Legal Damages at Uncertain Causation

Arbeitspapier

The legal notion of damages requires to compare the actual value of the creditor's assets with the hypothetical value that would have prevailed if the debtor had met his obligation. Moreover, values and causation may be uncertain. If nature's contribution is modelled as a random move then the interaction between debtor and nature can be described in normal form which, in turn, allows to capture causality and legal damages in a consistent way. In practice, such random moves of nature are rarely observable. Yet, statistical inference may reveal sufficient information to test for causation and to estimate legal damages on average over observable events as the present paper will establish.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: SFB/TR 15 Discussion Paper ; No. 160

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Tort Law and Product Liability; Forensic Economics ; Contract Law ; Externalities
• Subject: estimating legal damages ; liability for torts ; liability for breach of contracts

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Schweizer, Urs
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Sonderforschungsbereich/Transregio 15 - Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems (GESY)
• (where): München
• (when): 2006

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5282/ubm/epub.13391
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/93762
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bvb:19-epub-13391-5