Poor legal protection of shareholders is an often cited impediment to the efficient financing of businesses in developing and transition economies. In the presence of informational asymmetry between entrepreneurs and investors, however, higher levels of legal enforcement of fiduciary duty may be...

Legal systems throughout East Asia are in the midst of rapid and potentially fundamental change, across a range of legal fields. This paper, prepared for a conference on the potential effects of 9/11 on legal and social change in East Asia, examines East Asian legal reforms in the areas of...

We design an experiment to examine the causal effect of legal institutional quality on informal norms of cooperation, and study the interaction of institutions and culture in sustaining economic exchange. 346 subjects in Italy and Kosovo play a market game under different and randomly allocated...

This is the first paper to investigate whether the number of high courts in a country has systematic effects both on the quality of its legal system and on its level of economic development more generally. It is theorized that due to the division of labor and a higher degree of specialization,...

The custom often acts as a powerful hindrance to equity-increasing changes. In this paper, we present a simple model of legal dualism in which a progressive legal reform can, under certain conditions, shift the conflicting custom in the direction intended by the legislator. Formal law then acts...

In many Sub-Saharan countries, customary and statutory judicial systems co-exist. Customary justice is exercised by clan leaders or local courts, and based on restorative principles. By contrast, statutory justice is mostly retributive and administered by magistrates’ courts. As the...

The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States was released on January 27th, 2011. The strong political differences within the commission prevented the draft of a shared report. In addition to the majority report, two...

Employment is a main factor in promoting social inclusion of disadvantaged people, but they often need support more comprehensive strategies, which may include custom and include support and their families. Promoting more jobs and better integration and participation, supporting disadvantaged...