Knowledge claims in Law and Economics: Gaps and bridges between theoretical and practical rationality

The aim of this chapter is to reflect on the types of knowledge various approaches to Law and Economics can produce. While this topic lies at the crossroads of different ways of doing research in both parent disciplines of law and economics, it has rarely been addressed in a systematic fashion. Rather than a contribution to the philosophy of science as such, this chapter is an attempt to enrich our understanding of the interdisciplinary interactions conventionally lumped together under the label Law and Economics. While providing a typology of the most relevant interactions of theoretical and practical endeavors in Law and Economics, the chapter also puts forward a meta-theoretical claim: disagreements in the parent disciplines are transposed into but only partly determine the dynamics of Law and Economics as an interdisciplinary practice.