The Non-Consequentialist Uses of Economic Analysis: A Comment on Dagan and Kreitner, Economic Analysis in Law

Dagan and Kreitner have offered a rich and elegantly written discussion of the normative uses of economic analysis of law. For Dagan and Kreitner, a scholar uses economic analysis normatively either when she evaluates a legal rule or institution or when she makes policy recommendations. These two normative uses of economic analysis are closely related but distinct. Evaluation often starts from some ideal theory while policy design is clearly non-ideal. Moreover, in policy design, questions of institutional competence and capacity play a central role that they do not have in straightforward evaluation. I do not, however, pursue these distinctions here.Evaluative approaches divide into two classes: consequentialist and non-consequentialist. Dagan and Kreitner discuss the role of economic analysis in both classes. The role of economic analysis in consequentialist evaluation and design flows naturally from economic methodology. Any consequentialist evaluation or policy design requires a theory of how individuals, both private citizens and public officials, behave in response to legal rules. Economic analysis of law offers the most clearly elaborated and developed theory of such behavior. In addition, the structure of the theory provides a natural way to make welfarist evaluations as the theory explains behavior in terms of the preferences of the agents

ANALISIS EKONOMI HUKUM TERHADAP TINDAK PIDANA KORUPSI (KAJIAN PUTUSAN MA TENTANG KORUPSI BLBI)

Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui tinjauan ekonomi hukum terhadap pertimbangan Mahkamah Agung dalam Putusan No. 1555.K/PID.SUS/2019 dan tinjauan ekonomi hukum terhadap perbuatan hukum pejabat publik yang beririsan dengan hukum perdata atau administrasi negara dihubungkan dengan kebijakan penegakan hukum pemberantasan tindak pidana korupsi. Penelitian ini merupakan kajian filosofis terhadap kebijakan penegakan hukum yang dilakukan melalui pendekatan studi kasus dan pendekatan konseptual.  Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa berdasarkan analisis ekonomi hukum putusan Mahkamah Agung tersebut dapat dibenarkan karena penerbitan SKL berdasarkan dilakukan berdasarkan perjanjian MSAA dan Akta notaris. Model penafsiran yang digunakan Mahkamah Agung dalam memutus perkara ini adalah perpaduan model logike deontologis yang berbasis mazhab hukum positivsitk dengan logika utilitarian yang bercorak teleologis Pertimbangan hukum Mahkamah Agung tersebut di atas menjelaskan adanya pergeseran perspektif terkait dengan adanya irisan antara hukum pidana, perdata dan administrasi negara. Menurut Mahkamah Agung penerbitan SKL adalah ranah administrasi negara dan hukum perdata sehingga kesalahan dalam penerbitan SKL tidak dapat dikualifikasikan sebagai tindak pidana.Kata Kunci: Etika utilitarian; Ekonomi hukum; PenafsiranAbstract:The purpose of this study is to find out the legal, economic review of the Supreme Court's considerations in Decision No. 1555.K / PID.SUS / 2019 and legal, financial analysis of the legal actions of public officials that intersect with civil law and administration law when connected with enforcement policies to eradicate corruption. This research is a philosophical study of law enforcement policies carried out through a case study approach and conceptual approach. The results showed that based on legal, economic analysis of the Supreme Court decision could be justified because SKL issued was based on an MSAA and notarial deed. The interpretation model used by the Supreme Court in deciding this case is a mix of a deontological model based on positive schools of law with teleological-style form utilitarian logic. The Supreme Court's legal considerations above explain the shift in perspective related to the incision between criminal law, civil law, and state administration. According to the Supreme Court, SKL issued is the domain of administrative law or public law, so a fault in publishing SKL cannot be qualified as criminal acts.Keywords: Interpretation; Legal economy; Utilitarian ethic

Deglobalizing Rule of Law and Democracy: Hunting Down Rhetoric Through Comparative Law

