The Speed of Justice

Florence Kondylis and Mattea Stein

CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy

Abstract: Can procedural reforms improve judicial efficiency? And do improvements in judicial efficiency benefit firms? We study a reform that gave judges in Senegal the powers to desk reject cases and the responsibility to complete pre-trials within four months. We combine three years of hearing-level caseload data and monthly firm tax filings with the staggered roll-out of the reform to produce three key results. First, the reform improved judicial efficiency, with no detrimental effect on quality. Second, firm monthly revenues drop by 8-11 percent upon entering pre-trial, with the effect concentrated on slower pre-trials. Third, monthly firm revenues decline by on average 3.2-5.0 percent for every 100 days a case spends in pre-trial. Survey results show firms are willing to pay higher legal fees to achieve post-reform speed, suggesting net positive benefits of the reform on firms.

Keywords: Economic development; Firms; Judicial efficiency. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 K41 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.csef.it/WP/wp609.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Speed of Justice (2023)
Working Paper: The Speed of Justice (2018)
Working Paper: The Speed of Justice (2018)
Working Paper: The speed of justice (2018)
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:sef:csefwp:609

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Maria Carannante ().