Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria

Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Peter Grajzl, Atanas Slavov and Katarina Zajc

Economic Systems, 2016, vol. 40, issue 1, 18-38

Abstract: The lack of an effective judiciary in post-socialist countries has been a pervasive concern and successful judicial reform an elusive goal. Yet to date little empirical research exists on the functioning of courts in the post-socialist world. We draw on a new court-level panel dataset from Bulgaria to study the determinants of court case disposition and to evaluate whether judicial decision-making is subject to a quantity–quality tradeoff. Addressing endogeneity concerns, we find that case disposition in Bulgarian courts is largely driven by the demand for court services. The number of serving judges, a key court resource, matters to a limited extent only in a subsample of courts, a result suggesting that judges adjust their productivity based on the number of judges serving at a court. We do not find evidence implying that increasing court productivity would decrease adjudicatory quality. We discuss the policy implications of our findings.

Keywords: Courts; Post-socialist countries; Case disposition; Quantity–quality tradeoff (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 K40 P37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Courts in a Transition Economy: Case Disposition and the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Bulgaria (2015)
Working Paper: Courts in a Transition Economy: Case Disposition and the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Bulgaria (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecosys:v:40:y:2016:i:1:p:18-38

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecosys.2015.09.002

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