This paper is a contribution to the literature on rational design of trade agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign states. Incomplete contracts contain gaps. Ex post, contractual gaps may leave gains from trade unrealized; they may create 'regret'...

Ökonomische Analyse des Rechts (ÖAR) beschäftigt sich mit den Wirkungen von Rechtsnormen, gerichtlichen Entscheidungen und Verwaltungsakten in der Lebenswirklichkeit. Sie bewertet diese Folgen mit Hilfe des Kriteriums der ökonomischen Effizienz und macht Vorschläge, wie Recht zu gestalten...

Die Ökonomische Analyse des Rechts umweht in Deutschland immer noch der Hauch des Exotischen. In diesem Beitrag soll begründet werden, warum das ökonomische Entscheidungsmodell ganz hervorragend dazu geeignet ist, die Verhaltensfolgen von Gesetzen zu prognostizieren. Deshalb kann die ÖAR...

The Basle Accord of 1988 regulates how much equity banks must set aside as a cushion against the default risk. In its 1999 proposal for a new Accord, the Basle Committee seeks to introduce different equity ratios for customers of different risk levels. The proposal strongly favors external...

Law and economics in Germany was dominated by regulation, competition, and ?German Ordnungspolitik? until the early 1970s. Since then, German scholars have published a broad body of work in German and in the English language, covering fields like contract law, environmental law, labor law,...

Banks often have to determine the credit worthiness, i.e. the ability to repay the loan, of their customers ex-ante. According to the theory of imperfect diagnosis, it can be rational not to use an informative diagnosis result, even though it can be acquired without costs. We call this...

Pledges on shares and stocks are common as securities for loans. New are the attempts by pledgees to sell pledges in public auctions. The questions regarding the requirements for such public auctions have not been answered either by Ge rman court decisions or literature. This fact helps the...

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, all else being equal, for the case of Italy, tourist areas tend to have a greater amount of crime than non-tourist areas in the long run. Following the literature of the economics of crime à la Becker (1968) and Ehrlich (1973) and using a system...

Antieuropäische Strömungen scheinen sich in jüngster Zeit in der Europäischen Union wieder zu formieren. Im Zuge der Eurokrise sind Konstruktionsfehler der Eurozone in den Mittelpunkt gerückt. Die Abhandlung befasst sich mit ausgewählten Rechtsaspekten der Eurokrise, die von der Politik in...

This paper outlines the foundations of corporate governance. The discussion includes a review on the modern corporation, transaction costs theory, agency costs theory, legal investor protection, investor protection by corporate governance and its various mechanisms, as well as an overview of the...