Peter Siegelman
Biographic Data
| ID | 263355 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Siegelman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Siegelman |
| SIGNATURE | SIEGELMAN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1946-5943 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Preschool
Twenty-five years ago, we argued that it would be possible to reduce incarceration and use the resultant savings for investments in preschool education, which would further lower the crime rate. In this article, we revisit that line of thinking, surveying recent literature on the cost and efficacy of prisons and preschool education for crime reduction. We find that the new evidence strengthens our earlier conclusion about the feasibility of this …
Third-Party Moral Hazard and the Problem of Insurance Externalities
Insurance can lead to loss or claim creation not only by insureds but also by uninsured third parties. These externalities—which we call third-party moral hazard—arise because insurance creates opportunities both to extract rents and to recover otherwise unrecoverable losses. Using examples from health, automobile, kidnap, and liability insurance, we demonstrate that the phenomenon is widespread and important and that the downsides of insurance a…
Behavioral Economics and Insurance Law
Because choosing insurance requires consumers to assess risks and probabilities, the demand for insurance has proven to be fertile ground for identifying deviations from rational behavior. Consumers often shun the insurance against large losses that they rationally should want (e.g., floods); and they are attracted to insurance against small losses (extended warranties, low deductibles) that no rational individual should purchase. But the welfare…
The Questionable Character of the Bar's Character and Fitness Inquiry
Lawyers who engage in misconduct can do substantial harm. To screen out “unfit” lawyers, bar examining authorities collect detailed personal information from bar applicants. The rationale for this “character and fitness” inquiry is to identify who is likely to become a problematic lawyer. Despite the history of discrimination associated with this inquiry and the highly personal information requested, there has been no rigorous test of whether suc…
Underclaiming and Overclaiming
Arguments that we have too much litigation (overclaiming) or too little (underclaiming) cannot be valid without estimating how many of the undecided claims that are brought (actual claims) or not brought (potential claims) have or lack legal merit. We identify the basic conceptual structure of such underclaiming and overclaiming arguments, which entails inferences about the distribution of actual or potential claims by their probability of succes…
James Heckman as a Law and Society Scholar
The Problems of Lustration
This issue went to press almost exactly four years after the death of Charles Gillespie, in whose honor I wish to dedicate the lustration symposium. A political scientist at the University of Wisconsin with a broad range of comparative interests, Charlie's major work chronicled the reemergence of democracy in Uruguay. He would doubtless have been a contributor to this issue were he still alive, and there were many times during the course of worki…
The Problems of Lustration
The Selection of Employment Discrimination Disputes for Litigation
Employment discrimination cases filed during recessions are more likely to settle after filing and less likely to be won by plaintiffs than those filed when the economy is strong. This model of litigation confirms two predictions of the Priest-Klein model of litigation. First, relatively weak cases (for either party) should be more likely to settle. Second, the party with the greater stake in litigation will have the higher win rate in adjudicate…
Shaky Grounds
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Shaky Grounds
Many readers of Law and Social Inquiry will probably feel that all they need to know about Forbidden Grounds is that in it, prominent libertarian law professor Richard Epstein argues that there should not be any. The central thesis of this book is that (virtually all) federal and state laws regulating discrimination in employment are a bad thing-both for society at large and for those the laws are designed to protect-and should be repealed immedi…
Comment on Siegelman's Review of Auctions
The Changing Nature of Employment Discrimination Litigation
Part I analyzes several socioeconomic and legal changes that may have prompted the rise in employment discrimination litigation and estimates that these factors account for roughly two-thirds of the growth in litigation. Part II attempts to explain the residual growth. After discussing a number of commonly offered explanations, we put forth a somewhat counterintuitive theory of our own: As minorities and women moved into better jobs and the work …
Auctions
Studying the Iceberg from its Tip
Researchers often rely on published opinions to draw conclusions about cases decided by the courts, determinants of court decisions, and broader social phenomena. We demonstrate that 80 to 90 percent of employment discrimination cases filed in federal court do not produce a published opinion. There are good theoretical reasons to believe that the process generating a published opinion is not random and thus that samples of published cases will no…
Neoclassical Difficulties
Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work‐related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job‐related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken.What…
Studying the Iceberg from its Tip
Researchers often rely on published opinions to draw conclusions about cases decided by the courts, determinants of court decisions, and broader social phenomena. We demonstrate that 80 to 90 percent of employment discrimination cases filed in federal court do not produce a published opinion. There are good theoretical reasons to believe that the process generating a published opinion is not random and thus that samples of published cases will no…
The Changing Nature of Employment Discrimination Litigation
Part I analyzes several socioeconomic and legal changes that may have prompted the rise in employment discrimination litigation and estimates that these factors account for roughly two-thirds of the growth in litigation. Part II attempts to explain the residual growth. After discussing a number of commonly offered explanations, we put forth a somewhat counterintuitive theory of our own: As minorities and women moved into better jobs and the work …
The Selection of Employment Discrimination Disputes for Litigation
Employment discrimination cases filed during recessions are more likely to settle after filing and less likely to be won by plaintiffs than those filed when the economy is strong. This model of litigation confirms two predictions of the Priest-Klein model of litigation. First, relatively weak cases (for either party) should be more likely to settle. Second, the party with the greater stake in litigation will have the higher win rate in adjudicate…
Neoclassical Difficulties
Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work‐related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job‐related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken.What…
