Directory:Ejan Mackaay

Name: Ejan Mackaay

Web: http://users.ugent.be/~gdegeest/0200book.pdf
Contact: Ejan Mackaay
Title: Professor of Law University of Montreal

Abstract

The idea of applying economic concepts to gain a better understanding of law is older than the current movement, which goes back to the late 1950s. Key insights of law and economics can already be found in the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. The Historical School and the Institutionalist School, active on both sides of the Atlantic between roughly 1830 and 1930, had aims similar to the current law and economics movement. During the 1960s and 1970s the Chicago approach to law and economics reigned supreme. After the critical debates in the United States between 1976 and 1983, other approaches came to the fore. Of these, the neo-institutionalist approach and the Austrian approach, both corresponding to schools within economics proper, are worth watching. Law and economics has progressively found its way to countries outside the United States. From the mid 1970s onwards it reached the English speaking countries, then other countries as well. In no country has law and economics had as much impact as it has in the United States.

law and economics in general, history, institutions