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Professor Robert Cooter
792 Simon Tower
Phone: 642 0424
Email: rdc@law.berkeley.edu
Description
Laws and legal institutions facilitate and constrain business. By explaining these effects, microeconomics reveals strategies to make the best use of law in business. Understanding these strategies enables business executives and lawyers to work together more intimately and profitably. Practice in large law firms divides into transactions, regulation, and litigation. The bodies of law that facilitate business by lubricating transactions include property and contracts, as well as corporations, bankruptcy, and banking. The bodies of law that constrain business include torts and regulations to protect consumers, investors, and the environment. Transactions and regulatory compliance mostly avoids litigation, but its shadow looms over all business activities. Law and business students in this class will use microeconomics, which is one of the major theoretical and strategic perspectives on law, to analyze and strategize about some of these major bodies of law. (JSP Foundation course)
Prerequisites
There is no formal prerequisite. Graphs and simple algebra will be used in class. Students who have not completed an undergraduate class in intermediate microeconomics or its equivalent are discouraged from taking the class.
Reading Materials
Students are expected to read the assigned materials before class and to answer questions in class. Readings will be posted to the class web site. Readings on private law will be drawn from Robert Cooter and Thomas Ulen, Law and Economics (Addison-Wesley, 5th ed.). Readings in corporate and securities law will be from no single source.
Class Format
Lecture-discussion. Students are expected to read the assigned materials before class and to answer questions in class.
Grades
Grading is based on midterm exam, final exam and class participation. The final exam consists of questions with short answers or multiple choices. Students may use any books, materials or notes to answer the questions.
Related Course
The Law and Economics Workshop (Law 216) - hears an original, unpublished paper presented each week by a top scholar, often from another university or country. Students ask questions and write comments.
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