ABSTRACT
Lawyers are usually wary of economics, a rival mystery, and for their part mainstream economists who, might cheerfully concede that statute and common law are intricately interwoven with producer and consumer choices. Notoriously economists are fascinated by, if not fixated upon free markets, regardless of the mounting evidence that such markets are exceedingly rare. Competition allows of so many elegant simplifications. Thus as Ronald Coase demonstrated in a classic article, under conditions of perfect competition, the market brings into equality private and social costs. The chapter considers selected aspects of credit arrangements, tenant-landlord law, income maintenance, and retail sales. One might observe parenthetically that President Nixon's welfare proposals admirably embody the ambiguity of present public attitudes. Once the economist shucks off the simplicities of competitive models and endeavors to cope with the lush vegetation of oligopoly and monopoly it is hard to know how the legal liabilities will be shifted, factor incomes affected, and human incentives reshuffled.
