Memorandum

Date: January 15, 1998
To: Economic Reasoning and the Law students
From: Avery Katz
Re: Feedback on Fall 1997 exam

I have put on reserve the top two student answers to each of the questions to the final exam, along with a copy of the exam itself. What made these answers the best was their coverage of arguments, detail and sophistication in use of facts, clarity in organization and explanation, and the way they demonstrated mastery of concepts from the course. If you drew different inferences from the given facts than the top answers did, or chose to discuss different issues, you wouldn't have lost points, unless your inferences were unsupportable or your choice of issues inappropriate.

For both questions, I did have in mind certain issues that I thought should have been discussed. For instance, on the first question, dealing with the Sullivan case, a complete answer should have discussed both the standard for liability and the measure of damages; with regard to both of these it was appropriate to discuss both incentives and risk-bearing. Given the stereotypcial doctor-patient relationship, furthermore, some discussion of asymmetric information (and possibly bounded rationality as well) was also in order. More sophisticated answers also discussed institutional problems such as problems of proof and legal error (for instance, was it relevant in evaluating the doctor's incentives that the court found his behavior not to have been negligent?)

On the second question, dealing with the Louisiana covenant marriage statute, the best answers recognized that the statute could influence individual incentives at various points in time (at the moment of choosing whether to get married, during an ongoing marriage, and at the point of potential dissolution), and that there might be tensions and tradeoffs among these different incentives (for instance, placing high transaction costs in the way of divorce may discourage efficient decisions to divorce, but may for this reason improve incentives to take precautions at the time of marriage.) Top answers also recognized that effect on investment and precautionary behavior during marriage are ambiguous: individuals in covenant marriages will have better incentives with regard to behavior statutorily defined as cause for divorce, but worse incentives with regard to behavior not so defined (since the risk of provoking one's partner into leaving the marriage is substantially lessened.) A few answers even recognized that the choice between the two types of marriage contract will lead to informational signalling and sorting, possibly resulting in adverse selection.

As for the second part of question 2, there was more leeway for variation in your answer. Students who mechanically worked through the full list of critiques we covered in the last part of the course tended to get lower scores, however, while those who tailored their analysis to the specific question did better. At the least, however, you should have discussed the issue of preference formation, and the possibility that preferences might change over time, either exogenously or as the result of character development and interactions within marriage.

Your individual exams will be available for inspection at the registrar's office, though I have not made many marks on them; instead, I kept a score sheet for each exam containing my own notes. At the end of this memo is a key to the various markings I did use. If, after reading this memo and the top answers, you want to discuss your exam, please feel free to contact me.

It was a pleasure teaching the class and I wish you all well. Please keep in touch.

Key to symbols used to mark exams:

good point or argument

! excellent point or argument

~ fair point, or incompletely or unclearly expressed

- weak point

… point needs elaboration

" point already made, repetitive

? unclear

?? very unclear, confused, mixing together separate points

mistake of law, misstatement of fact, misuse of term

? point appears mistaken

# irrelevant or tangential point

#? point's relevance unclear

ns non sequitur: conclusion does not follow

ff fighting facts: contradicting stated facts or making assumptions inconsistent with them

ll laundry list: throwing in relevant and irrelevant arguments alike, without distinction