History of Law and Economics
Name: Ejan Mackaay
Web: http://users.ugent.be/~gdegeest/0200book.pdfContact: 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.
