It has been argued that procedural formalism undermines economic efficiency by fostering rent-seeking and corruption. We challenge this view by arguing that a number of judicial procedures foster economic growth by increasing the predictability of court decisions, which leads to more transactions and higher investment levels. We investigate the effects on economic growth of 15 judicial procedures. Employing a standard growth model, we find in a cross-section of 67 countries that timeliness, written—as opposed to oral—procedures, and the right to counsel have a positive effect on growth, whereas the number of independent procedural actions as well as the presumption of innocence have negative effects. Our results partially contradict the results of former studies based on the Lex Mundi dataset.
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2514.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General O40 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General P51 - Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silane & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 1998.
"The Quality of Goverment,"
NBER Working Papers
6727, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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