Title
Efficiency and Labor Law
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1993
ISSN
0029-3571
Publisher
Northwestern University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
The law and economics literature, particularly that part of the literature that offers positive theories of the law, has largely ignored labor law. There are two reasons for this. One is that unions are seen as economically inefficient - in the sense that society would be wealthier without them - because cartel behavior is generally viewed by economists as inefficient. The same arguments supporting the per se rule against price fixing lead economists and economically oriented lawyers to shy away from labor law as a field of study, because they take it as given that the union is an inefficient institution. The second reason labor law has not received much attention in the law and economics literature, particularly from positive theorists, is that it is seen as an area of statutory law. A large part of the law and economics literature makes a distinction between statutory and case law, arguing that the latter tends toward efficiency while the former is more often than not the product of rent-seeking efforts on the part of special interest groups.
Recommended Citation
Keith Hylton,
Efficiency and Labor Law
,
in
87
Northwestern University Law Review
471
(1993).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2042
Comments
Reprinted in Foundations of Labor and Employment Law 163, S. Estreicher & S. J. Schwab, eds., Foundation Press (2000).