Economics of comparative law / edited by Gerrit De Geest.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1.Adam Smith ([1776], 1976), 'Of the Division of Stock' and, 'Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire' in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'
2.Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas (1973), 'The Issue' and 'France and Spain -The Also-rans'
3.Saul Levmore (1986), 'Rethinking Comparative Law: Variety and Uniformity in Ancient and Modern Tort Law'
4.Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny (1998), 'Law and Finance'
Pt. II Property Law
5.Steven N. S. Cheung (1969), 'Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements'
6.Martin J. Bailey (1992), 'Approximate Optimality of Aboriginal Property Rights'
7.Michael A. Heller (1998), 'The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets'
Contents note continued: 8.Robert D. Cooter (1999), 'Mongolia: Avoiding Tragedy in the World's Largest Common'
9.Erica Field (2005), 'Property Rights and Investment in Urban Slums'
Pt. III Courts and the Legal System
10.Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer (2002), 'Legal Origins'
11.Simeon Djankov, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer (2003), 'Courts'
12.Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Ross Levine (2003), 'Law and Finance: Why does Legal Origin Matter?'
13.Tom Ginsburg and Glenn Hoetker (2006), 'The Unreluctant Litigant? An Empirical Analysis of Japan's Turn to Litigation'
14.Gillian K. Hadfield (2008), 'The Levers of Legal Design: Institutional Determinants of the Quality of Law'
Pt. IV Other
15.Henry Hansmann and Marina Santilli (1997), 'Authors' and Artists' Moral Rights: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis'
Contents note continued: 16.Ronald J. Gilson (1999), 'The Legal Infrastructure of High Technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete'
17.Simon Johnson, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer (2000), 'Tunneling'
18.Henrik Lando and Caspar Rose (2004), 'On the Enforcement of Specific Performance in Civil Law Countries'
19.Michael L. Smith (2005), 'Deterrence and Origin of Legal System: Evidence from 1950-1999'
20.Francesco Parisi, Vernon Valentine Palmer and Mauro Bussani (2007), 'The Comparative Law and Economics of Pure Economic Loss'.

De Geest (law, Washington U.) presents an anthology collecting readings from the past four decades of comparative law and economics (as well as a relevant excerpt from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations) in order to provide an overview of the interdisciplinary research field in which differences among legal systems are analyzed from an economic point of view. The 20 readings are presented in sections concerned with foundational issues of comparative law and economics; property law; courts and the legal system; and miscellaneous issues of intellectual property law, contract law, corporate law, and tort law.