Allocating Pollution
Many thanks to Michael Abramowicz, Amitai Aviram, Eric Biber, Ralph Brubaker, Thomas Colby, Dan Cole, John Colombo, Dhammika Dharmapala, Kirsten Engel, Lee Fennell, David Fontana, Eric Freyfogle, Robert Glicksman, Shi-Ling Hsu, Bruce Huber, Heidi Hurd, Christine Hurt, David Hyman, Charles Imohiosen, Eric Johnson, Robin Juni, Richard Kaplan, Robin Kar, Patrick Keenan, Dan Kelly, Jay Kesan, Scott Kieff, William Kovacic, Robert Lawless, Michael Livermore, Tim Malloy, Jonathan Masur, Jud Mathews, Brian McCall, Emily Meazell, John Nagle, Jonathan Nash, Lee Paddock, Richard Pierce, Jeffrey Pojanowski, Dara Purvis, Andrew Reeves, Larry Ribstein, Richard Ross, J.B. Ruhl, Steven Schooner, Karen Bradshaw Schulz, Justin Sevier, Jamelle Sharpe, Nicola Sharpe, Paul Stancil, Suja Thomas, Robert Tuttle, Lesley Wexler, Jonathan Wiener and Verity Winship for their comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review, including Liz Austin, Brad Hubbard, and Matt Rozen, for outstanding editorial support.
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Law can often be used to reduce or even eliminate the harm from pollution by manipulating “exposure allocation,” or how pollution is allocated across a target population. Opportunities for exposure allocation arise whenever the relationship between exposure to a pollutant and harm is nonlinear, as is the case for many pollutants. For these pollutants, exposure allocation presents the potential for reducing the harm from pollution even when it is not possible to reduce either the total amount of pollution emitted or the total amount of exposure. After identifying the conditions under which changing exposure allocations can improve health and save lives, this Article identifies legal strategies for managing exposure allocation to minimize the harm caused by pollution.
We would like to thank the workshop participants at University of Michigan Law School, Northwestern University Law School, Notre Dame Law School, University of Toronto Law School, Stanford Law School, and N.Y.U. School of Law; and conference participants at the 2024 American Law and Economics Association Meeting for many helpful comments and suggestions. We are most grateful to Jonathan Morad Artal (Stanford Class of 2025) and Andrea Lofquist (Michigan Class of 2024) for their valuable research assistance and comments on earlier drafts.
We would like to thank the workshop participants at University of Michigan Law School, Northwestern University Law School, Notre Dame Law School, University of Toronto Law School, Stanford Law School, and N.Y.U. School of Law; and conference participants at the 2024 American Law and Economics Association Meeting for many helpful comments and suggestions. We are most grateful to Jonathan Morad Artal (Stanford Class of 2025) and Andrea Lofquist (Michigan Class of 2024) for their valuable research assistance and comments on earlier drafts.
The flexibility to renegotiate can facilitate long-term contracting and thereby beneficial reliance investments and risk allocation. The prospect of modification can induce contracting parties who expect their bargaining power to improve to enter into contracts earlier and realize the advantages of longer-term relationships. Otherwise, those parties might decline to contract or delay until those opportunities realize, thereby foregoing the benefits of long-term risk allocation or reliance investments. The parties decide not only whether, but also when, to make legally binding commitments to each other. Courts should be more lenient in enforcing contract modifications that, prompted by a shift in bargaining power, may have only a redistributive effect. Parties can design under-compensatory damages that would provide a credible threat of breach ex post to facilitate ex post modification. Requiring good faith in modification (along with damages) can constrain possible holdup and protect reliance investments and risk allocation.
For thoughtful comments, the authors thank Jennifer Arlen, Rick Brooks, Kevin Davis, Brian Galle, Jacob Goldin, and participants in workshops at Columbia Law School, Texas A&M University School of Law, and the American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting. Ji Young Kim provided excellent research assistance.
For thoughtful comments, the authors thank Jennifer Arlen, Rick Brooks, Kevin Davis, Brian Galle, Jacob Goldin, and participants in workshops at Columbia Law School, Texas A&M University School of Law, and the American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting. Ji Young Kim provided excellent research assistance.
For thoughtful comments, the authors thank Jennifer Arlen, Rick Brooks, Kevin Davis, Brian Galle, Jacob Goldin, and participants in workshops at Columbia Law School, Texas A&M University School of Law, and the American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting. Ji Young Kim provided excellent research assistance.
The negative moral emotions of guilt and shame impose real social costs but also create opportunities for policymakers to engender compliance with legal rules in a cost-effective manner. This Essay presents a unified model of guilt and shame that demonstrates how legal policymakers can harness negative moral emotions to increase social welfare. The prospect of guilt and shame can deter individuals from violating moral norms and legal rules, thereby substituting for the expense of state enforcement. But when legal rules and law enforcement fail to induce total compliance, guilt and shame experienced by noncompliers can increase the law’s social costs. The Essay identifies specific circumstances in which rescinding a legal rule will improve social welfare because eliminating the rule reduces the moral costs of noncompliance with the law’s command. It also identifies other instances in which moral costs strengthen the case for enacting legal rules and investing additional resources in enforcement because deterrence reduces the negative emotions experienced by noncompliers.
Search costs matter and are reflected in many areas of law. For example, most disclosure requirements economize on search costs. A homeowner who must disclose the presence of termites saves a potential buyer, and perhaps many such buyers, from spending money to search, or inspect, the property. Similarly, requirements to reveal expected miles per gallon, or risks posed by a drug, economize on search costs. But these examples point to simple strategies and costs that can be minimized or entirely avoided with some legal intervention. Law can do better and take account of more subtle things once sophisticated search strategies are understood. This Essay introduces such search strategies and their implications for law.