Economics offers general counsel and other managers in law departments many concepts that collectively have great explanatory firepower: I have listed below alphabetically 32 important terms drawn from economics and my posts that introduced them, applied them, or referred to them.
Feb. 1, 2006: auctions; July 11, 2008: autarky; Sept. 4, 2005: behavioral economics; Jan. 17, 2006: behavioral economics; April 27, 2006: beta and levels of risk; April 27, 2006: comparative advantage; Dec. 21, 2005: diminishing returns and patent spending; Sept. 19, 2008: economics of information; Aug. 26, 2005: economies of size and scale; Oct. 1, 2005: efficiency and effectiveness as models; June 25, 2008: evolutionary economics; Feb. 18, 2006: fixed and variable costs; March 22, 2006: free riders; March 16, 2008: game theory with 6 references.); Sept. 7, 2008: information asymmetry with 7 references; April 27, 2006: marginal cost; Sept. 19, 2008: moral hazard; May 10, 2005: net present value of litigation expenses; and April 23, 2006: NPV and discounts vs rebates; Aug. 20, 2006: neuro-economics; March 12, 2006: nominal and inflation-adjusted metrics; Sept. 4, 2005: Pareto optimum; June 27, 2007: Pareto’s Law and team billings; Feb. 15, 2006: prediction markets; Jan. 16, 2006: principal-agent issues; May 24, 2005: profit margin as a benchmark denominator; Dec. 16, 2007: profit margins of seven global law firms; Jan. 10, 2008: profit margin discounts: July 20, 2005: Allen & Overy at 36%; April 27, 2006: monopoly power; April 20, 2008: choice of firms; Sept. 19, 2008: opportunity costs; April 27, 2006: price elasticity: March 28, 2008: three ways to deal with prices; Feb. 7, 2008: productivity; April 27, 2006: rents; July 29, 2007: economic rents; Jan. 13, 2006: risk compared to uncertainty; July 31, 2006: rival and non-rivalrous goods; Feb. 1, 2006: supply and demand in auctions; March 20, 2008: supply and demand and compensation in-house; July 31, 2006: transaction costs.)