Academic

If you are in San Francisco for the AALS Meeting in 2 weeks, check out the AALS Insurance Law Section's program on behavioral economics and Insurance regulation on ?Saturday, January 8th from 10:30 AM-12:15 PM in the Hilton. Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota) will be moderating the following panel:

Tom Baker (University of Pennsylvania Law School);

Michelle E. Boardman (George Mason University School of Law);

Russell Korobkin (University of California, Los Angeles School of Law);

Joshua C. Teitelbaum (Georgetown University Law Center)

As an editorial aside, there is still much good work to be done in the application of behavioral economics to law, particularly as this field grows out of its adolescence.  We are past the stage of whether behavioral biases and cognitive limitations affect individual decision-making and moving to much more difficult questions such as: which of the laundry list of biases is at work on any given decision?  When and to what extent does a particular bias affect a particular decision?  How do different groups of inviduals exhibit different biases?  The low hanging fruit has been picked clean.  There are lots of data in all sorts of fields showing anomalies inconsistent with rational actor models.  But the challenge is now to move beyond speculating that a particular bias causes the anomaly and then proposing a policy remedy towards providing clearer links between particular biases and particular changes in behavior.  If the easy pickings are gone, there is still a lot of ripe fruit higher up in the tree.  Check out this section meeting!