|
| |
N° 2006-26 |
  |
| December 2006 |
| On Legal Origins and Brankruptcy Laws: the European Experience (1808-1914) |
| Jérôme Sgard |
|
| Since the early 1998 paper by LLSV, a growing body of research has argued that “legal
origins” have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic
development. Following the methodology of LLSV, an original data-base of 51 bankruptcy
laws has been built: it ranges over fifteen European countries and more than a hundred
years (1808-1914), and summarises how the rights and incentives of the parties were
defined as the procedure unfold. The first conclusion is that, over the entire period, all legal
traditions strongly protected creditors’ rights; only English law comes out prima facie as
less protective. Second, evidences suggests that the evolution of these laws was influenced
less by their past than by continent-wide trends, arguably linked to capitalist development.
An early 19th century model thus saw heavy repression of failed debtors and highly regulated judicial procedures. After a transition period from the late 1860s to the late 1880s,
prison for debt was abandoned, rehabilitation became easier, and the parties were given
much more room to re-contract on property rights. |
Abstract |
| |
|
| bankruptcy, renegotiation, law history, legal origins |
Keywords |
| G33, K12, N43 |
JEL classification |
| |
|
| To visualise the full text document, use Acrobat
Reader |
Full text (pdf) |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
