The course is designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of law and economics and to its aspiration to place the study of law on a scientific basis, with coherent theory, precise hypotheses deduced from the theory and empirical tests of the hypotheses. 
In particular, the purpose of the course is providing students with the analytical tools and conceptual framework of law and economics, by examining a set of questions: why societies adopt legal rules to regulate relationships between their members; why those specific rules are selected among a number of possible choices and how the economic rationale underlying is conceived; how those rules affect the economic behaviour of individuals and firms. 
Starting from the exploration of the nature of law as a social institution, the course will cover the economic analysis of the law of property, torts, contracts, corporations and legal process; and it will also explain how indispensable is the interplay between society, economic system and regulation to the social coexistence, how enforcement and social norms are essential to its operation, how law shapes the behaviour of individuals through the economic incentives, how property, contract and tort emerged as the framework to drive and regulate the need of individuals in the context of modern society.