92 research outputs found

    The regulatory function of contract law : comparative law and economics approach

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    Defence date: 17 December 2015Examining Board: Prof. Giorgio Monti, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz, European University Institute; Prof. Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Stockholm University; Prof. Hugh Beale, University of Warwick.This thesis challenges the traditional view of national contract laws as facilitative regimes and argues that contract law on the national level has been progressively re-oriented to perform an efficiency-driven regulatory function. To develop the argument the thesis studies the contract law remedial regime of two common law and one civil law jurisdiction – the US, England and Bulgaria, in two specific contracts – the sale-of-goods and the construction contract. The introductory chapter puts the main theme in context and outlines the project. Exploring the limits of promissory theory and neoclassical economics, the second chapter develops an innovative interdisciplinary methodology joining the new institutional economics with the comparative law method. The third, fourth and fifth chapters offer taxonomies of remedies, types of contracts and remedial effects to set the stage for a meaningful comparison across the different legal traditions. Since economic theory has advanced most in the study of incentives generated by damages, the third chapter focuses on the latter remedy and shows that the common law classification of damage measures (expectation, reliance, restitution), on which traditional law-and-economics accounts are based, can be applied to study a civil law jurisdiction like Bulgaria. Distinguishing discrete and long-term contracts and demonstrating that the differentiation between sale-of-goods and construction contracts in the compared national legal systems does not necessarily go along the lines of the discrete/long-term distinction in economics, the fourth chapter argues that the positive comparison should be made with an eye on the market for substitute performances even if the compared factual scenarios are classified under different legal categories in the different jurisdictions. For the uninitiated, the fifth chapter reconstructs and criticises the standard economic model rationalising damages as incentives. The final chapter applies the approach developed here to contractual termination. The exemplary analysis identifies trends in the compared legal systems and suggests that all of them converge in charging the termination remedy with a regulatory function. Finally, I generalise to make some bolder claims about contract law

    An Experimental Study of Warranty Coverage and Dispute Resolution in Competitive Markets

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    In service and product markets where warranties are offered, disputes over warranty performance frequently occur between buyer and seller. Resolving such disputes in a fair and effective way has become an increasingly important and controversial question in recent years. Some observers have gone so far as to argue that the pervasiveness of such disputes and the inability to resolve them effectively is having a corrosive effect on society.1 This is probably somewhat extreme, but even a less excited perspective suggests that the design of procedures to handle consumer disputes is a matter for serious concern

    A comparative study on the seller's liability for non-conforming goods under CISG, English law, European law and Korean law

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    This thesis is a comparative and analytical study which comprises of an analysis of the rules of the seller's liability for non-conforming goods of four legal systems; Korean law, English law, the U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (1980) and the E.C. Directive on Certain Aspects of the Sale of Consumer Goods and Associated Guarantees. The purpose of this study is to ask whether there is any need to introduce a unified liability system into Korean law and how to achieve the system under the existing law in order to overcome all the complexities caused by the separate existence of the general liability for non-performance and the seller's guarantee liability. A further purpose is to investigate how effectively the rules of the seller's liability for non-conforming goods protect the reasonable expectations of the parties; in particular, the interests of consumers and private sellers which are distinguished from those of commercial buyers and business sellers, respectively, and where the issue is not directly related to the particular interests of consumers or private sellers, the common interests of all the parties. The study is conducted by an internal evaluation within the boundaries of law in a legal context and an external evaluation in light of 'efficiency' as used by economists. It shows, first, that Korean law needs a unified liability system which is based on a contract to resolve the problems originating in the distinction between the general liability as a contractual liability and the seller's guarantee liability as a legal liability. Second, achieving a genuine unified liability system require one's interpretation that rescission and damages in the seller's guarantee liability should be as they are in the general liability. This would settle other problems inherent in the casuistic distinction between the general liability as a fault liability and the seller's guarantee liability as no-fault liability and its consequences in interpreting damages under the seller's guarantee liability. Finally, in what aspects of the seller's liability for non-conforming goods each jurisdiction fails to reflect the interests of consumers and private sellers, and the common interests of all the parties

    The Legal Architecture of Virtual Stores: World Wide Web Sites and the Uniform Commercial Code

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    The Legal Architecture of Virtual Stories: World Wide Web Sites and the Uniform Commercial Code

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    “Virtual Stores” on the Web raise a myriad of traditional legal controversies in a new forum: the “battle of the forms” among purchasers and sellers; jurisdictional concerns and conflict-of-law problems; and the enforceability of contracts. This wide-ranging article analyzes law regarding these issues, with particular emphasis on the U.C.C

    Guidelines for Extending Implied Warranties to Service Markets

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