This second edition of Law and Economics for Civil Law Systems substantially updates a unique work that presents the core ideas of law and economics for audiences primarily familiar with civil law systems.

The aim of the book is to highlight the law and economics issues confronting civil law countries.

Business Law and Economics for Civil Law Systems highlights the relevance of economic analysis of business law from a civilian perspective. It integrates a comparative approach (common law and civil law) to economic analysis using tools and illustrations to assist in conducting critical economic analysis of rules in the field of business law. This book is a valuable contribution to the reflection on the place and meaning of value creation and accountability as goals for business law. It will be of great value to academics interested in business law, competition law, comparative law and legal theory, students studying law, business and economics, and to policy makers and regulators.

The aim of this book is to provide an overview of how economic analysis can enrich an understanding of law and can provide standards for its critical evaluation. It eschews a dogmatic approach, acknowledging that non-economic goals play an important part in the law. It is directed primarily at lawyers and law students, particularly those who hitherto have been sceptical of the uses and value of law and economics. It is not a conventional textbook in the sense that it does not deal systematically with different areas of law. Rather each chapter is built on a particular theme or set of themes, with examples drawn from across legal categories. The approach is discursive, anecdotal and analytical, reflecting the ideas and convictions developed during the author's 30 years working in the field of law and economics. Winner of the Hart SLSA Book Prize 2007 for an outstanding piece of socio-legal scholarship.

The nineteen outstanding contributors to this deeply insightful book concur in envisioning a fundamentally new systematic concept of contract law that, while preserving the essential and‘architectureand’ of the existing European codes, would nonetheless find cogent ways to integrate such modern developments as mass transactions, chains and networks of contracts, regulation of markets and contracts to protect consumers, and service and long-term contracts into an optional European code. The book is organised along three major avenues: and• the systematic arrangement of a contract law code - how it deals with core questions of formation and performance or breach of contract, such as mistake and misrepresentation, standard contract terms, and remedies in the case of breach of contract; and• the apparent necessity to merge consumer contract law (i.e. such issues as product safety and liability, warranties, and consumer debt and insolvency) with traditional core contract law concepts; and and• the importance to substantive contract law of the pre-contractual phase, in which information duties are becoming steadily more paramount. The authors perspectives cover a wide range of jurisdictions, including new EU Member States. The bookand’s commitment to an integration of comparative law, EC law, and the debate on European codification offers practitioners and academics fertile ground for the development of a new model of contract law that is more than a common denominator of what has been in force so far. This model may serve as a basis for Europe-wide and perhaps even worldwide discussion.

The papers in Governance, Decentralization and Reform in China, India and Russia, which were presented at a ZEF conference in May 1999, deal with three critical aspects of governance in China, India, and Russia: political reforms at the local level; fiscal reforms in intergovernmental relations; and legal reforms. The volume collects contributions from 24 outstanding economists, political scientists and legal specialists including Vito Tanzi, Daniel Treisman, Pranab Bardham, Jean Drèze, Katharina Pistor and Kathryn Hendley. Distorted economic and political incentive structures, capture of the state by powerful élites and inoperative legal systems are factors that have greatly complicated the political economy of reform in these three large countries with heterogeneous populations. Addressing these political and institutional issues is essential to designing good policies. One particular goal of this volume is to bring together new analytical insights and empirical evidence on governance, a new and growing field of research. The volume is divided into three parts: fiscal federalism; decentralization and provision of local public goods; and legal reforms. Part I discusses the role of incentives in fiscal federalism. The papers analyze the effects of different revenue-sharing mechanisms between different levels of government, in particular the effects on regional growth and inequality and the incentives that local politicians may have to provide public goods depending on fiscal arrangements with the central government. In adapting their governance structures, all three countries have been striving for increased decentralization. But the theoretical literature suggests that, in a decentralized setting, second-best solutions must prevail: it is not possible to ensure incentive compatibility simultaneously with optimal allocation of resources and a balanced budget in providing public goods. Part II discusses taxation and public expenditure management both as a political and as a budgetary process. Two questions which the papers address are: Does participation of stakeholders and accountability of public authorities improve economic and social outcomes? Does better governance in the provision of basic goods such as health care and education improve equity? While decentralization is often seen as a way to improve the quality of public services, rule-based governance is viewed as a safeguard against the arbitrariness of public officials and weaknesses in law enforcement. The five papers in Part III focus on the rule of law; the role of the judicial system in establishing a rule-based economy; and the effectiveness of legal institutions during the transition from socialism to a market economy. They present overviews of current legal reform issues in the three countries and discuss various conceptual approaches to addressing legal reform issues.

This innovative, refreshing, and reader-friendly book is aimed at enabling students to familiarise themselves with the challenges and controversies found in comparative law. At present there is no book which clearly explains the contemporary debates and methodological innovations found in modern comparative law. This book fills that gap in teaching at undergraduate level, and for postgraduates will be a starting point for further reading and discussion. Among the topics covered are: globalisation, legal culture, comparative law and diversity, economic approaches, competition between legal systems, legal families and mixed systems, comparative law beyond Europe, convergence and a new ius commune, comparative commercial law, comparative family law, the 'common core' and the 'better law' approaches, comparative administrative law, comparative studies in constitutional contexts, comparative law for international criminal justice, judicial comparativism in human rights, comparative law in law reform, comparative law in courts and a comparative law research project. The individual chapters can also be read as stand-alone contributions and are written by experts such as Masha Antokolskaia, John Bell, Roger Cotterell, Sjef van Erp, Nicholas Foster, Patrick Glenn, Andrew Harding, Peter Leyland, Christopher McCrudden, Werner Menski, David Nelken, Anthony Ogus, Esin Örücü, Paul Roberts, Jan Smits and William Twining. Each chapter begins with a description of key concepts and includes questions for discussion and reading lists to aid further study. Traditional topics of private law, such as contracts, obligations and unjustified enrichment are omitted as they are amply covered in other comparative law books, but developments in other areas of private law, such as family law, are included as being of current interest.

Law and economics can be considered as the most exciting development in legal scholarship in recent decades. This volume is the first all-encompassing bibliography in this area. It lists approximately 7000 publications, covering the whole area of law and economics, including `old' law and economics (topics such as antitrust law, labor law, tax law, social security, economic regulation, etc.) as well as `new' law and economics with such topics as tort law, contract law, family law, procedure, criminal law, etc.). The volume also includes the literature on the philosophical foundations and the fundamental concepts of the approach. Part Two gives a special survey of law and economics publications in Europe, written in other languages than English. The Bibliography of Law and Economics is an invaluable reference work for students, scholars, lawyers, economists and other people interested in this field.

"Each of the chapters was presented at a conference in the spring of 1995, sponsored by Duquesne University and George Mason University"--Pref.

Inherent flaws of the legal origins in researching the field of corporate law: the taxonomy of countries -- Inherent flaws of the legal origins in researching the field of corporate law: coding errors -- The inherent dangers of the persisting influence of legal origins theory on the international level -- The US and EU: legal origins and individual institutes in US and EU corporate laws -- Bibliography -- Index