TY  - JOUR
AU  - Shavell,Steven
TI  - Torts in Which Victim and Injurer Act Sequentially
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 939
PY  - 1982
Y2  - July 1982
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0939
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0939.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Steven Shavell
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Hauser Hall 508
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-3668
Fax: 617/496-2256
E-Mail: shavell@law.harvard.edu
AB  - The effect of liability rules on accident avoidance is studied in two types of situations in which potential victims and potential injurers act sequentially: those where victims act first and injurers second; and those where the reverse is true. What is of special interest about the working of liability rules in such sequential situations is that the party who acts second behaves in response to the party who acts first, and that the party who acts first takes this into account. The major result shown is that liability rules induce optimal behavior provided that they lead the party who acts second to act optimally if and only if the first party did so. In an important extension of the basic model considered, however, this result may not hold.
ER  -