LMU Analytical Methods for Lawyers - Lehrstuhl für Bürgerliches Recht, Deutsches, Europ. und Int. Unternehmensrecht

Contracting - Example: Your next tenancy agreement; Why exchange goods and services?; The Edgeworth box: Tea or coffee?; Why contracts?; Complete contracts; Contracts and the law; Adverse selection vs. moral hazard; Adverse selection: The reaction cycle; Moral hazard; Resolving disputes; Contract checklist; Production contracts; Examples for flat-free and cost-plus contracts; The hold-up problem; Sale and lease of property; Loan contracts; Principal-agent contracts; Example: Bonuses for executives.

Game Theory - Decision theory vs. game theory; A typical legal application of game theory; Some applications of game theory in legal settings; Representation of games; Normal-form games; The prisoner's dilemma; Prisoner's dilemma in litigation; Solution concepts for the prisoner's dilemma; Discoordination game: Matching pennies; A clever takeover bid; Dominant strategy equilibrium; Iterated games; The iterated prisoner's dilemma; Social benefits or social losses?; Achieving the cooperative outcome; N-person prisoner's dilemmata and common goods; Coordination games; Extensive-form games; The ultimatum game.

Individual Finance - What is finance?; Individual Finance; Finance and Lawyers; The time value of money; The time price of money;Compound interest; The effect of compound interest; Example: An investment decision; Example: Refined litigation risk analysis; Inflation; The Rule of 72; Net present value of an investment; The concept of Annuities; Internal rate of return; Risk and return; Mortgages as means of individual finance; The concept of a mortgage; Student debt in the US; Financial distress: Personal bankruptcy; Financial innovations before the crisis; The financial crisis - how come?; Global CDO Issuance Volume 2000 - 2012; Legal responses to the finacial crisis; Too big to fail?.

Decision Theory - Fundamental concepts; Expected value; Cumulative Probabilities; Serially cumulative probabilities; Decision trees; TreeAgePro and other software for litigation risk analysis; Difficulties in building the tree; Discounting and risk preferences; Risk aversion; Sensitivity analysis; Challenges to the rationality assumption.

Due to software failure this podcast covers only the first part of unit 4; we are currently working on restoring the second part. Accounting - Accounting and Lawyers; Why Accounting?; Financial Statements; Financial statements in the media; The fundamental accounting equation; The structure of a balance sheet; San Francisco Coffee Company GmbH; The income statement; Sample income statement; Alternative design of the income statement; Income statement Siemens AG; Cash flows; Sample cash flow statement (IAS 7).

Corporate Finance - What is corporate finance?; The fundamental accounting equation; Corporate finance and lawyers; The spectrum of financial products; Why do firms emerge?; The theory of the firm; Insourcing or outsourcing - make or buy?; Insourcing at General Motors; Why is there limited liability?; Separation of ownership and control; Shareholder coordination; Managers as agents for the stockholders; The case of Ernst Lieb; Diverging interests; Principal-agent theory; The case of Rajat Gupta; Countermeasures for principal-agent problems; The market for corporate control; Agent costs of debt; The efficient-market hypotheses; Behavioral finance; The dot-com bubble; Company valuation.

Law and Economics I - The basic idea of Law and Economics; Positive and normative Law and Economics; History of Law and Economics; Importance for jurists and lawyers; Property rights; Bargaining and efficiency; The externality problem; Solutions to the externality problem; Which legal measure to take?; The Coase theorem; The Coase's invariance thesis; Coase's efficiency thesis; Pareto efficiency and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency; Coase's assumptions; Challenges to the Coase theorem; Transaction costs; Consequences of high transaction costs; The (political) program of Law and Economics.

Microeconomics II - Microeconomics II - Imperfect consumer information; Adverse selection: The reaction cycle; Government responses; Example: Practice of mediation; Monopoly and related market behavior; Relevance for lawyers; Types of monopolies; Monopoly and IP; How a monopolist sets prices; The monopolist's calculation; Price discrimination; Government policy and monopoly; High profile cases; Natural monopolies and price regulation; Pricing in a duopoly; Oligopoly and monopolistic competition; Public goods; Welfare economics.

Microeconomics I - Microeconomics in the news; What is microeconomics about?; Microeconomics vs. macroeconomics; Microeconomics and lawyers; Individual decisions on the consumption of goods; Basic demand theory; Elasticities; Consumer choice; Opportunity costs; Supply and demand curves; Supply and demand; Competitive markets; Social welfare; Consumers' surplus and producers' surplus; Why competition?; Total surplus as a measure for social welfare?; Government intervention; Price floor and price ceiling; Commodity taxation leading to a deadweight loss; Distributive justice; Lessons for lawmakers.

Law and Economics II - Information productivity; Information duties; Complete contracts; Incomplete contracts; Contractual risk allocation; Risk allocation schedule; Utility function of a risk-averse individual; Contractual risk allocation; Risk allocation and legal practice; Sanctions for breach of contract; Efficient breach of contract; Specific performance and efficiency; Restitution damages and efficiency; Reliance damages and efficiency; Expectation damages and efficiency; Sanctions for breach of contract; Contract renegotiation.

Statistics I - Statistics and lawyers; What do statisticians do?; Descriptive vs. inferential statistics; Terms used for descriptive statistics; A multivariate date set; Building a histogram; Numerical descriptors; Inferential statistics; Variables used in inferential statistics; Deviations and distributions; The standard normal distribution; The Gaussian distribution; Z-scores and z-table; Calculating with a z-table; Hyothesis testing; Error types; Estimation; How to perform empirical research; The difference between coincidence and correlation; Negative Correlation; The difference between correlation and causation.

Statistics II - Methodology of econometrics; Regression analysis; OLS regressions; Minimizing ordinary least squares; Bivariate and multivariate statistics; Regression analysis in practice; Event studies; Cumulated average abnormal returns; Survey data and validity; Stratified random sampling; Misleading averages: Gesell's norms; Percentages and percentage points; How to tune up a graph; Statistical misinterpretation; Marketing with statistics; Suspicious wording; Statistical Don'ts.

Law and Economics IV - Dispute resolution and legal practice; Economic perspective on litigation; Corrective policies; Settle or litigate?; The English rule; The American rule; The zone of possible agreement; Effects of risk aversion; Prisoner's dilemma in litigation; The rationality assumption; Optimistic overconfidence; A hypothetical value function; Other challenges to the rationality assumption; Alternative dispute resolution; Methods of alternative dispute resolution; Dispute resolution clauses; Private and public effects of ADR; Settlement statistics.

Law and Economics III - Tort law and legal practice; The crisis of tort law; Costs of the US tort system; The history of liability law and economics; Liability standards; Tort law as a complement to contract law; Factors influencing the efficiency of liability standards; Damage costs; Liability (only) for damages intentionally caused; Negligence liability; The Hand rule; Strict liability; Identifying the optimal precaution level; Contributory vs. comparative negligence; Practical problems with the negligence rule and the strict liability; Which liability rule to choose?; Optimal liability standard; Liability and administratives costs.