Did the French reform of the judicial map affect conciliation activities?

Matthieu Belarouci (), Nicolas Vaillant and François-­charles Wolff ()
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Matthieu Belarouci: UR - Université de Rennes, CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Nicolas Vaillant: UCL - Université catholique de Lille, ETHICS EA 7446 - Experience ; Technology & Human Interactions ; Care & Society : - ICL - Institut Catholique de Lille - UCL - Université catholique de Lille
François-­charles Wolff: LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique - Nantes Univ - IAE Nantes - Nantes Université - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises - Nantes - Nantes Université - pôle Sociétés - Nantes Univ - Nantes Université

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Abstract: In France, the reform of the judicial map, initiated in mid-2007 and completed in 2010, led to a large reduction in the number of courts of first instance, from almost 500 to around 300. This led to an increase of about eight kilometers in the distance litigants should travel to courts in the treated jurisdictions. In this paper, we examine the impact of this reform on conciliation activity. We use a panel data set of courts covering the period 2003–2015 and consider a synthetic difference-in-differences strategy to compare changes in the number of referrals, conciliators, and conciliations between courts affected by the reform and those unaffected. We find that the number of conciliators decreased more significantly in treated courts than in control courts. Evidence is less clear for the number of referrals, showing a slightly higher increase in the courts where distance increased the most. Estimation of a production function shows that the reform had no effect on the number of conciliations once inputs are controlled for.

Keywords: Conciliation; Judicial reform; Referrals; Synthetic difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04479487v1
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Published in International Review of Law and Economics, 2024, 77, pp.106181. ⟨10.1016/j.irle.2024.106181⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04479487

DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2024.106181

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