Whales Get Beached, Don't They? An Essay on the Law and Economics of Copyrights in Music

L’auteur fonde son argument sur l’importance déterminante des conséquences économiques de la numérisation sur l’évolution des droits d’auteur afférant à la musique. La musique numérisée correspondant à un bien public, les prix de sa négociation tendent vers 0, et seules les contraintes légales telles que les droits d’auteur ou les ententes sur les prix, qui sont généralement proscrites par les lois sur la concurrence, peuvent sauver l’entrant intrépide ou l’opérateur mis sur le sable. Alors que les propriétaires de droits d’auteur maximisent leurs profits en prônant l’extension de leur champ d’application et en poursuivant leur application par les tribunaux, leur valeur sociale est mesurée en termes d’efficacité pour la promotion de l’innovation. L’industrie de la musique a projeté le champ d’application des droits d’auteur si grossièrement loin au–delà des limites de la raison par rapport à la musique numérisée que leur position légale sera attaquée inlassablement sur tous les fronts, que ce soit par une banalisation des infractions, ou par la résistance devant les tribunaux ou par des campagnes visant une réforme législative.

The law and economics of good faith in the civil law of contract

Good faith plays a central role in most legal systems, yet appears to be an intractable concept. This article proposes to analyse it economically as the absence of opportunism in circumstances which lend themselves to it. One of the objectives underlying the law of contract on an economic view is to curtail opportunism. In spelling out what this means, the paper proposes a three-step test: bad faith is present where a substantial informational or other asymmetry exists between the parties, which one of them turns into an undue advantage, considered against the gains both parties could normally expect to realise through the contract, and where loss to the disadvantaged party is so serious as to provoke recourse to expensive self-protection, which significantly raises transactions costs in the market. The three-step test is then used to analyse a set of recent decisions in international commercial transactions and three concepts derived from good faith: fraud, warranty for latent defects and lesion.

Cooperative VS. Non-cooperative Truels: Little Agreement, but Does that Matter?

It is well-known that non-cooperative and cooperative game theory may yield different solutions to games. These differences are particularly dramatic in the case of truels, or three-person duels, in which the players may fire sequentially or simultaneously, and the games may be one-round or n-round. Thus, it is never a Nash equilibrium for all players to hold their fire in any of these games, whereas in simultaneous one-round and n-round truels such cooperation, wherein everybody survives, is in both the a -core and ß -core. On the other hand, both cores may be empty, indicating a lack of stability, when the unique Nash equilibrium is one survivor. Conditions under which each approach seems most applicable are discussed. Although it might be desirable to subsume the two approaches within a unified framework, such unification seems unlikely since the two approaches are grounded in fundamentally different notions of stability.

Efficiency in Uncertain Cooperative Games

A contingent contract in a transferable utility game under uncertainty specifies an outcome for each possible state. It is assumed that coalitions evaluate these contracts by considering the minimal possible excesses. A main question of the paper concerns the existence and characterization of efficient contracts. It is shown that they exist if and only if the set of possible coalitions contains a balanced subset. Moreover, a characterization of values that result in efficient contracts in the case of minimally balanced collections is provided.

Methodology in Economics: the Logic of Appraisal

This Paper Intends to Develop a Coherent Methodological Framework Concerned with the Appraisal of Scientific Theories in Economics, and Which Is Based on a Postulated Aim of Science. We First Define the Scope of a Methodological Inquiry (Precise Definition of What Is Meant by the Logic of Appraisal of Scientific Theories) and Review the Work of Popper and Lakatos in the Philosophy of Science. We Then Use Their Results to Develop a Rational Structure of Scientific Activity. We Identify and Analyse Both a Micro and Macro Framework for the Process of Appraisal and Single Out the Importance of So-Called 'Fundamental Assumptions' in Creating Externalities in the Appraisal Process Which Forces Us to Adop a Multi-Level Analysis. Special Attention Is Given to the Role and Significance of the Abstraction Process and the Use of Assumptions in General. the Proposed Structure of Scientific Activity Is Illustrated with Examples From Economics.

Responsibility and Cross-Subsidization in Cost Sharing

We propose two axiomatic theories of cost sharing with the common premise that agents demand comparable -though perhaps different- commodities and are responsible for their own demand. Under partial responsibility the agents are not responsible for the asymmetries of the cost function: two agents consuming the same amount of output always pay the same price; this holds true under full responsibility only if the cost function is symmetric in all individual demands. If the cost function is additively separable, each agent pays her stand alone cost under full responsibility; this holds true under partial responsibility only if, in addition, the cost function is symmetric. By generalizing Moulin and Shenker’s (1999) Distributivity axiom to cost-sharing methods for heterogeneous goods, we identify in each of our two theories a different serial method. The subsidy-free serial method (Moulin, 1995) is essentially the only distributive method meeting Ranking and Dummy. The cross-subsidizing serial method (Sprumont, 1998) is the only distributive method satisfying Separability and Strong Ranking. Finally, we propose an alternative characterization of the latter method based on a strengthening of Distributivity.

Aumann-Shapley Pricing : A Reconsideration of the Discrete Case

We reconsider the following cost-sharing problem: agent i = 1,...,n demands a quantity xi of good i; the corresponding total cost C(x1,...,xn) must be shared among the n agents. The Aumann-Shapley prices (p1,...,pn) are given by the Shapley value of the game where each unit of each good is regarded as a distinct player. The Aumann-Shapley cost-sharing method assigns the cost share pixi to agent i. When goods come in indivisible units, we show that this method is characterized by the two standard axioms of Additivity and Dummy, and the property of No Merging or Splitting: agents never find it profitable to split or merge their demands.

Nearly Serial Sharing Methods

A group of agents participate in a cooperative enterprise producing a single good. Each participant contributes a particular type of input; output is nondecreasing in these contributions. How should it be shared? We analyze the implications of the axiom of Group Monotonicity: if a group of agents simultaneously decrease their input contributions, not all of them should receive a higher share of output. We show that in combination with other more familiar axioms, this condition pins down a very small class of methods, which we dub nearly serial.

The Law and Economics of the Civil Law of Mandate

Présentation à la Annual Law & Economics Conference 2007, Université de Bologne.

Analyse comparative des decisions d'emploi en incertitude de la cooperative de travailleurs et de la firme capitaliste traditionnelle a proprietaire unique.

Rapport de recherche

Cooperative of Noncooperative Behavior?

In an abstract two-agent model, we show that every deterministic joint choice function compatible with the hypothesis that agents act noncooperatively is also compatible with the hypothesis that they act cooperatively. the converse is false.

The Discipline of Economics and Economic Cycles

In This Article, It Is Argued That the Long International, Financial and Economic Cycle (50-60 Years) Is More Than a Statistical Aberration, and Is the Result of Institutional Political, Financial and Economic Conditions Which Are Recurrent. It Is Proposed As an Hypothesis That the Breakdown of International Monetary Systems Is At the Origin of Hte Financial and Economic Long Cycle. Such a Breakdown Starts a Process of Unexpected Inflation, of Balance of Payments Imbalances and of International Indebtedness in a Key-Currency. the Last Stage of This Process Is Characterized by Disinflation, a Speculative Stock Market Boom and a Period of Debt-Liquidation Which Negatively Affect the Real Side of the Economy. Without an International and Automatic Mechanism to Correct the Financial and Economic International Imbalances, the World Economy Runs the Risk of Getting More and More Unstable Until the Turning Point. International Monetary Cooperation Could Contribute in Alleviating the Negative Spillovers Accompanying Hte Adjustment of These Imbalances.