Economics of Ancient Law: The Laws of Manu on Contracts

Bose Feler ()
Additional contact information
Bose Feler: Indiana University East, Richmond, 47374-1289, USA

Asian Journal of Law and Economics, 2022, vol. 13, issue 3, 277-300

Abstract: Ancient law can be analyzed using economic tools. With a renewed interest from the political class to make the ancient Laws of Manu (Manu’s Dharmaśāstra) more relevant to modern Indian law, the economic analysis of the Laws of Manu regarding contracts allows us to look at the issue from an efficiency standpoint. The paper will look at both regular contracts and marriage contracts. Surprisingly, many of the ancient laws are like the modern law of contracts especially in areas of contract breach. However, when considering marriage contracts, the bargaining position of men is stronger than women.

Keywords: laws of manu; contracts; marriage contract; ancient law; breach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/ajle-2022-0028 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:ajlecn:v:13:y:2022:i:3:p:277-300:n:8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/ajle/html

DOI: 10.1515/ajle-2022-0028

Access Statistics for this article

Asian Journal of Law and Economics is currently edited by Noriyuki Yanagawa

More articles in Asian Journal of Law and Economics from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().