Dr. Claudia Landeo is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics of the University of Alberta. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002, where she was the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Award and the Reuben E. Slesinger Research Award.  Professor Landeo has served as Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School (2011-2012) and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Harvard Law School (2012). Dr. Landeo has also served as Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law (2011, 2009-2010), Research Scholar in Economics at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management (2007), and  Visiting Associate Professor of Economics (2006-2007) and Research Scholar in Economics (2005) at Carnegie Mellon University John H. Heinz School.  Professor Landeo's  work has been published in top general-interest economics journals such as THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, GAMES & ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR, and THE RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, top law and economics journals such as THE JOURNAL OF LAW & ECONOMICS and THE JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS & ORGANIZATION, and top law journals such as THE YALE JOURNAL OF REGULATION and THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW REVIEW. Her research has been funded by major granting agencies such as the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Professor Landeo's research is focused on the ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW. She applies game-theoretic modeling, mechanism-design tools, experimental economics methods, and legal analysis to the assessment and design of market and legal institutions. Her theoretical work on the economic analysis of legal disputes, published in GAMES & ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR in 2018, generalizes seminal economic models of litigation, presents the first formal definition of "Access to Justice," and provides methodological contributions to the economic analysis of law. She presented the findings from this study at the NBER Summer Institute in Law and Economics in July 2016. Professor Landeo's theoretical work on the design of optimal law enforcement mechanisms with ordered leniency, published in THE JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS in 2020, extends seminal work on the control of harmful externalities and provides the first formal analysis of enforcement policies with ordered leniency for short-term harmful group activities. She discussed her findings at the Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association in May 2019 and at the NBER Summer Institute in Law and Economics in July 2018.  Professor Landeo's theoretical research on the design of optimal civil justice mechanisms extends her work on Access to Justice (Games and Economic Behavior 2018) by identifying the properties that must be satisfied by an optimal civil justice system to ensure access to justice to the victims and maximal compensation to the victims at the minimum expected cost of producing evidence evidence. Her findings were discussed at the Stony Brook Game Theory Festival in July 2024 and at the European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society in December 2024. 

Dr. Landeo has also studied the efficiency properties of bargaining institutions in legal settings including partnership dissolution provisions and pretrial bargaining mechanisms. In addition, her work has provided insights about the use of vertical restraints by incumbent monopolists to exclude potential entrants, and the design of incentive contracts for teams. Professor Landeo is currently working on  the design of optimal legal systems, leniency mechanisms and corruption, and debiasing through law mechanisms. 

AREAS OF INTEREST

Economic Analysis of Law

Industrial Organization

Game Theory

Mechanism Design

Experimental and Behavioral Economics

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Financially-Constrained Lawyers: An Economic Theory of Legal Disputes (with Maxim Nikitin). GAMES & ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR, 109, pp. 625-647 (2018). Journal of the Game Theory Society

Optimal Law Enforcement with Ordered Leniency (with Kathryn Spier). THE JOURNAL OF LAW & ECONOMICS, 63, pp. 71-111 (2020). University of Chicago Press

Optimal Law Enforcement with Ordered Leniency (with Kathryn Spier). NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH W25095 (2018)

Naked Exclusion: An Experimental Study of Contracts with Externalities (with Kathryn Spier). THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, 99, pp. 1850-1877 (2009). Journal of the American Economic Association

Naked Exclusion: An Experimental Study of Contracts with Externalities (with Kathryn Spier).  NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH W14115 (2008)

Trigger Happy or Gun Shy: Dissolving Common-Value Partnerships with Texas Shootouts (with Richard Brooks and Kathryn Spier). THE RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, 41, pp. 649-673 (2010). Journal of the RAND Corporation

Article cited by Judge Dowd in the legal case Forbush v. Adams, [2014] No. ED101290, MISSOURI COURT OF APPEALS, EASTER DISTRICT - U.S.A.  

Article cited by Justice Edelman in the legal case JTA Le Roux v. Lawson, [2013] WASC 293, SUPREME COURT OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA – AUSTRALIA 

 Shotguns and Deadlocks (with Kathryn Spier). THE YALE JOURNAL ON REGULATION, 31, pp. 143-187 (2014). Yale University Press

Article featured in THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL FORUM ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FINANCIAL REGULATION, 2013 

Irreconcilable Differences: Judicial Resolution of Business Deadlock (with Kathryn Spier). THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW REVIEW, 81, pp. 203-229 (2014). University of Chicago Press

Article cited by Judge Dowd in the legal case Forbush v. Adams, [2014] No. ED101290, MISSOURI COURT OF APPEALS, EASTER DISTRICT - U.S.A. 

Article featured in THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL FORUM ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FINANCIAL REGULATION, 2013 

Exclusionary Vertical Restraints and Antitrust: Experimental Law and Economics Contributions. Chapter 3. In Kathryn Zeiler and Joshua Teitelbaum (eds.), THE RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON BEHAVIORAL LAW & ECONOMICS (2018). Edward Elgar Publishing 

Settlement Escrows: An Experimental Study of a Bilateral Bargaining Game (with Linda Babcock). THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION, 53, pp. 401-417 (2004). Elsevier Publishing

Deterrence, Lawsuits and Litigation Outcomes under Court Errors (with Maxim Nikitin and Scott Baker). THE JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS & ORGANIZATION, 23, pp. 57-97 (2007). Oxford University Press

MANUSCRIPTS

Optimal Civil Justice Design (with Maxim Nikitin & Sergei Izmalkov). UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, HSE UNIVERSITY & NEW ECONOMIC SCHOOL