Now showing 1 - 10 of 95
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    Behavioral International Law and Economics
    (Harvard Law School, 2014)
    Whereas the rational choice approach to international law has been widely accepted in legal scholarship and international relations theory, challenges to the rational choice paradigm in economic analysis of international law have hitherto not been systematically explored. Nevertheless, behavioral law and economics and psychology have been successfully applied to national law constellations. Behavioral economic insights have furthermore been used in international relations scholarship under the heading of political psychology but international norms are neglected. Building on all those insights, the article explores the potential and challenges of extending the behavioral law and economics approach to public international law and thus to further refine our understanding of international law. It looks specifically at treaty design problems and compliance questions. This ties in with increased use of empirical research in international law: a clear desideratum for evidence-based international law.
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    Principles and Structures of European Risk Governance : or: How (not) to Play a Trust Game
    (Lexxion-Verl., 2013-02-01)
    Ever more risky service activities are carried out across borders, creating spillovers and externalities. At the same time, if freedom to provide services is legally enabled, states can cooperate in multiple ways to mitigate the potential risks accruing from crossborder activities.
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    Smart Flexibility Clauses in International Investment Agreements
    (The International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2013-06-26)
    The discussions about International Investment Law (IIL) are slowly catching up with the discussions about international trade law in two respects: the first is the social science, especially economic, enrichment of the legal discourse, the second is the discussion on fragmentation of international investment law, that is ‘investment and…' issues. The topic of this book is a fragmentation issue, namely "investment and sustainable development (SD)". This article addresses this topic in two specific ways: firstly, it draws on diverse economic insights to analyze the problem trying to give meaningful insights to treaty negotiators and interpreters and, secondly, it concentrates on the contribution of flexibility clauses in solving ‘investment and…' issues by proposing ‘smart' flexibility clauses. The big problem to solve for treaty-designers and adjudicators is to separate opportunistic behavior of states from legitimate policies for SD of host states being pursued by them. This article contributes a procedural and substantive check-list to separate opportunistic behavior of states from good faith regulation which, in my view, should be allowed. In other words, the article is about smart flexibility mechanisms. In order to develop a frame for solving this problem, this article draws on the economic theories of contract theory (as a basic frame) and political economy theory (for fine-tuning) in order to understand when a host state's behavior has to be sanctioned and when not. It will then take stock of what kind of flexibility clauses exist in IIAs de lege lata in order to ask whether those clauses allow for a systematic distinction between opportunistic behavior and good faith behavior of states. This part highlights methodological and substantive tools which may be used in order to make this distinction easier. The last part concludes with a view on SD and investment treaties. http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2013/iisd_itn_june_2013_en.pdf
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    Rational Choice Theory
    (Oxford University Press, 2012-03-23)
    International law scholarship has predominantly been doctrinal in nature. Nevertheless, international law and rational choice assumptions have been closely connected for a long time. For the most part, realist thinkers in international relations are the ones who have used rational choice assumptions to explain states' behavior (though [liberal] institutionalist thinkers have done so as well), but they have rarely entered into legal intricacies. Instead, "big theories" have been at the forefront of the discussion. Economics is the study of rational choice. The rational choice approach to international law allows for theoretical conjectures that can be tested empirically regarding two questions: What are the effects of international law (international law as explanans; this question includes its effectiveness)? Why do states legalize their relations (international law as explanandum)? The rational choice assumption has been a cornerstone of positive economics and economic analysis of law, which applies economic methods to analyze law. International law is a rather young subject of economic analysis of law, but it has gained prominence since 2000. Following the traditional international law assumptions in the aftermath of the Westphalian peace, the nation-state has mostly been analyzed as a unitary actor, or what has been described as a "black box" state, but in the discussion on international governance this has also changed recently. Analyzing international law through the rational choice perspective has become a joint enterprise by economists, international lawyers, and rational-choice political scientists, focusing on more precise questions of international law scholarship intended to inform doctrinal scholarship as well. Rational choice analysis may be used to diagnose substantive problems and frame better legal solutions, explain the structure or function of particular international legal rules or institutions, and reconceptualize or reframe particular institutions or international law generally, such as customary international law. It is well acknowledged that legal scholars alone cannot accomplish these tasks, and that social science approaches are needed to address them. By now, many international relations scholars, as well as law and economic scholars, start from a rationalist assumption but do not exclude other explanatory factors used by other theories. The scholarship is US-driven, and English is the main language in which research on the topic is published.
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    Opportunities for and Limits to an Economic Analysis of International Economic Law
    (Ottawa United Learning Academy, 2011-03)
    The paper investigates the opportunities and the limits of economic analysis in international economic law. Based on a legal theory approach, it highlights the different epistemological statements in law and explores where and how social sciences, and especially economics, may play a role in law-making (external view) and law-application (internal view). International Economic Law is in special need of economic insights (economics as a subject-matter). Economics as a methodology (and its empirical insights) can also be used to explain noneconomic issues in international economic law, such as treaty negotiations. Examples from trade and investment law highlight the need for economic analysis in international economic law as well as its limits.
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    Do individual disclosure rules for parliamentarians improve government effectiveness?
    (Springer Verlag, 2011-12) ;
    Voigt, Stefan
    The pros and cons of stricter disclosure rules for parliamentarians are hotly debated. Some argue that disclosure rules for parliamentarians increase transparency of the legislative branch, leading to lower levels of rent-seeking and corruption, increased citizen trust in parliament, and better quality of law-making. Others argue that disclosure rules endanger the privacy of parliamentarians, that their introduction would stop businesspeople and lawyers from running for seats, which would decrease the quality of law-making. This is the first attempt to empirically test these conjectures on the composition of parliament empirically. We find that the introduction of disclosure rules is usually not accompanied by a significant shift in the proportion of lawyers and businesspeople in parliament.
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    Scopus© Citations 15
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    Do independant prosecutors deter political corruption? : An Empirical Evaluation across Seventy-eight Countries
    (Oxford Journals, 2010-04-12) ;
    Voigt, Stefan
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    Feld, Lars
    It is hypothesized that prosecution agencies that are dependent on the executive have less incentives to prosecute crimes committed by government members that in turn increases their incentives to commit such crimes. Here, this hypothesis is put to an empirical test focusing on a particular kind of crime, namely corruption. In order to test it, it was necessary to create an indicator measuring de jure as well as de facto independence of the prosecution agencies. The regressions show that de facto independence of prosecution agencies robustly reduces corruption of officials.
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    Scopus© Citations 46