법학과 사회과학-학제 연구방법론의 모색 : 제2부 ; 제6주제 : 논문 ; 과학적 법학연구를 위한 경제학도의 몇 가지 소고

Abstract

This paper makes a few constructive suggestions, with the hope to make

research in jurisprudence more scientific, from an economist's perspective,

particularly from the field of law and economics. Starting from some casual

observations regarding the usual research work in law, the paper attempts

to compare them with the typical law and economics research, and

subsequently to draw major related implications from the Coase Theorem.

Specifically, the paper first discusses the issue on the good law versus the

bad law, which is basically concerned with the efficient and fair allocation

of property rights among competing parties. The Coase Theorem,

highlighting greatly the reciprocal nature of such right-related conflicts, has

already provided a very powerful theoretical basis upon which the court or

scholars can make an optimal allocation of rights. To be sure, the driving

vehicle in this discussion will be the dynamic efficiency criterion. From this

discussion, the paper submits that the precise notions of fairness and

efficiency can converge each other.

The paper next examines how economists predict what kind of effects a

specific law will actually make, with the emphases that the ultimate effects

to be determined by the market forces are in fact fairly independent of the

original intention of legislation, no matter how novel and sincere it might be.

The market forces here indicate the fundamental economic principles such as

opportunity cost, decision-making at the margins, responsiveness to

economic incentives, etc. The paper focuses, in particular, on the concept of

transaction costs originally derived also from the Coase Theorem and...