Economic Development, Legality, and the Transplant Effect

Daniel Berkowitz, Katharina Pistor and Jean-Francois Richard

No 308, William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross Business School

Abstract: We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law, and/or had a population that was already familiar with basic principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than countries that received foreign law without any similar pre-dispositions. The transplanting process has a strong indirect effect on economic development via its impact on legality.

Keywords: transplant versus origin; receptive; unreceptive; direct and indirect transplants; legality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O1 O57 K00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pke
Date: Written
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.wdi.umich.edu/files/Publications/WorkingPapers/wp308.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Development, Legality, and the Transplant Effect (2001)
Working Paper: Economic Development, Legality, and the Transplant Effect (2000)
Journal Article: Economic development, legality, and the transplant effect (2003)
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:wdi:papers:2000-308

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross Business School
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Patricia Loh ().