The opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Windsor is express in its affirmation of the right of states to regulate family law; it affirms state power at least twenty-nine times. In repudiating the federal definition of marriage, Windsor seems to uphold state...

This paper expounds the latest main regulatory projects and industry-wide consultations in the United States (US), in the European Union (EU) and in the main economic countries where distributed ledgers (thereafter, “Blockchain”) regulations have been discussed, proposed and/or adopted. In...

The purpose of this article is to analyse how Australia's regulatory framework for housing finance mitigates various risks in mortgage lending and promotes positive market outcomes and system stability. The article first considers the main bodies involved in the regulation of residential...

In this paper, intended as a chapter for a study book, attention is given to the notion of harmonisation, its operation in the area of private law and the extent to which harmonisation of private law rules contributes to the development of the internal market

Recent statements by the Minister of Consumer Affairs indicate that developing consumer law so that it is technologically neutral is a priority. This article analyses how the current law responds to the technological innovation of the online auction. The article concludes that consumers using...

With the passage of the Internet Gambling Ban of 2006, Congress envisioned a complete prohibition on online poker and online gambling in general. Instead, this hastily passed law has created more confusion than it has cured. By failing to acknowledge jurisdictional problems associated with this...

This manuscript summarizes a speech given at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia on May 14, 2013. The speech begins with a discussion of ethical theory and how it can be applied to the topic of government regulation of business, and proceeds to summarize some recent studies on the costs...

This paper analyzes the relation between the quality of the legal enforcement of loan contracts and the allocation of credit to households, both theoretically and empirically.

We relate the design of contract law to the process of development. In this paper, contract law defines which private agreements are enforceable (i.e. are binding and enforced by courts) and which are not. Specically, we consider an economy where agents face a hold-up problem (moral hazard in...