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'Capacitas': Contract Law and the Institutional Preconditions of a Market Economy

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Author Info
Simon Deakin
Abstract

Capacity may be defined as a status conferred by law for the purpose of empowering persons to participate in the operations of a market economy. This paper argues that because of the confining influence of the classical private law of the nineteenth century, we currently lack a convincing theory of the role of law in enhancing and protecting the substantive contractual capacity of market agents, a notion which resembles the economic concept of 'capability' as developed by Amartya Sen. Re-examining the legal notion of capacity from the perspective of Sen's 'capability approach' is part of a process of understanding the preconditions for a sustainable market order under modern conditions.

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Paper provided by ESRC Centre for Business Research in its series ESRC Centre for Business Research - Working Papers with number wp325.

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Date of creation: Jun 2006
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Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp325

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Web page: http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/

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Related research
Keywords: contract law; capacity; capability approach;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
K12 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Contract Law
K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Stigler, George J & Becker, Gary S, 1977. "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 76-90, March.
  2. Mathias M Siems, 2006. "Legal origins: reconciling law and finance and comparative law," ESRC Centre for Business Research - Working Papers wp321, ESRC Centre for Business Research. [Downloadable!]
  3. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2002. "Legal Origins," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 117(4), pages 1193-1229, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-26.

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