Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T01:11:54.878Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Positional goods and Robert Lee Hale's legal economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2013

MASSIMILIANO VATIERO*
Affiliation:
Institute of Law, University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

Abstract

The legal realist Robert Lee Hale offered a definition of freedom as a zero-sum game: each volitional freedom implies some degree of coercion over other people's freedom, and at the same time one's freedom is subject to some degree of control and coercion by others. The objective of our work is to develop this idea along with the theory of positional goods. This allows us to illustrate the externalities deriving from the ‘consumption’ of freedom and detail the role of the lawmaker in accordance with the Halean contribution.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anand, P., Pattanaik, P. K. and Puppe, C. (eds.) (2009), The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice: an Overview of New Foundations and Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ayres, I. (1999a), ‘Taking Issue with Issue Advocacy’, Virginia Law Review, 85 (8): 17931802.Google Scholar
Ayres, I. (1999b), ‘Discrediting the Free Market’, The University of Chicago Law Review, 66 (1): 273296.Google Scholar
Berlin, I. (1969), ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Berlin, I. (ed.), Four Essays on Liberty, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 118172.Google Scholar
Dowding, K. and van Hees, M. (2009), ‘Freedom of Choice’, in P. Anand, Pattanaik, P. K. and Puppe, C. (eds.), The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice: An Overview of New Foundations and Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 374392.Google Scholar
Duxbury, N. (1990), ‘Robert Hale and the Economy of Legal Force’, The Modern Law Review, 53 (4): 421444.Google Scholar
Fiorito, L. and Vatiero, M. (2011), ‘Beyond Legal Relations: Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld's Influence on American Institutionalism’, Journal of Economic Issues, 45 (1): 199222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fried, B. (1998), The Progressive Assault on the Laissez Faire: Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, L. L. (1954), ‘Some Reflection on Legal and Economic Freedoms – A Review of Robert L. Hale's Freedom Through Law’, Columbia Law Review, 54 (1): 7082.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1922), ‘Rate Making and the Revision of the Property Concept’, Columbia Law Review, 22 (3): 209216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1923), ‘Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State’, Political Science Quarterly, 38 (3): 470494.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1927), ‘Value and Vested Rights’, Columbia Law Review, 27 (5): 523529.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1935a), ‘Force and State: A Comparison of “Political” and “Economic” Compulsion’, Columbia Law Review, 35 (2): 149201.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1935b), ‘Unconstitutional Conditions and Constitutional Rights’, Columbia Law Review, 35 (3): 321359.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1939), ‘Our Equivocal Constitutional Guaranties’, Columbia Law Review, 39 (4): 563594.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1943), ‘Bargaining, Duress, and Economic Liberty’, Columbia Law Review, 43 (5): 603628.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L. (1952), Freedom Through Law: Public Control of Private Governing Power, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hale, R. L., Hollander, J. H. and Lewisohn, S. A. (1923), ‘Discussion of the Restatement and Clarification of the Law’, Proceeding of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, 10 (3): 4758.Google Scholar
Hirsch, F. (1976), The Social Limits to Growth, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, A. (1961), Principles of Economics, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Marx, K. ([1891] 1978), ‘Wage Labour and Capital’, in Tucker, R. C. (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edn, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 203217.Google Scholar
Mercuro, N., Medema, S. G. and Samuels, W. J. (2006), ‘Robert Lee Hale (1884–1969) – Legal Economist’, in Backhaus, J. G. (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Law and Economics, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 531544.Google Scholar
Pagano, U. (1999), ‘Is Power an Economic Good? Notes on Social Scarcity and the Economics of Positional Goods’, in Bowles, S., Franzini, M. and Pagano, U. (eds.), The Politics and the Economics of Power, London: Routledge, pp. 6384.Google Scholar
Pagano, U. (2007), ‘Positional Goods and Asymmetric Development’, in Yotopolus, P. and Romano, D. (eds.), Asymmetries in Globalization, London: Routledge, pp. 2847.Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1968), Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi, New York: Doubleday/Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Samuels, W. J. (1973), ‘The Economy as a System of Power and Its Legal Bases: The Legal Economics of Robert Lee Hale’, University of Miami Law Review, 27 (3–4): 261371.Google Scholar
Samuels, W. J. (1984), ‘On the Nature and Existence of Economic Coercion: The Correspondence of Robert Lee Hale and Thomas Nixon Carver’, Journal of Economic Issues, 18 (4): 10271048.Google Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. (1954), ‘The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 36 (4): 387389.Google Scholar
Vatiero, M. (2009), Understanding Power. A ‘Law and Economics’ Approach, Saarbrücken: VDM-Verlag Publisher.Google Scholar
Vatiero, M. (2010), ‘From W. N. Hohfeld to J. R. Commons, and Beyond? A “Law and Economics” Enquiry on Jural Relations’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 69 (2): 840866.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class, New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar