Empirical studies of judicial behavior using judge-level data are scarce and almost exclusively focused on higher court judges in the U.S. The majority of disputes in any legal system, however, are adjudicated by lower court judges and conclusions about judicial behavior from one legal system...

We contribute to the scant empirical literature on court activity by examining how judicial staffing and caseload influence court output in Slovenia, a post-socialist EU member state struggling with implementing an effective judicial system. Unlike the majority of the existing literature, we...

We develop a model of lawmaking to study the efficiency implications of, and variation in, jurisdictions’ choices between promulgation of indigenously developed laws and legal transplants. Our framework emphasizes the sequential nature of lawmaking, the ubiquity of uncertainty, considerations...

We develop a model of lawmaking to study efficiency implications of, and variation in, jurisdictions' choices between promulgation of indigenously developed laws and legal transplants. Our framework emphasizes the sequential nature of lawmaking, the ubiquity of uncertainty, considerations about...

The lack of effective judiciary in post-socialist countries has been a pervasive concern and successful judicial reform an elusive goal. Yet to date, little empirical research exists on the functioning of courts in the post-socialist world. We draw on a new court-level panel dataset from...

The Ottoman Empire has been predominantly viewed as the 'Sick Man of Europe.' The question arises, however, how this perceived inefficiency can be reconciled with the long existence and prosperity of the Empire. I argue that the Ottoman system could have been efficient subject to constraints....

This paper, unlike the vast existing literature on political trust, focuses on trust in post-socialist countries, and more specifically on their emerging elites, rather than on their general populations. Studying emerging elites is important in the context of establishing democracy and the...

When discussing South East Europe, the Ottoman Empire stands out in history as a prime candidate for an inquiry on historical path-dependence of institutions in the region. This paper analyzes the historical origins of the Ottoman legacy and identifies the legacy with particular pertinence to...

The former socialist countries of South East and Central Europe exhibit great variation in institutional performance. Unlike the sparse existing literature on the determinants of institutional variation in transition economies, I claim that the variation can be explained by the legacies of the...

This paper applies the property rights theory to study both positive and normative aspects of legislative delegation in a setup where interest groups directly influence lawmaking by initiating regulatory bargaining. A self-interested legislature choosing between the direct exercise of its...