Yun-chien Chang - Böcker

This innovative volume explores empirical legal issues around the world. While legal studies have traditionally been worked on and of letters and with a normative bent, in recent years quantitative methods have gained traction by offering a brand new perspective of understanding law. That is, legal scholars have started to crunch numbers, not letters, to tease out the effects of law on the regulated industries, citizens, or judges in reality. In this edited book, authors from leading institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia investigate legal issues in South Africa, Argentina, the U.S., Israel, Taiwan, and other countries. Using original data in a variety of statistical tools (from the most basic chi-square analysis to sophisticated two-stage least square regression models), contributors to this book look into the judicial behaviours in Taiwan and Israel, the determinants of constitutional judicial systems in 100 countries, and the effect of appellate court decisions on media competition. In addition, this book breaks new ground in informing important policy debates. Specifically, how long should we incarcerate criminals? Should the medical malpractice liability system be reformed? Do police reduce crime? Why is South Africa’s democratic transition viable? With solid data as evidence, this volume sheds new light on these issues from a road more and more frequently taken—what is known as "empirical legal studies/analysis." This book should be useful to students, practitioners and professors of law, economics and public policy in many countries who seek to understand their legal system from a different, and arguably more scientific, perspective.

From the foreword by Richard A. Epstein, New York University, US: 'Chang reviews the various standards and concludes that the proper measure, which is most invulnerable to political manipulation, calls for compensation at the fair market level of the property at its highest and best use, not just its current value.'This innovative volume offers a thorough breakdown of the issues surrounding takings compensation - payments made as reimbursement for government takeover of private property. Using examples from New York City and Taiwan, Yun-chien Chang discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of compensation and offers insightful suggestions for future implementation.In an effort to fill the gaps in the current literature, the author identifies the five previously recognized types of compensation - zero, current value, fair market value, economic value and project value compensation - and uses a combination of previous research and new data to determine which is the most economically efficient. In doing so, he sets out a concrete methodology for the evaluation of takings compensation strategies that should prove vital to future policy decisions.Students and professors of law, economics and public policy will find much of interest in the author's careful analysis, as will policymakers and other government officials working on similar land use issues.Contents: Foreword by Richard Epstein; Introduction; Part I: Theoretical Framework; 1. A New Analytical Framework; 2. Condemnors: Three Behavioral Theories; 3. Condemnees: Four Types of Incentives; 4. Four Assessment Methods; Part II: Empirical Analysis; 5. Taiwan 1977-2009 and Condemnors' Incentives; 6. Taiwan 1954-77 and Condemnees' Incentives; 7. Settled Compensation in New York City and the Power of Hedonic Regression Models; 8. Adjudicated Compensation in New York City and the Failure of Appraisal Methods; Conclusion; References; Index

The first book of its kind, Property Law: Comparative, Empirical, and Economic Analyses, uses a unique hand-coded data set on nearly 300 dimensions on the substance of property law in 156 jurisdictions to describe the convergence and divergence of key property doctrines around the world. This book quantitatively analyzes property institutions and uses machine learning methods to categorize jurisdictions into ten legal families, challenging the existing paradigms in economics and law. Using other cross-country data, the author empirically tests theories about property law and comparative law. Using economic efficiency as both a positive and a normative criterion, each chapter evaluates which jurisdictions have the most efficient property doctrines, concluding that the common law is not more efficient than the civil law. Unlike prior studies on empirical comparative law, this book provides detailed citations to laws in each jurisdiction. Data and documentation are publicly available on the author's website.

The first book of its kind, Property Law: Comparative, Empirical, and Economic Analyses, uses a unique hand-coded data set on nearly 300 dimensions on the substance of property law in 156 jurisdictions to describe the convergence and divergence of key property doctrines around the world. This book quantitatively analyzes property institutions and uses machine learning methods to categorize jurisdictions into ten legal families, challenging the existing paradigms in economics and law. Using other cross-country data, the author empirically tests theories about property law and comparative law. Using economic efficiency as both a positive and a normative criterion, each chapter evaluates which jurisdictions have the most efficient property doctrines, concluding that the common law is not more efficient than the civil law. Unlike prior studies on empirical comparative law, this book provides detailed citations to laws in each jurisdiction. Data and documentation are publicly available on the author's website.

This book empirically explores whether and under what conditions the judicial process is efficient. Three specific issues are addressed: first, disputants self-select into litigation. Do they tend to bring cases with merit? Second, filed cases differ in their social import. Do courts select more important cases to devote more resource to? Third, courts establish precedents, affect resource allocation in the cases at hand, and influence future behaviours of transacting parties. Do courts, like Judge Posner asserts, tend to make decisions that enhance allocative efficiency and reduce transaction costs? Positive answers to the above questions attest to the efficiency of the judicial process. What drive efficient or inefficient outcomes are the selections and decisions by litigants, litigators, and judges. Their earlier selections and decisions affect later ones. Eleven chapters in this book, authored by leading empirical legal scholars in the world, deal with these issues in the US, Europe, and Asia.

