Damages

About: Damages is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9365 publications have been published within this topic receiving 89750 citations. The topic is also known as: compensation award.

Should Property or Liability Rules Govern Information

Abstract: This Article focuses on an unappreciated and significant aspect of the debate over property rules in the technology law context. In particular, it argues that the classic justification for legal entitlements protected by a property rule - i.e., a right to injunctive relief - depends on the ability to define and enforce property rights effectively. In the case of many technology markets, the inability to tailor injunctive relief so that it protects only the underlying right rather than also enjoining noninfringing conduct provides a powerful basis for using a liability rule (i.e., awarding the relevant damages to the plaintiff) instead of a property rule. Notably, where injunctive relief cannot be confined to protecting the underlying right, the availability of such relief can give rise to a "holdup strategy," whereby a firm threatens or uses litigation to obtain a settlement significantly in excess of any harm it suffers. Such strategies, as the Article explains, arise in a variety of technology law contexts, including patent law, digital copyright cases, and spectrum regulation. Depending on the particulars of the context, either courts or agencies should superintend the relevant liability regime and, in some cases, the administrative challenges may undermine the case for a liability rule at all. Unfortunately, legal scholars have generally focused on the substantive debate as to the proper scope of property rights - often arguing for an all or nothing solution - at the expense of evaluating the institutional considerations as to whether and when courts or agencies can superintend a liability regime in lieu of a property right.

Money, who needs it? natural resource damage assessment

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Several authors (Mazzotta et al., 1994; Unsworth and Bishop, 1994; Jones and Pease, 1997; Unsworth et al., 1999) have discussed or suggested a shift of emphasis in natural resource damage assessment away from the monetary assessment of damages to direct analysis of compensatory restoration. Rather than first assess the monetary damages of the natural resource injuries and then use the money for restoration, trustees instead focus on the scale of restoration projects that would make the public whole. There are two primary justifications given in support of this new paradigm. First, federal natural resource damage assessment statues explicitly require that recoveries be used for the purpose of enhancing or creating natural resources (Jones and Pease, 1997; Mazzotta et al., 1994). (1) Estimating preferences for both injured and replacement resources may result in a more efficient use of recoveries. Second, directly assessing compensatory restoration may avoid some of the controversy that has been associated with the monetary assessment of damages (Jones and Pease, 1997; Randall, 1997). Much of the controversy over monetary damage assessment stems from the measurement of passive use values where small individual household damages can easily aggregate into the billions of dollars. For example, passive use value damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill damage assessment were estimated at $2.8 billion (Carson et al., 1992). Direct measurement of compensatory restoration may provide responsible parties relief fro m the problem of aggregating monetary compensation over millions of households because public goods are used to replace public goods. In accordance with this new shift of emphasis in natural resource damage assessment, recent damage assessments plans in Texas (Texas General Land Office et al., 1999) and Wisconsin (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource Services, 1999) were developed with an emphasis on compensatory restoration. It is safe to say that the paradigm shift has already happened. This article considers the question of whether or not money can be altogether avoided in damage assessment. The article provides an analysis of the restoration methods that have recently been advanced. The use of pure compensatory restoration will result in some losers and some gainers relative to preinjury utility levels due simply to the public goods nature of the compensatory goods. As the case with monetary compensation, a rigorous standard is necessary to meaningfully evaluate alternative scales of compensatory restoration. Providing the mean or median level of individual compensatory restoration may have appeal on account of the ease of implementation. Unfortunately, these measures have no grounding in welfare economics when using purely compensatory restoration. This article adopts a specific standard to judge the adequacy of the proposed methods: whether the resulting restoration projects at least satisfy the condition that the sum of individual compensating variations equal zero, a standard consisten t with welfare economics. The analysis leads to the conclusion that from the standpoint of adhering to the principles of welfare economics, money is a necessary condition for sound damage assessment practice. There are other practical reasons to model money along with natural resources under the new damage assessment paradigm. II. GUIDING ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES Compensating variation is the key concept in most applied welfare economic analysis; it provides both the economic and legal standard for damage assessment. In the case of natural resource damage assessment, the goal is to determine monetary compensation or restoration projects that could in principle make the public whole. For those individuals who suffer a loss from the natural resource injury, willingness to accept (compensating variation) by definition exactly satisfies the requirement that an individual can be returned to their preinjury level of utility. …

National Income and Economic Growth: The Conceptual Side of Defensive Expenditures

Abstract: The practice of using the national product as a welfare indicator has long been faulted. Since the early 1 970s such criticism has been heard particularly from the ecological movement, the point being made that the environmental damages caused by production and consumption are left completely unaccounted for in the calculation of the national product. Environmental damages imply the consumption of environmental assets-part of a nation's total wealth-and, under certain circumstances, an irreversible loss of natural resources or a deterioration in the quality of human life and nature. They represent additional social costs of production, but they are not recorded as such in the traditional system for measuring the total production of the economy, the national accounts. On the contrary (and this is the second main point in the ecological criticism of the national product), when economic consequences of negative environmental impacts resulting from the economic process are included in the calculation of the national product, they are recorded as positive items in the net production figure of the economy. This is the case when societal actors respond in economic terms to prevent imminent environmental damages by taking measures to protect the environment or by repairing or compensating for negative effects of environmental damages. The author is fellow of the Science Center Berlin of Social Research. This article is a follow-up and an empirical extension of his papers "Social Costs of Economic Growth,"

The Potential Costs of Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract: The various costs imposed on countries as a result of global warming are considered by interpreting adaptation as part of a comprehensive climate change response strategy. These costs include those associated with damages, as well as adjustments in strategies now in place for adapting to the current climate. Imposed costs are defined as the least-cost combination of adaptation costs, residual damages, and indirect effects. A possible framework is suggested for calculating imposed costs and assessing individual adaptive measures.