Do judiciaries matter for development? Evidence from India

Matthieu Chemin ()

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2009, vol. 37, issue 2, pages 230-250

Abstract: This paper attempts to measure the causal impact of the speed of judiciaries on economic activity by using three novel instrumental variables measuring judicial procedural ambiguity and complexity. First, I find that Indian High Court amendments complicating procedures to treat a case are related to higher trial duration. Second, I find that temporally exogenous conflicting judicial decisions taken in India due to the Code of Civil Procedure's ambiguity lead to higher expected trial duration as judges are required to spend considerable time in choosing between several conflicting views. By using spatial and temporal variations in the occurrence of enactment of amendments and conflicting decisions as instrumental variables, I am able to measure the impact of judicial speed on credit markets, agricultural development, and manufacturing performance. Journal of Comparative Economics 37 (2) (2009) 230-250.

Keywords: Law; and; economics; Institutions; Courts; Economic; growth; Industrial; performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WHV ... 3ff04f23b7826ced286c
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:37:y:2009:i:2:p:230-250

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().