Ian Ayres

Essay

A Legislative Response to 303 Creative

States should respond to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 303 Creative decision by enacting implied warranties of nondiscrimination. Making nondiscrimination a publicly disclaimable default would facilitate informed consumer choice and mitigate the dignitary harms of point-of-sale discrimination.

Jan 14, 2025
Article

Regulating Opt-Out: An Economic Theory of Altering Rules

121 Yale L.J. 2032 (2012). Whenever a rule is contractible, the law must establish separate rules governing how private parties can contract around the default legal treatment. To date, contract theorists have not developed satisfying theories for how to set “altering rules,” the rules that establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for displacing a default. This Article argues that when setting altering rules, efficiency-minded...

May 2, 2012
Essay

To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping

114 Yale L.J. 1613 (2005) Many studies have documented seller discrimination against consumers, but this Essay tests and finds that consumers discriminate based on the seller's race. The authors collected data on more than 1000 taxicab rides in New Haven, Connecticut in 2001. After controlling for a host of other variables, they find two potential racial disparities in tipping: (1)...

May 1, 2005
Response

Valuing Modern Contract Scholarship

112 Yale L.J. 881 (2003) In sum, Posner has leveled three different criticisms at the modern economic analysis of contracts: a descriptive critique that the scholarship fails to describe or predict the content of current law, a normative critique that the scholarship fails to "provide a solid basis for criticizing and reforming contract law," and an implicit evolutionary critique that...

Jan 1, 2003
Article

A Dilution Mechanism for Valuing Corporations in Bankruptcy

111 Yale L.J. 83 (2001) This Article proposes a new mechanism for valuing firms in bankruptcy. Under the "senior dilution" mechanism, a court would dilute the reorganized stock issued to senior claimants by issuing additional shares to junior claimants until there was no excess demand for the stock at a price that would implement absolute priority. A "junior diluation" mechanism...

Oct 1, 2001