TY - JOUR PY - 1974// TI - Economic Analysis as a Potentially Defective Product: A Buyer's Guide to Posner's "Economic Analysis of Law" JO - Harvard law review A1 - Polinsky, A. Mitchell SP - 1655 EP - 1681 VL - 87 IS - 8 N2 - With increasing frequency, economic analysis has been employed as a guide to formulating legal rules. Richard A. Posner's recent book, Economic Analysis of Law, is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive attempt to apply the efficiency criterion to legal problems. In this Comment, Professor Polinsky critically examines three central assumptions underlying Professor Posner's analysis in order to highlight the limitations as well as the value of combining law and economics. He concludes that a market-type solution to legal problems often will not promote efficiency because of the nature of transaction costs, and that the goals of equity and efficiency may be inseparable due to the costs of redistributing income.
LA - SN - 0017-811X UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1339919 ID - ref1 ER -