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The economic importance of judicial institutions, their performance and the proper way to measure them

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2018

ALAIN MARCIANO ,
ALESSANDRO MELCARNE  and
GIOVANNI B. RAMELLO
ALAIN MARCIANO
Affiliation:
MRE, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France
ALESSANDRO MELCARNE
Affiliation:
EconomiX, CNRS & Université Paris Nanterre, Nanterre, France
GIOVANNI B. RAMELLO*
Affiliation:
DiGSPES, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Alessandria, Italy
*
*Corresponding author: Email: giovanni.ramello@uniupo.it
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Abstract

In the present paper we contribute to the previous literature on de facto enforcing mechanisms, by focusing on the role of judicial institutions and their performance and measurement. We propose both theoretical and empirical evidence supporting the necessity of a clear distinction between two measures of judicial performance, efficiency and efficacy, which have often been confused in previous literature. Not only might economic actors not be affected to the same extent by these two indicators, but we show that these measures do not even correlate significantly with each other. We also bring evidence against the alleged trade-off between the quality of justice and judicial performance in its quantitative dimension, showing that this relationship is much more complicated than is claimed by some legal scholars.

Type
Symposium on the Empirics of Judicial Institutions
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2018 

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