Comments on: Red tape and legal systems

By: skepticlawyer

skepticlawyer — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:30:18 +0000

Am a fan of continency fees. Not only do they improve efficiency, but they also improve access to justice.

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 00:22:14 +0000

Yes, I caught myself wondering whether they’d counted the number of words for instance! Maybe the methodology isn’t that shallow. But then maybe it is!

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:49:26 +0000

PS I agree that the assumptions are heroic to the point where discretion might have been the better part of valour. Number of pages, to start with, is surely a heroic to the point of useless measure of anything except the likelihood of RSI amongst practitioners.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:47:31 +0000

Overwhelmingly, major international trade flows through Anglo systems and Amsterdam. The ME’s legal system is basically the Chancery division of the High Court (their Supreme Court) of London with a bit of help from New York, the Caymans and Bermuda.

So that is important.

Also, I may be being presumptous, but looking at two of my favorite countries (for comparative purposes) France and Australia, the percentage of the debt in France is 11.8 as against our 12.8 but the length of time is 331 against our 181. Would not that 150 days easily cancel out the 1 percent of the debt? if interest is more than 2.2 percent, at least it would, or so it seems to me very quickly in the morning.

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:25:11 +0000

I think the correlation is reasonable, but I’ve not subjected it to proper analysis. I’m basically ignoring the less developed countries as I expect a bunch of other factors will be relevant. But amongst the developed countries, there’s a whole bunch of European and rich Asian countries up the top, and then a bunch of English speaking countries. But I’m not making too much of it because

1) The US is an exception (Though I’ll make use of your suggestion that perhaps it has bigger cases on average which accounts for at least some of it’s good rating.)
2) If you look at time of cases, as I’ve said, what patten there is seems to go the other way.

By: Getachew

Getachew — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 12:22:56 +0000

Sir/Ms
Your publication including the analysis is not far from facts.
But, where do you catagorize those States known for their “AIDS package” ? and not loan or technical assistance Program under UN ambrela?
warm regards,
GBZ

By: SJ

SJ — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:26:51 +0000

No worries.

Let’s say that the cost of pursuing a debt is $100. In rich countries, it turns out that $100 is small compared to the size of the debt. In poor countries, $100 is large compared to the size of the debt.

Note that I’m not claiming that my hypothesis true.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’ve found a correlation between two factors, but you haven’t really given a convincing argument as to the causal relationship between the two.

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:09:21 +0000

Thanks for the comment SJ, but I can’t really understand the point you’re making. Can you expand a little.

By: SJ

SJ — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:17:12 +0000

Nicholas, I don’t find the data persuasive as to your efficiency hypothesis.

I could posit an alternative hypothesis, that legal costs are fixed across countries. Your ranking fits my hypothesis, too. Which kinda indicates there’s something lacking in both hypotheses.