Professor David Friedman
Spring 2011
The course will have a midterm and a final. In addition, each student is expected to pick one side of a law case and present, either orally or in writing, a case for that side based on economic arguments. You may choose any case, past or present, provided that the case was not actually argued on economic grounds and is not discussed in either Law's Order or Richard Posner's Economic Analysis of Law. Oral arguments should be about ten to fifteen minutes, written arguments about three to five pages.
Law's
Order: Webbed page images with virtual
footnotes
Recordings
of classes and pictures of whiteboard
One way of remembering ideas is by the stories that go with them--from the Bionic Burglar Alarm to the Rational Voodoo Killer. Here is a list of story titles that you may find useful. We will cover all of them by the end of the semester
Powerpoints from 2009: First Week, Second Week(Externalities),
Third Week, Fourth Week (Risk, Ex post/Ex ante)
Fifth
Week (Game theory), Sixth Week
(Review), Seventh Week
(property), Eighth Week
(Contract) Family Law
Tort Crime Antitrust Other Paths
Recordings
of classes (and pictures of whiteboard) from 2009
Lecture Notes from 2007: HTML
Word
Midterm Spring 1997
Midterm Fall 1995
Midterm
2000
Final
Fall 1995
Midterm Spring 2009
My Price Theory textbook is webbed; you may find parts of it useful for explaining economic concepts in more detail than the lecture and the lecture notes. They include:
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, which present a general introduction to economics.
Chapter 11, which discusses strategic behavior, game theory, et. al.
Chapter 15, which discusses economic efficiency and related concepts.
Chapter 18, which discusses market failure problems, including externalities.
Additional chapters are available through the table of contents page.