This paper examines the complexity and "fuzzy logic" actually at play in governance in case studies such as HIH (Australia) and Enron (USA). The rules applying to each sector cannot fully explain events. Non?prescribed factors influencing behaviours affecting the interconnections,...

The emergence of an international regime of soft law principles and rules to prohibit money laundering by financial institutions and other intermediaries is an important step in reducing systemic risk in the international financial system. This paper analyses the various international...

This paper uses a new quantitative methodology ("numerical comparative law", "leximetrics") in order to answer the questions whether there has been convergence, divergence or persistence of legal rules, and how this relates to the Common Law/Civil Law distinction. It is based on indices for...

In this paper we build a new and meaningful shareholder protection index for five countries and code the development of the law for over three decades. At-tributing and comparing legal differences by numbers is contrary to the tradi-tional way of doing comparative law and the use of a...

Following the 1900 congress in Paris, the beginning of the 20th century saw comparative law emerge as a significant discipline. This paper suggests that the early 21st century is seeing the decline, or maybe even the 'end', of comparative law. In contrast to other claims which see the 21st...

In the New Property Rights approach the degree of incompleteness of markets is taken independently of the cost of the public ordering and of their efficiency relatively to private orderings. In this approach "public markets", similarly to a Swiss cheese, are either assumed to be non-existent...

This article analyzes how shareholder protection has developed in 20 countries from 1995 to 2005. In contrast to traditional legal research, it draws on a quanti-tative methodology to law ("leximetrics", "numerical comparative law"). Some of its results are that in most countries shareholder...

In the last few years law and finance scholars have 'discovered' the usefulness of comparative law. Their studies look at the quantifiable effect that legal rules and their enforcement have on financial development in different countries. Moreover, they link their results with the long- standing...