Courts in a Transition Economy: Case Disposition and the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Bulgaria

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

No 5283, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The lack of 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 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: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Courts in a transition economy: Case disposition and the quantity–quality tradeoff in Bulgaria (2016)
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:ces:ceswps:_5283

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