AVERY WIENER KATZ

CURRENT POSITION:  Vice Dean (2006-) and Milton Handler Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law (2004–)

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Columbia University School of Law

435 W. 116th Street

New York, NY 10027

(212) 854–0066 (voice)

ak472@columbia.edu (e-mail)

www.columbia.edu/~ak472 (home page)

EDUCATION:

●    Ph.D. in Economics, Harvard University, 1986

●    J.D., magna cum laude, Harvard Law School, 1985

●    M.A. in Economics, Harvard University, 1983

●    B.A. in Economics, summa cum laude, University of Michigan, 1980

PREVIOUS POSITIONS:

●    Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law, 2000-04. 

●    Scholar in Residence, New York University School of Law, Spring 2004.

●    Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, 1995-99.

●    Director, John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Georgetown University Law Center, 1998–99.

●    Visiting Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law, Spring 1998.

●    Professor of Law and Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics, University of Michigan, 1993–94.

●    Visiting Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Fall 1992, Spring 1994.

●    Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan, 1987–93.

●    Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan, 1986–93.

●    Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan, 1986–87.

PROFESSIONAL AWARDS:

●    Olin Faculty Research Fellow, Columbia University School of Law, Spring 1998.

●    Olin Faculty Research Fellow, Yale Law School, Spring 1990.

PUBLICATIONS:

Books and book chapters:

Foundations of the Economic Approach to Law, New York: Foundation Press, 1998.

Contract Formation and Interpretation, in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, vol.1 , ed. Peter Newman. New York: Stockton Press, 1998.

Standard Form Contracts, in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, vol. 3, ed. Peter Newman. New York: Stockton Press, 1998.

Indemnity of Legal Fees, in the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, vol. 5, ed. Boudewijn Bouckaert and Gerrit DeGeest. Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000.

Vertragsrecht im Zeitalter des Internets: Eine ökonomische Perspektive (Contract Law in the Age of the Internet: An Economic Analysis), in Ökonomische Analyse des Sozialschutzprinzips im Zivilrecht (Economic Analysis of the Social Protection Principle in Civil Law), ed. Hans-Bernd Schäfer and Claus Ott. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

Journal articles:

How Should Fringe Benefits be Taxed?, (with N. Gregory Mankiw), National Tax Journal, 38(1), March 1985, pp. 37–45.

Measuring the Demand for Litigation: Is the English Rule Really Cheaper?, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 3(2), Fall 1987, pp. 143–176.

Reflections on Fuller and Perdue's `The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages': A Positive Economic Framework, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 21(4), Summer 1988, pp. 541–560.

Judicial Decisionmaking and Litigation Expenditure, International Review of Law and Economics, 8(2), December 1988, pp. 127–143. Reprinted in Economics Of Evidence, Procedure And Litigation, ed. Chris William Sanchirico. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007.

The Effect of Frivolous Lawsuits on the Settlement of Litigation, International Review of Law and Economics, 10(1), June 1990, pp. 3–27.

The Strategic Structure of Offer and Acceptance: Game Theory and the Law of Contract Formation, Michigan Law Review, 89(2), November 1990, pp. 215–295. Reprinted in Contract Law, ed. Brian Bix (The International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory, 2d Series). Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1999.

Your Terms or Mine: The Duty to Read the Fine Print in Contracts, Rand Journal of Economics, 21(4), Winter 1990, pp. 518–537.

Transaction Costs and the Legal Mechanics of Contract Formation: When Should Silence in the Face of an Offer be Construed as Acceptance?, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 9(1), April 1993. pp. 77–97.

The Incentive Effects of Litigation Fee Shifting when Legal Standards are Uncertain (with Clinton F. Beckner), International Review of Law and Economics, 15(2), June 1995, pp. 205–224.

When Should an Offer Stick? The Economics of Promissory Estoppel in Preliminary Negotiations, Yale Law Journal, 105(5), March 1996, pp. 1249–1309.

Taking Private Ordering Seriously, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144(5), May 1996, pp. 1745–1763.

Positivism and the Separation of Law and Economics, Michigan Law Review, 94(7), June 1996, pp. 2229–2269.

