IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bep/usclwp/usclwps-1003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contract Law is Not Enough: The Many Legal Institutions That Support Contractual Commitments

Author

Listed:
  • Gillian Hadfield

    (USC Law School)

Abstract

One of the fundamental contributions of transaction cost theory and institutional economics has been to focus attention on opening the "black box" of contract enforcement, drawing attention to the institutions required to achieve effective and low-cost contract enforcement. The idea that the effectiveness of contract law is critical to the growth of economic activity is widespread in the literature on development and transition economies. Recent studies attempting to document toe relative strength of contract enforcement in different settings (La Porta, et al., 19982; Djankov, et al., 2003), however, have focused on relatively abstract notions of "courts" and "legal systems" and have yet to investigate the detailed institutional features that make contract law effective and low-cost. Even if it is correct to identify "common law legal systems" as productive of greater economic growth, for example, we still do not know what it is about those systems that produces this growth and in particular how these systems achieve more effective and lower cost contract enforcement. This paper explores in a detailed way the multiple legal institutions at work in the organization of courts, the judiciary, the legal profession, enforcement services, and the process of lawmaking and legal innovation, all of which play significant roles in structuring an effective and cost-effective regime of contract enforcement.

Suggested Citation

  • Gillian Hadfield, "undated". "Contract Law is Not Enough: The Many Legal Institutions That Support Contractual Commitments," University of Southern California Legal Working Paper Series usclwps-1003, University of Southern California Law School.
    • Handle: RePEc:bep:usclwp:usclwps-1003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=usclwps
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Masten, Scott E & Snyder, Edward A, 1993. "United States versus United Shoe Machinery Corporation: On the Merits," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 33-70, April.
    2. Paul R. Milgrom & Douglass C. North & Barry R. Weingast*, 1990. "The Role Of Institutions In The Revival Of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, And The Champagne Fairs," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, March.
    3. Simeon Djankov & Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer, 2002. "Courts: the Lex Mundi Project," NBER Working Papers 8890, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Greif, Avner, 1989. "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 857-882, December.
    5. Messick, Richard E, 1999. "Judicial Reform and Economic Development: A Survey of the Issues," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(1), pages 117-136, February.
    6. Greif, Avner & Milgrom, Paul & Weingast, Barry R, 1994. "Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Guild," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 745-776, August.
    7. Klein, Benjamin & Crawford, Robert G & Alchian, Armen A, 1978. "Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 297-326, October.
    8. Bernstein, Lisa, 1992. "Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual Relations in the Diamond Industry," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 115-157, January.
    9. Henry Hansmann & Reinier Kraakman, 2000. "The Essential Role of Organizational Law," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm147, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Nov 2001.
    10. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-641, August.
    11. Hay, Jonathan R & Shleifer, Andrei, 1998. "Private Enforcement of Public Laws: A Theory of Legal Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 398-403, May.
    12. G.F. Mathewson & R.A. Winter, 1984. "An Economic Theory of Vertical Restraints," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 27-38, Spring.
    13. Avner Shared & John Sutton, 1981. "The Self-Regulating Profession," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(2), pages 217-234.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John S. Earle & Klara Sabirianova Peter, 2006. "Complementarity and Custom in Contract Violation," Upjohn Working Papers 06-129, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    2. Mr. Joshua Charap & Jelena Pavlovic, 2009. "Development of the Commercial Banking System in Afghanistan: Risks and Rewards," IMF Working Papers 2009/150, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Joel T. Harper & James E. Mcnulty, 2008. "Financial System Size in Transition Economies: The Effect of Legal Origin," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(6), pages 1263-1280, September.
    4. Paul Vaaler & Barclay James & Ruth Aguilera, 2008. "Risk and capital structure in Asian project finance," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 25-50, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aldashev, Gani & Zanarone, Giorgio, 2017. "Endogenous enforcement institutions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 49-64.
    2. Stringham, Edward, 2003. "The extralegal development of securities trading in seventeenth-century Amsterdam," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 321-344.
    3. Radygin Alexandr & Entov Revold & Apevalova E. & Shvetsov P., 2008. "Market Discipline and Contracts: Theory, Empiric Analysis, Law," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 117P.
    4. Maze, Armelle, 2006. "Multilateral reputation mechanisms and contract law in agriculture : complement or substitutes," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21285, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    5. Peter T. Leeson, 2008. "Social Distance and Self-Enforcing Exchange," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 161-188, January.
    6. Vincenzo Scoppa, 2003. "Contratti incompleti ed enforcement endogeno. Una rassegna della letteratura," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 391-440.
    7. Armelle Mazé & Claude Ménard, 2010. "Private Ordering, Collective Action, and the Self-Enforcing Range of Contracts. The Case of French Livestock Industry," Post-Print halshs-00624288, HAL.
    8. Sergio G. Lazzarini & Gary J. Miller & Todd R. Zenger, 2008. "Dealing with the Paradox of Embeddedness: The Role of Contracts and Trust in Facilitating Movement Out of Committed Relationships," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(5), pages 709-728, October.
    9. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107629707, September.
    10. Clay, Karen, 1997. "Trade, Institutions, and Credit," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 495-521, October.
    11. Peter T. Leeson, 2007. "Trading with Bandits," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(2), pages 303-321.
    12. Avner Greif, 1997. "On the Social Foundations and Historical Development of Institutions that Facilitate Impersonal Exchange: From the Community Responsibility System to Individual Legal Responsibility in Pre-modern Euro," Working Papers 97016, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    13. Entov Revold & Radygin Alexandr, 2006. "Corporate Governance and Self-regulation in Institutional Changes System," Research Paper Series, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, issue 101.
    14. Garrouste, Pierre, 2008. "The Handbook of New Institutional Economics, C. Ménard, M.M. Shirley (Eds.), Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. 2005, 884Â +Â xi pp., $199.00, index, ISBN: 10 1-4020-2687-0," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 532-536, August.
    15. Benito Arruñada & Veneta Andonova, 2008. "Market Institutions and Judicial Rulemaking," Springer Books, in: Claude Ménard & Mary M. Shirley (ed.), Handbook of New Institutional Economics, chapter 10, pages 229-250, Springer.
    16. Mika Kallioinen, 2017. "Inter‐communal institutions in medieval trade," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1131-1152, November.
    17. Hannah Simpson, 2023. "Access to justice in revenue-seeking legal institutions," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 35(2), pages 75-99, April.
    18. Peter T. Leeson, 2009. "The Laws of Lawlessness," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 471-503, June.
    19. Haucap, Justus, 2017. "The rule of law and the emergence of market exchange: A new institutional economic perspective," DICE Discussion Papers 276, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    20. Daron Acemoglu & Alexander Wolitzky, 2015. "Sustaining Cooperation: Community Enforcement vs. Specialized Enforcement," NBER Working Papers 21457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bep:usclwp:usclwps-1003. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://lawweb.usc.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.