Michael J. Meurer Boston University - School of Law Buffalo Law
Review, Vol. 47, pp. 937-74, 1999 In this article I introduce
legal scholars to concepts of fairness developed by
microeconomic theorists. My starting point is a review of the
books: Cooperative Microeconomics: A Game-Theoretic
Introduction, by Herve Moulin, and Equity: In Theory and
Practice, by H. Peyton Young. The books explain how to use
cooperative game theory to study the fair allocation of benefits
and costs. I illustrate the use of cooperative game theory by
applying it to various problems of fair division in the law. I
believe formal analysis of fair division is valuable because it
allows scholars to connect their intuitive sense of fairness to
a particular solution concept and an underlying set of axioms. I
apply the Shapley value and the nucleolus solutions to the
problem of the fair assignment of property rights in a nuisance
problem. I explain the axioms that give rise to each of these
solution concepts, and I suggest that one can id