Volume 16, Issue 3

This paper examines the approaches taken by courts, competition and health authorities in China, Japan and Korea when dealing with ‘pay for delay’ cases in the pharmaceutical sector. Most disputes involving ‘pay for delay’ agreements have to date occurred in the United States and Europe, and have involved challenges to the underlying agreement under applicable competition legislation. The principal concern in such cases is the potential anti-competitive effect of a ‘pay for delay’ agreement in the event that market exclusivity is maintained to the detriment of earlier entry of generics. A number of East Asian countries with advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity such as China and the Republic of Korea have, however, begun to see cases involving ‘pay for delay’ agreements. Japanese competition authorities also appear to be aware of the potential for such cases in the country. This paper examines the approaches used by the respective authorities of these countries in assessing these agreements.

The Hand Formula internalizes tort externalities into decision-making by comparing prevention costs with accident damages, achieving theoretical breakthroughs in liability determination. However, in human-machine collaborative driving, AI’s “black box” nature and decision complexity make accident probabilities unpredictable and costs impossible to internalize, weakening institutional incentives due to extended decision chains and multiple liability subjects. To address this, negligence-based causal rules must evolve with changing care level concepts, while activity-based causal approaches better suit human–machine interactions. Institutionally, accident liability mechanisms should incorporate presumption of fault, establish multi-tiered liability allocation, and promote proactive insurance involvement. As AI develops, personalized rules will transform through intelligent evolution to become legal system fundamentals, while causation will serve both as a liability allocation tool and a mechanism for social stability.

This study aims to determine a theoretical basis for the assignment of property rights by applying an evolutionary game model in which two types of workers apply for their effort for the increase of the property value. By extending the evolutionary game approach to determine the theoretical basis supporting that the property rights institution is preceded by the evolutionarily developed human psyche, due originally to Eswaran and Neary, the resulting evolutionary stable set of preferences differs from them since the relative endowment effect hardwired depends on the productivity difference between the two parties.

Since its introduction to China in the 1980s, the field of law and economics has undergone significant development, with a growing emphasis on empirical research. However, the integration of economic analysis into the current legal study framework has been constrained by insufficient supply and limited demand for this knowledge. This study provides a detailed analysis of the challenges hindering the advancement of law and economics in China. It categorizes research in this field into three main areas: case analysis of legal issues, quantitative analysis of the law, and empirical studies on the economic impact of law and regulations. The study examines the progress made in each category of research and identifies the key obstacles that need to be addressed.

Laws send a message – or so we assume. Law and economics scholars argue that it may do so through mere expression. Since this requires no active enforcement, legal expression has become a popular policy tool. This article questions both the strength of legal expression for social change as well as its costlessness by focusing on the institutional conditions essential for legal expression to work. First, legal expression requires that people have good legal knowledge. At least, their legal knowledge should be better than their social knowledge. Second, individuals must be interested in the attitudes of a ‘homogenized whole’ of which law is a credible source of information. As the article highlights, neither of these two conditions exist in most contexts. As importantly, the article explains how over-utilizing legal expression in such ill-suited contexts further undermines the power of future laws in creating change, with or without enforcement.