An Economic Analysis of the Guaranty Contract. University of Chicago Law Review, 66(1), Winter 1999, pp. 47–116.

Informality as a Bilateral Assurance Mechanism.  Michigan Law Review, 98(8), August 2000, pp. 2554–2573.

On the Use of Practitioner Surveys in Commercial Law Research.  Michigan Law Review, 98(8), August 2000, pp. 2760–2772.

The Economics of Form and Substance in Contract Interpretation. Columbia Law Review, 103(2), March 2004, pp. 496–538.

The Relative Costs of Incorporating Trade Usage into Domestic versus International Sales Contracts. Chicago Journal of International Law, 5(1), Spring 2004, pp. 181-190.

The Option Element in Contracting, Virginia Law Review, 90(8), December 2004, pp. 2187-2244.

Contractual Incompleteness: A Transactional Perspective. Case Western Reserve Law Review, 56(1), Fall 2005, pp. 169-186.

Remedies for Breach of Contract under the CISG. International Review of Law and Economics, 25(3), September 2005, pp. 378-396.

Contractual Enforcement Institutions and the Structure of Information. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 164(1), March 2008, pp. 134–154.

UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS:

Reliance on Non-Enforcement of Legal Entitlements (with Omri Ben-Shahar). March 2001.

Can A Rational Juror Be Impartial?, October 1995. Presented at Olin Conference on the Role of the Jury in a Democratic Society, Georgetown University Law Center.

Bargaining at a Distance: The Economics of the Mailbox Rule, October 1991.

Efficiency and Distribution in Bargaining Over Default Terms in Contract: An Experiment with First–year Law Students (with James J. White), April 1991.

A Note on Optimal Contract Damages When Litigation is Costly, University of Michigan, Center for Research on Economic and Social Theory, Working Paper No. 88–11.

Essays in the Economics of Litigation, Ph.D. dissertation (Economics), Harvard University, 1986.

CURRENT RESEARCH:

Is Electronic Contracting Different? Contract Law in the Information Age. Under revision.

A Transactional Approach to Tortious Interference with Contract.

General research on electronic commerce and on the impact of informational technology on contractual and Payment Systems.

Regulation and Public Policy for Lawyers (joint with Jeffrey Gordon and William Sage). Casebook and reader to be used in Foundations of Regulatory State class at Columbia and in similar classes at other schools. Subjects covered include the range of normative criteria for evaluating state regulation, positive theories of regulation, basic concepts of empirical analysis, substantive regulatory analysis of externalities, public goods, competition policy, and imperfect market information, income and wealth redistribution, problems of insurance markets, cost-benefit analysis, regulatory federalism, and alternative systems of regulatory enforcement and administration, including liability, insurance, and centralized and decentralized approaches to regulation.

Revised second edition of Foundations of the Economic Approach to Law, to be published by Foundation Press.

COURSES TAUGHT:

●    Contract law (website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/contracts)

●    Commercial law (websites at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/comtrans and www.columbia.edu/~ak472/seminar)

●    Sales of goods (website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/sales)

●    Secured transactions (website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/sectrans)

●    Payment systems (website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/payments)

●    Foundations of the regulatory state (first-year J.D. course in regulation and public policy; website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/regstate)

●    Economic analysis of law (website at www.columbia.edu/~ak472/econlaw)

INVITED LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS:

●   2007–2008 academic year: Washington and Lee University School of Law, March 2008; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 2008 (three-week course on “The International Law Of Sales”)

●   2006–2007 academic year: Federal Trade Commission, Workshop on Negative Option Contracts, January 2007; Case Western Reserve University School of Law, March 2007; New York City Bar Association, May 2007; University of Hamburg, June 2007 (one-week Ph.D. course on "Economic Analysis of Contract Law").

●    2005–2006 academic year: University of Texas Law School, September 2005; Hebrew University of Jerusalem, May 2005 (two-week course on “The Economics of Contracts.”)

