IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2015-279.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reforming the Legal and Institutional Framework for the Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Claims in Portugal

Author

Listed:
  • Sebastiaan Pompe
  • Mr. Wolfgang Bergthaler

Abstract

This paper discusses the recent major reforms in the area of civil and commercial claims enforcement undertaken by the Portuguese authorities in the context of the IMF/EU-supported adjustment program. The economic literature has long recognized that slow claims enforcement affects economic growth, foreign direct investment, credit and labor markets, and firm size. The Portuguese authorities together with IMF/EU staff deployed a novel approach that has focused on incentives tackling weaknesses in the enforcement process with the aim of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of claims enforcement and resolving court backlogs. The paper finds impressive quantifiable changes affecting, in particular, court backlog reduction, court processing speed, and private debt recovery. The economic literature suggests that this will impact positively on the payment culture and overall growth, even if such impact cannot be determined at this stage.

Suggested Citation

  • Sebastiaan Pompe & Mr. Wolfgang Bergthaler, 2015. "Reforming the Legal and Institutional Framework for the Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Claims in Portugal," IMF Working Papers 2015/279, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2015/279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=43497
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kee‐Hong Bae & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Creditor Rights, Enforcement, and Bank Loans," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 823-860, April.
    2. Miguel García-Posada & Juan S. Mora-Sanguinetti, 2012. "Why do spanish firms rarely use the bankruptcy system? The role of the mortgage institution," Working Papers 1234, Banco de España.
    3. Agnès Bénassy‐Quéré & Maylis Coupet & Thierry Mayer, 2007. "Institutional Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 764-782, May.
    4. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2006. "The influence of financial and legal institutions on firm size," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2995-3015, November.
    5. Paulo Júlio & Ricardo Pinheiro–Alves & José Tavares, 2013. "Foreign direct investment and institutional reform: evidence and an application to Portugal," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 12(3), pages 215-250, December.
    6. Warnock, Veronica Cacdac & Warnock, Francis E., 2008. "Markets and housing finance," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 239-251, September.
    7. Serguey Braguinsky & Lee G. Branstetter & Andre Regateiro, 2011. "The Incredible Shrinking Portuguese Firm," NBER Working Papers 17265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Jappelli, Tullio & Pagano, Marco & Bianco, Magda, 2005. "Courts and Banks: Effects of Judicial Enforcement on Credit Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 223-244, April.
    9. Giuseppina Gianfreda & Giovanna Vallanti, 2013. "Courts' ineffciency and irregular workers:identifying the impact of real EPL," Working Papers LuissLab 13104, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, LUISS Guido Carli.
    10. Silvia Giacomelli & Carlo Menon, 2012. "Firm Size and Judicial Efficiency in Italy: Evidence from the Neighbour's Tribunal," SERC Discussion Papers 0108, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Silvia Ardagna & Annamaria Lusardi, 2010. "Explaining International Differences in Entrepreneurship: The Role of Individual Characteristics and Regulatory Constraints," NBER Chapters, in: International Differences in Entrepreneurship, pages 17-62, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gianluca Esposito & Mr. Sergi Lanau & Sebastiaan Pompe, 2014. "Judicial System Reform in Italy - A Key to Growth," IMF Working Papers 2014/032, International Monetary Fund.
    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. repec:ptu:bdpart:r201701 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. International Monetary Fund, 2016. "Portugal: Ex Post Evaluation of Exceptional Access Under the 2011 Extended Arrangement-Press Release; Staff Report; and Authorities Views," IMF Staff Country Reports 2016/302, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Lara Wemans & Manuel Coutinho Pereira, 2017. "Productivity in civil justice in Portugal: A crucial issue in a congested system," Economic Bulletin and Financial Stability Report Articles and Banco de Portugal Economic Studies, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.

    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. Comi, Simona & Grasseni, Mara & Resmini, Laura, 2021. "Can judicial efficiency improve territorial attractiveness to FDI? The Italian experience," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    2. Gianluca Esposito & Mr. Sergi Lanau & Sebastiaan Pompe, 2014. "Judicial System Reform in Italy - A Key to Growth," IMF Working Papers 2014/032, International Monetary Fund.
    3. World Bank, 2020. "Judiciary of The Republic of Uganda," World Bank Publications - Reports 34154, The World Bank Group.
    4. Greta Falavigna & Roberto Ippoliti, 2018. "Industrial spatial dynamics, financial health and bankruptcy: evidence from Italian manufacturing industry," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 45(4), pages 533-554, December.
    5. Roberto Ippoliti & Massimiliano Vatiero, 2014. "An analysis of how 2002 judicial reorganisation has impacted on the performance of the First Instance Courts (Preture) in Ticino," IdEP Economic Papers 1408, USI Università della Svizzera italiana.
    6. Rizos, Anastasios & Kapopoulos, Panayotis, 2021. "Judicial Efficiency and Economic Growth: Evidence based on EU data," MPRA Paper 107861, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Miguel García-Posada & Juan Mora-Sanguinetti, 2015. "Entrepreneurship and enforcement institutions: disaggregated evidence for Spain," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 49-74, August.
    8. Juan S. Mora-Sanguinetti & Marta Martínez-Matute & Miguel García-Posada, 2017. "Credit, crisis and contract enforcement: evidence from the Spanish loan market," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 361-383, October.
    9. Ewelina Mruk & Inmaculada Aguiar-Díaz & Maria Victoria Ruiz-Mallorquí, 2019. "Use of formal insolvency procedure and judicial efficiency in Spain," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 435-470, June.
    10. Papaioannou, Elias & Karatza, Stavroula, 2018. "The Greek Justice System: Collapse and Reform," CEPR Discussion Papers 12731, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Vincenzo Pezone, 2023. "The Real Effects of Judicial Enforcement," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(3), pages 889-933.
    12. Silvia Giacomelli & Carlo Menon, 2017. "Does weak contract enforcement affect firm size? Evidence from the neighbour’s court," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 1251-1282.
    13. Lenzu, Simone & Manaresi, Francesco, 2018. "Do Marginal Products Differ from User Costs? Micro-Level Evidence from Italian Firms," Working Papers 276, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    14. Giacomelli, Silvia & Menon, Carlo, 2012. "Firm size and judicial efficiency in Italy: evidence from the neighbour's tribunal," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58339, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Falavigna, Greta & Ippoliti, Roberto, 2023. "SMEs’ behavior under financial constraints: An empirical investigation on the legal environment and the substitution effect with tax arrears," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    16. Luis Medrano-Adán & Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Sanchez-Asin, 2015. "Heterogeneous entrepreneurs from occupational choices in economies with minimum wages," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 597-619, March.
    17. Rodano, Giacomo & Serrano-Velarde, Nicolas & Tarantino, Emanuele, 2016. "Bankruptcy law and bank financing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 363-382.
    18. Drozd, Lukasz A. & Serrano-Padial, Ricardo, 2018. "Financial contracting with enforcement externalities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 153-189.
    19. Calomiris, Charles W. & Larrain, Mauricio & Liberti, José & Sturgess, Jason, 2017. "How collateral laws shape lending and sectoral activity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 163-188.
    20. Economou, Fotini, 2019. "Economic freedom and asymmetric crisis effects on FDI inflows: The case of four South European economies," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 114-126.

    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:imf:imfwpa:2015/279. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.