of the implications of different modes of payment for lawyers and of cases involving tax law in which the plaintiff is always the IRS, which has the double objective of maximizing the amount of unpaid taxes collected via audits or litigations and of minimizing taxpayers' incentives to evade taxes in the first place. Also, the study draws the important distinction between substantive and procedural legal complexity. In the specification of a model of the effects of liability rules on accident avoidance incentives, account is taken of the possibility that both parties may consider themselves victims, that courts make errors in deciding liability, that the due care standard used by courts to determine liabililty may vary widely across cases, and that drivers themselves may make mistakes. The theoretical and empirical analyses on these topics promise to illuminate our understanding of the existence of economic efficiencies and inefficiencies of the law and their impact. Most of the examinations of the complexity of legal doctrines have assumed it as given. In contrast, one portion of this study focuses on legal complexity as an element manipulable by lawyers in their roles as legislators and judges and having an effect on lawyers in their role as litigators. It examines the patterns of the relationship between the level of complexity and the predicted outcome of litigation. The project has the potential to increase our knowledge of the economic and social implications of legal complexity, particularly by means of developing a normative model, which considers whether there is any social gain, that is, any increase in the probability of an accurate verdict, from adopting legal objectives that are more than minimally complex. The project's empirical analysis of the application of negligence rules in the context of a reconsideration of the incentive structure for avoiding accidents will contribute to our understanding of liability under circumstances where it cannot be determined in advance who is the injurer and who is the victim.