Volume 1, Issue 2

Although law and economics is considered to be enjoying significant success and influence in the United States, particularly in American law schools, its reception elsewhere is at most tepid. In this paper, I suggest that this sorry state of affairs is due to the lack of economic literacy skills among legal scholars, which in turn is due to the legal and economic education systems in Europe and in other countries following a similar structure. Some evidence of the importance of competency in these economic literacy skills for success in law and economics scholarship is offered by way of analysis of journal editorships as a proxy for success. Furthermore, the effectiveness of various law and economics programmes are discussed and the establishment of doctoral programmes in law and economics within the legal academia as a solution to the problem of law and economics scholarship is examined.

Law and Finance literature shows that effective creditor and investor protection leads to vibrant financial markets. This paper hypothesizes that supporting laws that lead to swift enforcement and reduce the cost of availing legal services would help implement the law effectively. The causal relationship between the procedural law and credit in India is explored using both macro and micro econometric techniques. Using a newly constructed time series index of procedural law innovations in India, this paper tries to identify the direction of causality and also explore the possible channels of impact in the Indian context. The results suggest that there is a long run causal relationship between law and finance, and the channel of impact is debt accumulation rather than total factor productivity. At a micro-level, using the staggered introduction of the Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRTs), a fast track court for financial disputes involving banks, we show that the procedural law innovation in India has resulted in higher disbursal of loans to the private sector by the banks.

The present research provides a critical review of the housing industry efficiency and its future in Iran. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to evaluate housing industry performance in different states based on the relevant data collected from Statistical Centres of Iran during 2006-2009. The research found that only 30 percent of the states operate as technically efficient and the average efficiency score obtained by all states is 0.90. Most of the technically efficient states have the opportunity to employ illegally migrated workers of neighboring countries in building construction activities using the advantages of lower level of payments and less commitment to the worker's insurance regulations in the country. Providing subsidy assistance to disadvantaged states and stimulating legal employment of building workers will supplement the government in finding a solution to the current housing problem.

Since 2004, European undertakings have had the possibility to opt for a supranational type of company: The “European Company” or “Societas Europaea” (SE). A considerable – though overall not huge – number of enterprises have already availed themselves of this new opportunity, including, inter alia, famous names like the German industry giants Allianz SE, BASF SE, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE or the French reinsurer SCOR SE. The paper will first provide an overview of the salient features of this new supranational “European” type of company. The primary focus will be on the most important advantages (e.g., cross-border transfer of seat and restructuring, flexibility with respect to internal structure, “European corporate identity”) and disadvantages (e.g., rather complex legal framework, no special tax provisions) of using this supranational corporate vehicle, both from a legal and an economic point of view and illustrating the respective aspects by way of examples from the practical experience gained with the SE so far. Based on this, the paper will then examine whether the SE has really turned out to be the “practical failure” that many predicted or whether it could actually serve as a model for other supranational company types ? not only on the European level, but also on a wider international or even global level, especially for Asian countries as well.