The transatlantic dialogue: An introduction

Abstract

This collection of original papers had its origin in a series of annual meetings of the National Association of Forensic Economics (NAFE) held in Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, and the United States from 2004 to 2008.1 NAFE sponsored these meetings to explore common research areas in the calculation of damages in personal injury and death litigation in Western Europe and the United States. NAFE was founded in 1986 and is the largest association of economists and other damages experts specializing in the calculation of economic damages in litigation in the United States and Canada. The Journal of Forensic Economics (JFE) is the journal of NAFE and has been the primary outlet of peer-reviewed research in forensic economics over the past 22 years. The field of forensic economics has generated a substantial literature on methodologies and empirical research in the calculation of damages in personal injury, death, employment, and commercial litigation; and the use of that literature in the United States and Canadian courts by economists, Certified Public Accounts (CPAs), and actuaries has become commonplace in the past two decades (Thornton & Ward, 1999).2