Law and Economics Forum

The Law and Economics Forum brings together economists and lawyers to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

The Law and Economics Forum brings together economists and lawyers engaged in interdisciplinary research to present their work, engage in an exchange of research themes and methodological approaches, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. The Forum organises regular seminars, workshops and conferences, and members of the Forum produce research output in the form of journal articles, working papers, and monographs employing both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Events 2017

Tuesday 19 September 2017 | 12 pm Moot Court Room, 7th floor, New Academic Building, LSE

Economic Analysis of Eminent Domain Law: Takings of Land by Self-interested Governments

Speaker: Dr Ram Singh (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India)

Professor Ram Singh will discuss his recent paper with Professor Hans-Bernd Shaefer on the economic analysis of eminent domain law, focusing on takings of land. The paper examines the effects of two salient features of the eminent domain law and its use. First, the compensation is less than ‘full’. Second, the government is not a perfect agent of the society. Once these features are factored in, several claims in the existing literature do not hold. The paper questions the ‘fiscal-illusion’ theory. The paper shows that full compensation ensures efficiency neither of the takings, nor of the investment decisions, while under-compensation combined with the provision of restitution delivers a better outcome - in terms of investment choices by the owners as well as the takings decisions and project choices by the government. Further, the paper shows that fixed-compensation schemes generally are not efficient even if the government is benevolent, but under-compensation can still deliver more efficient outcomes than full compensation.

While the activities of the Forum are not restricted to any particular area of law, the members of the Forum focus on the following core research themes:

Law and economics of corporate law and financial regulation: design and effects of control rights in corporations (for example, corporate governance structures, shareholder rights, debt indentures, venture capital agreements, takeover defences); construction of legal indices measuring board insulation, investor protection in corporate governance codes, or the effectiveness of derivative actions; secured financing; and the regulation of risk in financial markets
Law and economics of legal change: evolution of legal rules, exploring how legal rules are shaped, how they adapt, and what their effects are on economic and other social variables
Law and economics of European Union integration: implications of the European harmonisation programme in capital markets regulation and corporate law; regulatory competition in the EU engendered by market freedoms ensuring corporate mobility and free movement of capital
Regulation of network industries (electronic communications, energy, airlines postal services), in particular questions relating to rule and institutional design, access pricing and the analysis of incentives
Competition and innovation: traditional antitrust/industrial organisation questions as well as those relating to the interface between competition law and intellectual property and to the introduction of dynamic considerations in legal regimes
International economic governance: the use of economics and economic knowledge in international economic governance, including the construction of market benchmarks, institution-specific practices of objectivity, and the co-production of legal and economic knowledge

The Forum runs a seminar series that brings young promising scholars as well as leading academics to the LSE to give a presentation on current research projects using qualitative or quantitative economic methods to advance the understanding and analysis of legal rules. The seminar series is jointly organised by LSE Law School and the Department of Economics at LSE. In order to facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion, the presentation of the paper is typically followed by a brief intervention of a discussant from the other discipline.