●    2004-2005 academic year: University of Virginia School of Law, John M. Olin Conference on Real Options and the Law, October 2004; NYU School of Law Conference on Commercial Law Theory and the CISG, October 2004; Northwestern University School of Law, October 2004; American Association of Law Schools, Section on Contracts, January 2005; Boston University School of Law, February 2005; European Association for Law and Economics, Conference on Pure Economic Loss, April 2005;

●    2003-2004 academic year: American Law and Economic Association, Section on Contracts, September 2003; American University Law School, September 2003; University of North Carolina Law School, January 2004; Harvard Law School, March 2004; Travemünde Conference on Law and Economics, University of Hamburg, March 2004; Emory Law School, April 2004, University of Hamburg, June 2004 (one-week Ph.D. course on "Economic Analysis of Contract Law").

●    2002-2003 academic year: University of Michigan Law School, April 2003, Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum, June 2003.

●    2001-2002 academic year: University of California at Berkeley, February 2002; Stanford Law School, March 2002; University of Chicago Law School, April 2002.

●    1999-2000 academic year: Vanderbilt University Law School, October 1999; University of Michigan Law School, February 2000; University of Virginia Law School, March 2000.

●    1998-1999 academic year: American Law and Economic Association, Section on Contracts, May 1999.

●    1997-1998 academic year: University of Pennsylvania Law School, March 1998, Columbia University School of Law, April 1998; Tel–Aviv University, June 1998.

●    Prior years: UCLA Department of Economics, 1986; Columbia University School of Law, 1987; Georgetown University Law Center, 1989; University of Chicago Law School, 1990; Yale Law School, 1990; Harvard Law School, 1990; Stanford Law School, 1991; Law and Society Association, Section on Bargaining, 1991; Northwestern University Law School, 1991; University of Western Ontario Economics Department, 1991; American Association of Law Schools, Section on Contracts, 1992; University of Toronto Law School, 1992; American Law and Economic Association, Section on Contracts, 1992; American Law and Economic Association, Section on Civil Litigation, 1992; Georgetown University Law Center, 1992; American Law and Economic Association, Section on Contracts, 1993; University of Pennsylvania Law School, 1993; American Association of Law Schools, Family Law Workshop, 1994; American Law and Economic Association, Section on Civil Litigation, 1994; Georgetown University Law Center, Olin Conference on Litigation Reform, 1994; Wayne State University, Law School and Department of Economics, 1994; Georgetown University Law Center, Law and Economics Workshop, 1994; George Mason University Law School, 1995; U.S. Department of Justice, 1995; University of Michigan Law School, Law and Economics Workshop, 1995; Georgetown University Law Center, Olin Conference on the Role of the Jury in a Democratic Society, 1995; Harvard Law School, Conference on the Economics of Litigation and Legal Procedure, 1995; University of Pennsylvania Law School, Conference on Law, Economics, and Norms, 1996; University of Michigan Law School, Law and Economics Workshop, 1996; New York University Law School, Discourses Workshop, 1997; Columbia Law School, Law and Economics Workshop, 1997; American Law and Economic Association, Section on Contracts, 1997.

OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

●    Co-Editor, 2003–, and Member, Board of Editors, 1999-2002, International Review of Law and Economics.

●    Board of Directors, 2003–, and Annual Meeting Program Committee, 2005, American Law and Economics Association.

●    Member of Advisory Board, Contracts and Commercial Law Abstracts, published electronically by Legal Scholarship Network, 1999–

●    Chair, Section on Contracts and Commercial Law, Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum, June 2003.

●    Chair, Section on Law and Economics, American Association of Law Schools, 2000-01.

●    Admitted to practice, State Bar of Michigan, 1986–present (currently on inactive status)

●    Member of American Bar Association, American Law and Economics Association, American Economic Association

●    Editorial referee for Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Journal of Legal Studies, International Review of Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, National Tax Journal, Economic Inquiry, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, MIT Press, Cambridge University Press, and University of Chicago Press.

UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY SERVICE:

●   Columbia University Senate. Service on Budget Review Committee (2002–2006, Chair, 2004–2006), Structure and Operations Committee (2002), Ad Hoc Committee on Online Learning (2002–03), Ad Hoc Subcommittee on the Columbia School for Children (2003-2006).

●   Chair, Advisory Board, Tompkins Hall Nursery School and Child Care Center, 2003–.