The UN Declaration of 24 September 2012 reaffirming the commitment of Heads of State and Government to the Rule of Law reflects the current uneasiness accompanying the application of just the concept. This short paper argues that it is due to discrepancies in its worldwide understanding and to...

Economists have made great progress in understanding the incentives and behavior of actors who operate outside of traditional economic markets, including voters, legislators, and bureaucrats. The incentives and behavior of judges, however, remain largely opaque. Do judges act as neutral...

This paper examines one particular aspect of the Greek courts: the time they need to dispose cases. As an indirect measure for the time needed to dispose cases, we use the ratio of cases remaining at the end of the year to total cases introduced. Using this metric, we document a steady increase...

The legal and the economic perspective on a policy proposal are likely to differ far more fundamentally than is commonly appreciated. Economists will impose certain minimal requirements of rationality on the evaluation process, which lawyers routinely violate. Economists will expect the...

Salvatore Rossi’s book illustrates clearly the problems of Italian economic development, the causes of the crisis and the advantages that could accrue from a return to policies favouring competition. Also fundamental, however, are more appropriate definition of regulation models and...

This paper studies bankruptcy law in Latin America, focusing on the Brazilian reform. We start with a review of the international literature on this subject. Next we examine the economic incentives associated with several aspects of bankruptcy laws and insolvency procedures in general, as well...

Specifying system transformations of the standard-legal base of market institu-tions is a purpose of the article, in it in the sphere of attitudes to the work and the employment in the Republic of Belarus, in individual stages of the transformation of the economics of the country after 1991,...

This chapter surveys literature on experimental law and economics. Long the domain of legally minded psychologists and criminologists, experimental methods are gaining significant popularity among economists interested in exploring positive and normative aspects of law. Because this literature...

There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject touncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In...

In cooperation with Lex Mundi member law firms in 109 countries, we measure and describe the exact procedures used by litigants and courts to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent and to collect a bounced check. We use these data to construct an index of procedural formalism of dispute...