Sergio Mittlaender

Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy | MPISOC · Department of Social Law

Este artigo apresenta um panorama de decisões judiciais relacionadas a conflitos de natureza privada nas quais a pandemia da Covid-19 foi empregada como argumento. Ao analisar julgamentos de 2020 e 2021, constatamos que tais decisões geralmente não consideraram a pandemia como fundamento suficiente para deferir o pleito. Existem exceções, comumente...

This paper studies how individuals consider other individuals’ preferences when selecting whom to include in a group or network in the absence of any personal taste or statistical reason associated with the inclusion of a particular applicant. This type of decision emerges, for instance, when unprejudiced white landlords discriminate against black...

Most jurisdictions grant differentiated and more beneficial treatment – usually in the form of early retirement, and commonly under special pension schemes – to workers in arduous or hazardous jobs. Several justifications for such treatment have been advanced, including i) compensating the worker for the hardship, ii) protecting the worker from the...

This chapter identifies, in the existing empirical evidence, some of the reasons for why individuals engage in retaliation and punishment of others, while also considering why individual behavior may differ when parties are bound to each other by contract, and hence by an obligation, they voluntarily and autonomously entered into. It endogeneizes,...

This chapter studies how the promisor may breach in circumstances in which the promisee might expect performance, and how retaliation to breach is, in the absence of legal relief, often the expected and observed final product of the parties’ unresolved dispute. It identifies different reasons for why parties might disagree on whether the promisor s...

The present chapter presents the empirical study, firstly, on the behavioral effect of the primary duty to keep promises and contract on the promisor’s decision to perform or breach and on the promisee’s decision to retaliate or not to breach. With respect to the latter, the experiment further attempts to investigate the circumstances and types of...

This chapter reviews the three main theories of contract and contract law, namely promissory, reliance, and economic theories. It inquires, firstly, into the nature of the contractual obligation with the aim of identifying why breach of contract is an act possibly perceived by individuals as a wrong in need of redress. Among the candidates advanced...

This chapter studies how expectation and disgorgement damages, as well as specific performance, perform different economic functions, inducing promisors to perform and dissuading promisees to retaliate to breaches of contract and their impact on social welfare. It considers situations where the promisor breaches to avoid incurring losses and situat...

The principle of compensation, considered fundamental in the law of remedies for breach of contract both in legal scholarship and in existing law, finds its justification, in promissory and reliance theories, on moral considerations and on the dictates of corrective justice. Economic theories, however, have not addressed the social welfare function...

This article investigates the causal effect of inter-group contact on statistical and taste-based discrimination as well as on the associated anticipation effects of the latter, leading to reduced inter-group trust. In our experiment, individuals are randomly assigned to teams comprising in-group and out-group members or to homogeneous teams, inter...

Societies, communities, groups, and teams must often decide to exclude or to include other individuals. This article studies, firstly, the consequences of exclusion on the subsequent behavior of excluded individuals in the resulting segregated public good games, providing evidence that excluded individuals tend to behave in a more prosocial manner...

Contracts commit individuals to a future course of action and create feelings of entitlement on the parties. In a contractual gap, parties’ duties and rights are not univocal, and while promisors will often feel entitled to breach, promisees will feel entitled to receive the promised performance. This divergence leads to disputes, aggrievement, and...

This article presents empirical estimates suggesting that most people do not perceive breach of contract followed by compensation for the promisee as immoral. In the absence of compensation, the article reveals that individuals commonly perceive the moral value of breach depending on the consequences thereof, with the unfairness of the outcome—and...

span>Como o político que “rouba, mas faz” tem a chance de continuar na vida pública, a saída é bloquear a sua candidatura.</span

This article reports results from an economic experiment that investigates the extent to which voters punish corruption and waste in elections. While both are responsible for reductions in voters’ welfare, they are not necessarily perceived as equally immoral. The empirical literature in political agency has not yet dealt with these two dimensions...

This article reports results from an economic experiment that investigates to what extent voters punish corruption and waste in elections. While both are responsible for a loss of welfare for voters, they are not necessarily perceived as equally immoral. The empirical literature in political agency has not yet dealt with these two dimensions that d...