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Judicial Independence, Judges’ Incentives and Efficiency

  • Alessandro Melcarne EMAIL logo und Giovanni B. Ramello
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 10. Juni 2015
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Abstract

Although often assumed by economic theory, the idea of an efficient judicial system often sounds like an oxymoron. In this work, we suggest an innovative approach to investigating the determinants of court performance. Our focus is on determining the ideal institutional environment for fostering the appropriate set of incentives for judges to operate efficiently. In this setting, we find evidence that greater independence enjoyed by the judiciary from politics induces more competition among judges to obtain professional upgrades. Such an environment will incentivize ambitious individuals to be more efficient, thus positively affecting the aggregate performance of the judiciary.

JEL Classification: K41; K49; C14; C34

Appendix

Table 5:

Variables descriptions.

Variable Name Description
CIVLIB Civil Liberties indexb
BUDGET Per capita public expenditure allocated to justice sector workers’ gross salaries (Purchase Power Parity adjusted & logarithmic transformation)a
LITIGATION Litigation rate calculated as quantity of cases filed to courts for every 10,000 citizensa
FRENCH Dummy = 1 if legal system belongs to French tradition.c
GERMAN Dummy = 1 if legal system belongs to German tradition.c
SCANDINAVIAN Dummy = 1 if legal system belongs to Scandinavian tradition.c
[*]
Table 6:

Correlation matrix.

JI CIVLIB BUDGET LITIGATION GERMAN FRENCH SCANDINA
JI 1
CIVLIB –0.1316 1
BUDGET –0.1800 0.5466* 1
LITIGATION –0.1486 −0.2480 0.1722 1
GERMAN 0.3846* 0.1769 0.3024 −0.1304 1
FRENCH –0.0591 0.2992 0.2948 0.1304 −0.1750 1
SCANDINAVIAN 0.0249 0.3577* −0.0038 −0.3785* −0.1004 −0.2050 1
[*]

Acknowledgment

We are very grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions provided by Theodore Eisenberg, Giuseppe Di Vita, Richard Jong-A-Pin, Peter Grajzl, Mathias Siems and participants at the Italian Society of Law & Economics (Lugano, Switzerland), European Public Choice Society Conference (Cambridge, UK), Economic Analysis of Litigation Workshop (Catania, Italy), Spanish Association of Law & Economics Conference (Malaga, Spain), POLIS Summer Seminar (Alessandria, Italy), European Association of Comparative Economic Studies Conference (Budapest, Hungary) and European Association of Law & Economics Conference (Aix En Provence, France). Alessandro Melcarne would like to acknowledge the financial support of the “Alberto Musy” fellowship granted by Centro di Ricerca e Documentazione “Luigi Einaudi”. The usual disclaimers apply.

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Published Online: 2015-06-10
Published in Print: 2015-07-01

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