Gazal-Ayal on the Economics of Law & Economics
Oren Gazal-Ayal (University of Haifa – Faculty of Law) has posted Economic Analysis of Law and Economics on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
- The academic world is wonderful. Like few other professionals, we can choose what we want to do and what questions we think are important, which in our line of work means choosing what topics we want to research. But what influences our choices? This paper examines what drives scholars to select Law and Economics (L&E) as a topic for research. It does so by implementing the methodology of many L&E papers – by assuming that regulation and incentives matter.
Legal scholars face very different academic incentives in different parts of the world. In some countries, the academic standards for appointment, promotion and tenure encourage legal scholars to concentrate on L&E. In others, they strongly discourage such research. Thus, we should expect wide variation in the rate of participation of legal scholars in the L&E discourse across countries. On the other hand, economists are evaluated with similar yardsticks everywhere. Thus, participation of economists in the L&E discourse is likely to vary much less from one place to another.
The hypothesis of this paper is that the academic incentives are a major factor in the level of participation in the L&E scholarship. This incentives hypothesis is presented and then examined empirically on data gathered from the list of authors in L&E journals and the list of participants in L&E conferences. The data generally supports the hypothesis. In the legal academia, the incentives to focus research on L&E topics are the strongest in Israel, they are weaker in North America and weakest in Europe. In fact, the data reveal that lawyers’ authorship of L&E papers weighted by population is almost ten times higher in Israel then in North America; while in Europe it is almost ten times lower then in North America. By comparison, the weighted participation level of economists – who face relatively similar academic environments across countries – in L&E research is not significantly different across countries.
There is an obvious question: are both the participation rates and the incentives caused by some other variable? In particular, by academic and legal culture?Here’s a bit more from the paper:
- L&E discourse is highly correlated with academic incentives favoring that discipline. European lawyers usually do not need to write articles in English and for them papers in L&E do not carry substantial academic benefit in appointments and promotion decisions. To the contrary: in many cases such a paper would be much less valuable to their career then a doctrinal paper in their own language. And publishing an article about the local law in a local journal may be easier as well. These are strong disincentives to overcome language and disciplinary barriers.
For Americans and Canadians, interdisciplinary papers are as valuable as legal papers for academic career advancement. There are no language barriers, since the L&E journals are in English. The most prestigious journals are also looking for articles with a national or international interest and L&E papers, like other theoretical or critical legal papers, are often general enough for that purpose. Thus, L&E is another potential course a scholar can take; not necessary more or less valuable then concentrating on any other legal subject or type of legal discourse. Thus, North Americans are much more likely than European lawyers to author and publish L&E papers.2
Very interesting stuff!