An economic analysis of the use of citations in the law

Abstract

This paper examines the use of citations analysis as an empirical tool for understanding aspects of the legal system and for improving the performance of the system. Emphasis is laid on the use of such analysis as a means to evaluate courts and judges (and therefore as a judicial-management tool), to test hypotheses about judicial behavior, and to evaluate and improve legal scholarship. It is argued that economic models, particularly of reputation and of human capital, can frame and guide the use of citations analysis in law.

Does Patent Strategy Shape the Long-Run Supply of Public Knowledge? Evidence from Human Genetics

“…While we would like to measure the rate of follow-on knowledge production embedded in the public stream directly, it is difficult to gather systematic information for a large sample of publications. Our citation-based approach follows a long literature using citations to trace the flow of ideas and their follow-on accumulation in later knowledge production (de Solla Price, 1965;Hall, Jaffe, & Trajtenberg, 2001;Posner, 2000). The use of publication citations is subject to several caveats; first, it does not capture accumulation of non-disclosed knowledge.…”

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