On the evolution of collective enforcement institutions:Communities and courts

Masten, Scott E. and Prüfer, Jens ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7203-9711 (2014) On the evolution of collective enforcement institutions:Communities and courts. Journal of Legal Studies, 43 (2). pp. 359-400. ISSN 0047-2530

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Abstract

We analyze the capacities of communities (or social networks) and courts to secure cooperation among heterogeneous, impersonal transactors. We find that communities and courts are complementary in that they tend to support cooperation for different types of transactions but that the existence of courts weakens the effectiveness of community enforcement. Our findings are consistent with the emergence of the medieval law merchant and its subsequent supersession by state courts as changes in the costs and risks of long-distance trade, driven in part by improvement in shipbuilding methods, altered the characteristics of merchants’ transactions over the course of the Commercial Revolution in Europe. We then contrast the European experience with the evolution of enforcement institutions in Asia over the same period.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords: law ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3308
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Economic Theory
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Industrial Economics
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 08 Sep 2022 12:30
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2023 00:42
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/87953
DOI: 10.1086/677837

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