Possession is a key concept in both the common and civil law, but it has hitherto received little scrutiny. Law and Economics of Possession uses insights from economics, psychology and history to analyse possession in law, compare and contrast possession with ownership, break down the elements of possession as a fact and as a right, challenge the adage that 'possession is 9/10 of the law', examine possession as notice, explain the heuristics of possession, debunk the behavioural studies which confuse possession with ownership, explore the LightSquared dispute from the perspective of 'possession' of spectrum frequency and provide new insights to old questions such as first possession, adverse possession and property jurisdiction. The authors include leading property scholars, who examine possession laws in, among others, the USA, UK, China, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria.

Past research and literature suggest that legal institutions drive economic development. Yet China has grown for decades without the fundamental legal infrastructure that was once considered necessary. This is called the 'China puzzle' or the 'China myth'. By carefully comparing the four key branches of private law in China and Taiwan - a jurisdiction that grew with modest legal institutions and shares similar legal and non-legal culture - this collaborative and novel book demystifies the 'China puzzle'. Top scholars in the field use an economics-focused analytical approach to explain how and why the laws have taken such paths over the past four decades. Comparing property, contract, tort, and corporate laws in China and Taiwan, these authors delve deeply into key doctrines to provide a meaningful account of the evolution of private law in these two jurisdictions.

Possession is a key concept in both the common and civil law, but it has hitherto received little scrutiny. Law and Economics of Possession uses insights from economics, psychology and history to analyse possession in law, compare and contrast possession with ownership, break down the elements of possession as a fact and as a right, challenge the adage that 'possession is 9/10 of the law', examine possession as notice, explain the heuristics of possession, debunk the behavioural studies which confuse possession with ownership, explore the LightSquared dispute from the perspective of 'possession' of spectrum frequency and provide new insights to old questions such as first possession, adverse possession and property jurisdiction. The authors include leading property scholars, who examine possession laws in, among others, the USA, UK, China, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, France, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Austria.

Past research and literature suggest that legal institutions drive economic development. Yet China has grown for decades without the fundamental legal infrastructure that was once considered necessary. This is called the 'China puzzle' or the 'China myth'. By carefully comparing the four key branches of private law in China and Taiwan - a jurisdiction that grew with modest legal institutions and shares similar legal and non-legal culture - this collaborative and novel book demystifies the 'China puzzle'. Top scholars in the field use an economics-focused analytical approach to explain how and why the laws have taken such paths over the past four decades. Comparing property, contract, tort, and corporate laws in China and Taiwan, these authors delve deeply into key doctrines to provide a meaningful account of the evolution of private law in these two jurisdictions.

This book empirically explores whether and under what conditions the judicial process is efficient. Three specific issues are addressed: first, disputants self-select into litigation. Do they tend to bring cases with merit? Second, filed cases differ in their social import. Do courts select more important cases to devote more resource to? Third, courts establish precedents, affect resource allocation in the cases at hand, and influence future behaviours of transacting parties. Do courts, like Judge Posner asserts, tend to make decisions that enhance allocative efficiency and reduce transaction costs? Positive answers to the above questions attest to the efficiency of the judicial process. What drive efficient or inefficient outcomes are the selections and decisions by litigants, litigators, and judges. Their earlier selections and decisions affect later ones. Eleven chapters in this book, authored by leading empirical legal scholars in the world, deal with these issues in the US, Europe, and Asia.

This innovative volume explores empirical legal issues around the world. While legal studies have traditionally been worked on and of letters and with a normative bent, in recent years quantitative methods have gained traction by offering a brand new perspective of understanding law. That is, legal scholars have started to crunch numbers, not letters, to tease out the effects of law on the regulated industries, citizens, or judges in reality. In this edited book, authors from leading institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia investigate legal issues in South Africa, Argentina, the U.S., Israel, Taiwan, and other countries. Using original data in a variety of statistical tools (from the most basic chi-square analysis to sophisticated two-stage least square regression models), contributors to this book look into the judicial behaviours in Taiwan and Israel, the determinants of constitutional judicial systems in 100 countries, and the effect of appellate court decisions on media competition. In addition, this book breaks new ground in informing important policy debates. Specifically, how long should we incarcerate criminals? Should the medical malpractice liability system be reformed? Do police reduce crime? Why is South Africa’s democratic transition viable? With solid data as evidence, this volume sheds new light on these issues from a road more and more frequently taken—what is known as "empirical legal studies/analysis." This book should be useful to students, practitioners and professors of law, economics and public policy in many countries who seek to understand their legal system from a different, and arguably more scientific, perspective.