Comparative Law and Economics

Edited by Gerrit De Geest, Charles F. Nagel Professor of International and Comparative Law, Washington University School of Law, US and Roger J. Van den Bergh, Professor of Law and Economics, Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

'This is an extremely fine, wide-ranging anthology of essays applying economic analysis to comparative law. Comparative law - the comparison of the world's extraordinarily diverse legal systems - with special reference to the legal challenges facing developing nations offers an enormous and underexplored field for the application of economics. These essays demonstrate the promise of the economic approach and will go far to stimulate further research, thinking, and reform.'

• Contents:Volume I AcknowledgementsIntroduction Gerrit De Geest and Roger Van den BerghPART IGENERAL THEORIES AND GENERAL HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 1. Saul Levmore (1986), ‘Rethinking Comparative Law: Variety and Uniformity in Ancient and Modern Tort Law’2. Ugo Mattei (1997), ‘The Competitive Relationship among Sources of Law’3. Anthony Ogus (2002), ‘The Economic Basis of Legal Culture: Networks and Monopolization’4. Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer (2002), ‘Legal Origins’5. Richard A. Posner (1981), ‘The Economic Theory of Primitive Law’6. Francesco Parisi (2001), ‘The Genesis of Liability in Ancient Law’PART IIREGULATORY COMPETITION AND LEGAL TRANSPLANTS 7. Wallace E. Oates and Robert M. Schwab (1988), ‘Economic Competition Among Jurisdictions: Efficiency Enhancing or Distortion Inducing?’8. Roger Van den Bergh (2000), ‘Towards an Institutional Legal Framework for Regulatory Competition in Europe’9. Edgardo Buscaglia and William Ratliff (2000), ‘Legal and Economic Integration: The Cases For and Against Legal Transplants’10. Gerrit De Geest (2002), ‘Information Problems Caused by Regulatory Competition, and Their Solution: International Standard Codes’11. Daniel Berkowitz, Katharina Pistor and Jean-Francois Richard (2003), ‘The Transplant Effect’PART IIILEGAL SYSTEMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH 12. Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas (1973), ‘The Issue’ and ‘France and Spain – The Also-rans’13. Mancur Olson (1982), ‘The Developed Democracies Since World War II’14. Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny (1999), ‘The Quality of Government’15. Paul G. Mahoney (2001), ‘The Common Law and Economic Growth: Hayek Might Be Right’Name IndexVolume II AcknowledgementsAn introduction by the editors to all three volumes appears in Volume IPART IPROPERTY 1. Harold Demsetz (1967), ‘Toward a Theory of Property Rights’2. Saul Levmore (1987), ‘Variety and Uniformity in the Treatment of the Good-Faith Purchaser’3. J. Mark Ramseyer (1989), ‘Water Law in Imperial Japan: Public Goods, Private Claims, and Legal Convergence’4. Kathryn Firmin-Sellers (2000), ‘Custom, Capitalism, and the State: The Origins of Insecure Land Tenure in West Africa’5. Michael A. Heller (1998), ‘The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets’6. Francesco Parisi (2002), ‘Entropy in Property’PART IITORT LAW AND RESTITUTION 7. Michelle J. White (1989), ‘An Empirical Test of the Comparative and Contributory Negligence Rules in Accident Law’8. J. Finsinger, T. Hoehn and A. Pototschnig (1991), ‘The Enforcement of Product Liability Rules: A Two-Country Analysis of Court Cases’9. Boudewijn Bouckaert and Gerrit De Geest (1995), ‘Private Takings, Private Taxes, Private Compulsory Services: The Economic Doctrine of Quasi Contracts’10. Claus Ott and Hans-Bernd Schäfer (1997), ‘Negligence as Untaken Precaution, Limited Information, and Efficient Standard Formation in the Civil Liability System’11. Mauro Bussani, Vernon Valentine Palmer and Francesco Parisi (2003), ‘Liability for Pure Financial Loss in Europe: An Economic Restatement’PART IIICONTRACTS AND CONSUMER PROTECTION 12. Steven N.S. Cheung (1969), ‘Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements’13. Janet T. Landa (1981), ‘A Theory of the Ethnically Homogeneous Middleman Group: An Institutional Alternative to Contract Law’14. Heidi Kroll (1987), ‘Breach of Contract in the Soviet Economy’15. Wouter P.J. Wils (1993), ‘Who Should Bear the Costs of Failed Negotiations? A Functional Inquiry into Precontractual Liability’16. Hein Kötz (2000), ‘Precontractual Duties of Disclosure: A Comparative and Economic Perspective’17. Ronald J. Gilson (1999), ‘The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete’18. Pamaria Rekaiti and Roger Van den Bergh (2000), ‘Cooling-off Periods in the Consumer Laws of the EC Member States. A Comparative Law and Economics Approach’Name IndexVolume III AcknowledgementsAn introduction by the editors to all three volumes appears in Volume IPART ICORPORATE LAW AND ORGANIZATIONS 1. Mark J. Roe (1993), ‘Some Differences in Corporate Structure in Germany, Japan, and the United States’2. Michelle J. White (1996), ‘The Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy: A U.S.-European Comparison’3. Henry Hansmann and Ugo Mattei (1998), ‘The Functions of Trust Law: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis’4. Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny (1998), ‘Law and Finance’5. Bernard Black, Reinier Kraakman and Anna Tarassova (2000), ‘Russian Privatization and Corporate Governance: What Went Wrong?’6. Henry Hansmann and Reinier Kraakman (2001), ‘The End of History for Corporate Law’7. John C. Coffee, Jr. (2001), ‘Do Norms Matter? A Cross-country Evaluation’PART IIPROCEDURAL LAW 8. Geoffrey P. Miller (1997), ‘The Legal-Economic Analysis of Comparative Civil Procedure’9. J. Mark Ramseyer and Minoru Nakazato (1989), ‘The Rational Litigant: Settlement Amounts and Verdict Rates in Japan’10. Michael Adams (1995), ‘The Conflict of Jurisdictions – An Economic Analysis of Pre-trial Discovery, Fact Gathering and Cost Shifting Rules in the United States and Germany’11. Richard A. Posner (1996), ‘Lecture Three: Functional, Systemic Comparisons of Legal Systems’12. Robert D. Cooter and Tom Ginsburg (1996), ‘Comparative Judicial Discretion: An Empirical Test of Economic Models’13. Edgardo Buscaglia and Thomas Ulen (1997), ‘A Quantitative Assessment of the Efficiency of the Judicial Sector in Latin America’Name Index