The Problems of Lustration
This issue went to press almost exactly four years after the death of Charles Gillespie, in whose honor I wish to dedicate the lustration symposium. A political scientist at the University of Wisconsin with a broad range of comparative interests, Charlie's major work chronicled the reemergence of democracy in Uruguay. He would doubtless have been a contributor to this issue were he still alive, and there were many times during the course of worki…
Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Preschool
Twenty-five years ago, we argued that it would be possible to reduce incarceration and use the resultant savings for investments in preschool education, which would further lower the crime rate. In this article, we revisit that line of thinking, surveying recent literature on the cost and efficacy of prisons and preschool education for crime reduction. We find that the new evidence strengthens our earlier conclusion about the feasibility of this …
The Questionable Character of the Bar's Character and Fitness Inquiry
Lawyers who engage in misconduct can do substantial harm. To screen out “unfit” lawyers, bar examining authorities collect detailed personal information from bar applicants. The rationale for this “character and fitness” inquiry is to identify who is likely to become a problematic lawyer. Despite the history of discrimination associated with this inquiry and the highly personal information requested, there has been no rigorous test of whether suc…
The Problems of Lustration
Neoclassical Difficulties
Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work‐related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job‐related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken.What…
Auctions
Studying the Iceberg from its Tip
Researchers often rely on published opinions to draw conclusions about cases decided by the courts, determinants of court decisions, and broader social phenomena. We demonstrate that 80 to 90 percent of employment discrimination cases filed in federal court do not produce a published opinion. There are good theoretical reasons to believe that the process generating a published opinion is not random and thus that samples of published cases will no…
Comment on Siegelman's Review of Auctions
The Changing Nature of Employment Discrimination Litigation
Part I analyzes several socioeconomic and legal changes that may have prompted the rise in employment discrimination litigation and estimates that these factors account for roughly two-thirds of the growth in litigation. Part II attempts to explain the residual growth. After discussing a number of commonly offered explanations, we put forth a somewhat counterintuitive theory of our own: As minorities and women moved into better jobs and the work …
Shaky Grounds
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Shaky Grounds
Many readers of Law and Social Inquiry will probably feel that all they need to know about Forbidden Grounds is that in it, prominent libertarian law professor Richard Epstein argues that there should not be any. The central thesis of this book is that (virtually all) federal and state laws regulating discrimination in employment are a bad thing-both for society at large and for those the laws are designed to protect-and should be repealed immedi…
The Problems of Lustration
This issue went to press almost exactly four years after the death of Charles Gillespie, in whose honor I wish to dedicate the lustration symposium. A political scientist at the University of Wisconsin with a broad range of comparative interests, Charlie's major work chronicled the reemergence of democracy in Uruguay. He would doubtless have been a contributor to this issue were he still alive, and there were many times during the course of worki…
The Problems of Lustration
The Selection of Employment Discrimination Disputes for Litigation
Employment discrimination cases filed during recessions are more likely to settle after filing and less likely to be won by plaintiffs than those filed when the economy is strong. This model of litigation confirms two predictions of the Priest-Klein model of litigation. First, relatively weak cases (for either party) should be more likely to settle. Second, the party with the greater stake in litigation will have the higher win rate in adjudicate…
James Heckman as a Law and Society Scholar
Underclaiming and Overclaiming
Arguments that we have too much litigation (overclaiming) or too little (underclaiming) cannot be valid without estimating how many of the undecided claims that are brought (actual claims) or not brought (potential claims) have or lack legal merit. We identify the basic conceptual structure of such underclaiming and overclaiming arguments, which entails inferences about the distribution of actual or potential claims by their probability of succes…
The Questionable Character of the Bar's Character and Fitness Inquiry
Lawyers who engage in misconduct can do substantial harm. To screen out “unfit” lawyers, bar examining authorities collect detailed personal information from bar applicants. The rationale for this “character and fitness” inquiry is to identify who is likely to become a problematic lawyer. Despite the history of discrimination associated with this inquiry and the highly personal information requested, there has been no rigorous test of whether suc…
Behavioral Economics and Insurance Law
Because choosing insurance requires consumers to assess risks and probabilities, the demand for insurance has proven to be fertile ground for identifying deviations from rational behavior. Consumers often shun the insurance against large losses that they rationally should want (e.g., floods); and they are attracted to insurance against small losses (extended warranties, low deductibles) that no rational individual should purchase. But the welfare…
Third-Party Moral Hazard and the Problem of Insurance Externalities
Insurance can lead to loss or claim creation not only by insureds but also by uninsured third parties. These externalities—which we call third-party moral hazard—arise because insurance creates opportunities both to extract rents and to recover otherwise unrecoverable losses. Using examples from health, automobile, kidnap, and liability insurance, we demonstrate that the phenomenon is widespread and important and that the downsides of insurance a…
Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Preschool
Twenty-five years ago, we argued that it would be possible to reduce incarceration and use the resultant savings for investments in preschool education, which would further lower the crime rate. In this article, we revisit that line of thinking, surveying recent literature on the cost and efficacy of prisons and preschool education for crime reduction. We find that the new evidence strengthens our earlier conclusion about the feasibility of this …
Political science (11 works) · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Economics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law and economics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Actuarial science (4 works) · Microeconomics (4 works)