Global business interacts efficiently despite the heterogeneity of social, economic and legal cultures which, according to widespread assumptions, cause insecurities and uncertainties. Breaches of contracts may occur more frequently and business relationships may be terminated more often in international than in domestic trade. But most business people engaged in exporting or importing products or services seem to operate in a sufficiently predictable environment allowing successful ventures into the global market. The apparent paradox presented by cultural/institutional diversity and contractual efficiency in cross-border business transactions is the focus of this volume of essays. The wide range of approaches adopted by contributors to the volume include: the Weberian concept of law as a tool for avoiding the risk of opportunism; economic sociology, which treats networks and relationships between contractual parties as paramount; representatives of new institutional economics who discuss law as well as private governance institutions as most efficient responses to risk; comparative economic sociologists who point to the varieties of legal cultures in the social organisation of trust; and national and international institutions such as the World Bank which try to promote legal certainty in the economy. The purpose of the volume is to build on this interdisciplinary exercise by adding empirical evidence to ongoing debates regarding enabling structures for international business, and by critically reviewing and discussing some of the propositions in the literature which contain interesting hypotheses on the effects of the internationalization of markets on market co-ordination institutions and on the role of the state in the globalising economy.

Commercial contract law is in every sense optional given the choice between legal systems and law and arbitration. Its 'doctrines' are in fact virtually all default rules. Contract Law Minimalism advances the thesis that commercial parties prefer a minimalist law that sets out to enforce what they have decided - but does nothing else. The limited capacity of the legal process is the key to this 'minimalist' stance. This book considers evidence that such minimalism is indeed what commercial parties choose to govern their transactions. It critically engages with alternative schools of thought, that call for active regulation of contracts to promote either economic efficiency or the trust and co-operation necessary for 'relational contracting'. The book also necessarily argues against the view that private law should be understood non-instrumentally (whether through promissory morality, corrective justice, taxonomic rationality, or otherwise). It sketches a restatement of English contract law in line with the thesis.

This interdisciplinary book examines comparative business systems, institutions, and practices by looking at current developments between firms, nations, and markets in an increasingly globalized world and in the context of the recent financial crises.

Outsourcing state functions and the limits of existing regulatory regimes -- Contract as transnational regulatory governance -- The emergence of a transnational private regime for the regulation of PMSCs -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 14. Conclusion: Empire through contract: A private international law perspective -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Self-constituting regimes: Private international law's libertarian view of contract -- Possible antidotes: From the undiscovered DNA of contract law to new global forms of legal pluralism -- Notes -- References -- Index

The principle of legal certainty is of fundamental importance for law and society: it has been vital in stabilising normative expectations and in providing a framework for social interaction, as well as defining the scope of individual freedom and political power. Even though it has not always been fully realised, legal certainty has also functioned as a normative ideal that has structured legal debates, both at the national and transnational level. This book presents research from a range of substantive areas regarding the meaning, possibility and desirability of legal certainty in the context of a rapidly changing global society. It aims to address these issues by bringing together scholars from various jurisdictions in order to examine changes in the shifting meaning of legal certainty in a comparative and transnational context. In particular, the book explores some of the tensions that now exist between the conventional expectation of legal certainty and the various challenges associated with regulating highly complex, late modern economies and societies. The book will be of interest to lawyers concerned with understanding the transformation of core rule of law values in the context of contemporary social change, as well as to political scientists and social theorists.

Well-functioning contract law is a crucial prerequisite for economic development. However, even though international trade has increased enormously in recent decades, we still know little about the contract enforcement mechanisms that exist in today's globalised markets. The aim of this work is to shed light on the governance of complex cross-border contracts by developing a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the relevance of both formal and informal institutions. This framework is then applied to an empirical study of cross-border software development contracts. Combining a unique data set of 41 qualitative expert interviews with statistical data and surveys, the author demonstrates that state contract laws show fundamental signs of dysfunction across borders. Companies engaged in globalised exchange therefore rarely use this mechanism. Even the European Union's supranational enforcement order is, in practice, insignificant. Against all expectations, international commercial arbitration also turns out to be limited in its ability to provide a workable legal infrastructure for global commerce. With global trade lacking a reliable formal legal order, companies have reacted by creating their own informal governance structures. This book explains how complex exchange in global markets has emerged in the absence of a global legal order.

The ITBLA is the official publication of the Australian Institute of Foreign and Comparative Law.

Examines how, despite its past significance and influence, English contract law now faces functional and moral redundancy.

Part one of Volume 4 (2013) of the European Yearbook of International Economic Law offers a special focus on recent developments in international competition policy and law. International competition law has only begun to emerge as a distinct subfield of international economic law in recent years, even though international agreements on competition co-operation date back to the 1970s. Competition law became a prominent subject of political and academic debates in the late 1990s when competition and trade were discussed as one of the Singapore issues in the WTO. Today, international competition law is a complex and multi-layered system of rules and principles encompassing not only the external application of domestic competition law and traditional bilateral co-operation agreements, but also competition provisions in regional trade agreements and non-binding guidelines and standards. Furthermore, the relevance of competition law for developing countries and the relationship between competition law and public services are the subject of heated debates. The contributions to this volume reflect the growing diversity of the issues and elements of international competition law. Part two presents analytical reports on the developments of the regional integration processes in North America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia as well as on the treaty practice of the European Union. Part three covers the legal and political developments in major international organizations that deal with international economic law, namely the IMF, WCO, WTO, WIPO, ICSID and UNCTAD. Lastly, part four offers book reviews of recent works in the field of international economic law.

This book assesses the conceptualization and legal response to the social problem of abuse of fiduciary authority in transnational context.