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The Dynamic Quality Of Law: The Role Of Judicial Incentives And Legal Human Capital In The Adaptation Of Law, Gillian K. Hadfield

Gillian K Hadfield

Much of the existing literature investigating the relationship between legal regimes and economic growth focuses on the agency problem of aligning judicial incentives with social welfare. In this paper I look instead at the factors that influence the quality of law when judges have incentives to promote social welfare but they have limited knowledge about the environment in which law is to be applied. The key insight is that the capacity for a legal regime to generate value-enhancing legal adaptation to local and changing conditions depends on its capacity to generate and implement adequate expertise about the environment in which …