How the Talmud Anticipated Behavioral Economics

In talmudic tort law, remuneration for damages must in many cases be paid in high-quality land. (As in most premodern economies, payment made in kind was more common than payment in cash.) A court thus places a price on the damages and then the responsible party must transfer to the plaintiff an area of his best land of equivalent value—rather than a larger area of lower-quality land. From the standpoint of classical economics, such a requirement is nonsensical, as Shlomo Zuckier writes: