Textbook and course companion
Rules, Rights, and Runtimes
Law and Economics in the Age of AI
Legal rules shape incentives, define rights, organize bargaining, allocate risk, and make cooperation possible. This book develops the standard law-and-economics toolkit and follows its logic into platforms, code, and AI.
Undergraduate law and economics
A canonical course organized around incentives and institutional choice
Chapters 1 through 14 provide the core sequence from legal institutions and the Coase theorem through property, torts, contracts, litigation, crime, organizations, regulation, and antitrust. Chapters 15 and 16 extend and synthesize the framework for platforms, code, and AI.
Open Chapter 1Sixteen chapters
Book contents
The first twelve chapters are sufficient for a standard semester course. The later chapters support broader coverage and a forward-looking capstone.
- 01What Is Law and Economics?Foundations
- 02The Microeconomic Toolkit for LawEconomic toolkit
- 03Law, Courts, and Legal InstitutionsLegal institutions
- 04Transaction Costs and the Coase TheoremTransaction costs
- 05Property Rights and Institutional EvolutionProperty
- 06Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Information GoodsInnovation
- 07Torts, Accidents, and IncentivesTorts
- 08Contracts, Bargaining, and EnforcementContracts
- 09Courts, Litigation, and Dispute ResolutionLegal process
- 10Does the Common Law Tend Toward Efficiency?Common law
- 11Crime, Punishment, and Social OrderCrime
- 12The Corporation as a Legal TechnologyOrganizations
- 13Regulation and Public ChoiceRegulation
- 14Antitrust, Competition, and Market PowerCompetition
- 15Platforms, Code, and AI: New Questions for Law and EconomicsTechnology
- 16From Rights to Runtimes: The Long Arc of Legal TechnologySynthesis
Course files
Study from the source or teach from the deck
Download every chapter as AI-friendly Markdown or use the synchronized PowerPoint lecture decks. The online reader, source files, and slides update together.
Browse downloads