Economic Development, Legality, and the Transplant Effect


Book Description

We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from forty-nine countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law, and/or had a population that was already familiar with basic principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than countries that received foreign law without any similar pre-dispositions. The transplanting process has a strong indirect effect on economic development via its impact on legality, while the impact of particular legal families is weaker and not robust to alternative legality measures.







Law and Development


Book Description

This book draws on the analytical framework of New Institutional Economics (NIE) to critically examine the role which law and the legal system play in economic development. Analytical concepts from NIE are used to assess policies which have been supported by multilateral development organisations including securing private property rights, reform of the legal system and financial development. The importance of culture in shaping the legal environment, which in turn influences financial sector development, is also assessed using Oliver Williamson’s ‘levels of social analysis’ framework.




Legal Transplants in East Asia and Oceania


Book Description

This volume provides a unique overview of methodologies that are conducive to a successful legal transplant in East Asia and Oceania. Each chapter is drafted by a scholar who holds direct professional experience on the legal transplant considered and has a distinctive insight into the pragmatic difficulties related to grafting an alien institution into a legal tradition. The range of transplants includes the implementation of contractual obligations, the regulation of commercial investments and the protection of the environment. The majority of recent legal reforms in these geographical areas have aimed at improving national economic performance and fostering trade and have been directly inspired by European and North American institutional experiences. There is also, however, a tendency to couple economic reforms, aimed at attracting foreign investment, with constitutional reforms that improve the protection of individual rights, the environment and the rule of law.




Evolution of Corporate Law and the Transplant Effect


Book Description

The pattern of legal change in countries that have their legal systems transplanted from abroad differs markedly from countries that develop their own systems, irrespective of the legal family from which their laws come. In transplant countries, law often stagnates for long periods of time; when change takes place, it tends to be radical, if not erratic. External models remain dominant even years after the law was transplanted. Although there is some evidence that transplant countries have engaged in comprehensive legal reforms in response to the pressures of globalization, it is still too early to judge whether these new changes can be taken as a sign that the legal systems in these countries have started a process of endogenous legal evolution.




The New Law and Economic Development


Book Description

This book is a collection of essays that identify and analyze a new phase in thinking about the role of law in economic development and in the practices of development agencies that support law reform. The authors trace the history of theory and doctrine in this field, relating it to changing ideas about development and its institutional practices. The essays describe a new phase in thinking about the relation between law and economic development and analyze how this rising consensus differs from previous efforts to use law as an instrument to achieve social and economic progress. In analyzing the current phase, these essays also identify tensions and contradictions in current practice. This work is a comprehensive treatment of this emerging paradigm, situating it within the intellectual and historical framework of the most influential development models since World War II.




The Law and Economics of Development


Book Description

An examination of how legal and economic issues affect developing countries. Particular emphasis is placed upon Latin America, with studies of deregulation in Mexico, judicial reform in Latin America and jurisprudence of the antitrust committee in Chile.




Comparative Law and Economics


Book Description

The book links the study of comparative law with the study of law and economics




Aggregating Governance Indicators


Book Description

With the right method, aggregate indicators can provide useful estimates of basic governance concepts as well as measures of the imprecision of these aggregate estimates and their components.