Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2009
Abstract
Enforceable promises discourage lying, cheating, and stealing. Contracts that embody such promises shape institutions, distribute power, and organize markets. The Smith-King critique of elite empirical contracts scholarship reveals a field preoccupied with the first set of functions and barely interested in the second. I am loath to second-guess this view without empirical evidence of my own. Instead, I draw from it two sets of implications-one for the substantive study of contracts, the other for the relationship between contract theory and contract empiricism.
Publication Citation
51 Ariz. L. Rev. 57 (2009)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Gelpern, Anna, "Commentary" (2009). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 1865.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1865