IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v4y2008i1n16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transaction Costs, Neighborhood Effects, and the Diffusion of the Uniform Sales Act, 1906-47

Author

Listed:
  • Smythe Donald J.

    (California Western School of Law)

Abstract

The Uniform Sales Act was a precursor to Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Between 1906 and 1947 it was adopted in 34 states. Transaction cost theory suggests that states adoption decisions should have been influenced by neighborhood effects the adoption decisions of their neighbors. This paper uses hazard analysis to test various hypotheses about the factors that influenced states adoption decisions. The results indicate that neighborhood effects were among the most important factors in the diffusion of the Act. Manufacturing interests also played an important role, especially in a small number of states that adopted the Act early. Subsequent to these early adoptions, the Act gradually diffused across most of the country, except the south. Its diffusion was driven primarily by neighborhood effects and manufacturing interests, although the legal profession and transportation systems may also have played a role. It appears that the Act ultimately failed to achieve complete uniformity largely because the neighborhood effects that drove its adoption in most of the country were not present in the south.

Suggested Citation

  • Smythe Donald J., 2008. "Transaction Costs, Neighborhood Effects, and the Diffusion of the Uniform Sales Act, 1906-47," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 341-372, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:4:y:2008:i:1:n:16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/rle.2008.4.1/rle.2008.4.1.1126/rle.2008.4.1.1126.xml?format=INT
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kiefer, Nicholas M, 1988. "Economic Duration Data and Hazard Functions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 646-679, June.
    2. Jenkins, Stephen P, 1995. "Easy Estimation Methods for Discrete-Time Duration Models," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 57(1), pages 129-138, February.
    3. Peter Kennedy, 2003. "A Guide to Econometrics, 5th Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 5, volume 1, number 026261183x, January.
    4. Nelson, Richard R & Wright, Gavin, 1992. "The Rise and Fall of American Technological Leadership: The Postwar Era in Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 1931-1964, December.
    5. White, Halbert, 1982. "Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Misspecified Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 1-25, January.
    6. Mahoney, Paul G, 2003. "The Origins of the Blue-Sky Laws: A Test of Competing Hypotheses," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(1), pages 229-251, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Loeper, Antoine, 2011. "Coordination in heterogeneous federal systems," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 900-912, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:rlecon:v:4:y:2008:i:1:n:16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Peter Golla). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.