This chapter examines the treatment of fiduciary law in the field of law and economics. It begins with a typology of three theoretical tracts that accounts for loyalty in economics: the first tract takes a structural approach to questions of loyalty and disloyalty based on models occupied by strictly rational economic agents who are unable to choose or act in any manner than that dictated by narrow self-interests; the second explains loyalty in terms of personal character or preferences for particular actions and choices; and the third approaches loyalty in terms of allegiances to relationships or associations and, more specifically, to their associated rules of conduct. The chapter then discusses these three theoretical tracts of loyalty by reviewing the law and economics literature on beneficiaries and fiduciaries in general, and principals and agents in particular. The discussion is organized along lines of the two branches of scholarship that defines the field of law and economics: institutional economic analysis and economic analysis of law.
Transaction Cost in Irrigation Tank Management: An Institutional Economic Analysis