Notwithstanding the well-known differences that run through cultures and traditions, the West has never stopped trying to export its own law into the rest of the world. During and after the colonial era similar endeavors were spreading Western views on how legal issues are to be understood and handled, thereby broadening the West\u2019s area of influence on global legal affairs. More recently, these efforts have overlapped with (and have been blurred by the rhetorical veil of) so-called legal globalization. The focus of this Article is on the attitudes and methods underpinning the ongoing Western attempts to transplant the two pillars of Western civilization, i.e., democracy and the rule of law, into outside contexts. Confronted with processes that concern different legal systems, this Article cannot but take a comparative law approach. Such an approach entails a careful consideration of the historical and contextual factors and will enable an analysis of data that are usually either discarded or underrated in mainstream legal debates. Thus notions, ideas, and debates about the rule of law and democracy will be reappraised from a comparative law point of view in order to both unearth their intimate legal foundations and to scrutinize their potential for being transplanted outside Western societies. The analysis will show how this potential, to the extent that it exists, can only be exploited through a radical shift from the usual way in which the West approaches the legal settings it aims to change

Resource allocation by frugal majority rule

We propose a model of "frugal aggregation" in which the evaluation of social welfare must be based on information about agents\u27 top choices plus general qualitative background conditions on preferences. The former is elicited individually, while the latter is not. We apply this model to problems of public budget allocation, relying on the specific assumption of separable and convex preferences. We propose and analyze a particularly aggregation rule called "Frugal Majority Rule". It is defined in terms of a suitably localized net majority relation. This relation is shown to be consistent, i.e. acyclic and decisive; its maxima minimize the sum of the natural resource distances to the individual tops. As a consequence of this result, we argue that the Condorcet and Borda perspectives - which conflict in the standard, ordinal setting - converge here. The second main result provides a crisp algorithmic characterization that renders the Frugal Majority Rule analytically tractable and efficiently computable

Collective Decisions on Conditional Topics - An Empirical Study of the Impact of Nonseparable Preferences

Analytical politics investigates collective decision-making in political systems. Such voting behavior in groups takes place in parliaments, committees or the board of local football clubs. It is a frequent object of study for theoretical as well as empirical analysis. Previous contributions have demonstrated well the stabilizing effect of procedural rules, such as agenda-setting or multi-chamber systems, for collective decisions. These rules are applied in many institutions, such as the European Parliament or the German Bundestag. Their main purpose is to ensure reliable policy. Previous work continually used the restrictive assumption of separable preferences. This assumption implies that different aspects of a question do not influence each other. The limited validity of this hypothesis is apparent even in everyday situations. For example, the enjoyment of a delicious meal depends on the combination of food and drink. When choosing between fish and venison for dinner you also have to consider the question of which sort of wine to have with the meal; white with fish, and red with venison. This form of interdependence also occurs in legislation. For example, the savings determined in the Greek budget influence the preferences of the German public for financial assistance to Greece. The assumption of separable preferences is therefore in the critical focus of theoretical research. This literature discusses the impacts of and solutions to nonseparable preferences in detail. The analysis suggests an increased complexity for every decision-making process affected by nonseparable preferences. This complexity leads to difficulties in the operationalization of nonseparable preferences and is one of the reasons that there are too few empirical examinations. In addition, the stabilizing properties of institutional arrangements identified under the assumption of separable preferences are in question. The goal of this study is to close this gap between theory and empiricism. I investigate nonseparable preferences by conducting a laboratory experiment, which allows comprehensive environmental control. This facilitates the operationalization of nonseparable preferences. First, I prove the relevance of nonseparable preferences for analytical research on social interaction. The experiment is therefore completed by empirical case studies. Next, I investigate the effects of nonseparable preferences on collective and individual decision-making in the laboratory. Finally, I assess my contribution with respect to current research in social science and discuss possibilities to more accurately model of human behavior. The dissertation is structured as follows. I start in chapter 1 with the presentation of my research question and design. In chapter 2 the concept of nonseparable preferences is further clarified by means of exemplary case studies. It also discusses the theoretical foundations of nonseparable preferences. My hypotheses are specified along common concepts used in the literature. Based on empirical data the relevance of nonseparable preferences for political science research is demonstrated in chapter 3. Next, chapter 4 presents the design of the laboratory experiment. The effects of nonseparable preferences on collective decision-making are examined in chapter 5. Subsequently, determinants for the motivation function of individuals are scrutinized in chapter 6. In chapter 7 I report the results of the post-experiment survey. All findings are evaluated in chapter 8, where I focus on detailing their usefulness to future research on human behavior. Finally, chapter 9 summarizes the study and lists possibilities to further expand research in this area

Only a dictatorship is efficient

In many, if not most, elections, several different seats must be filled, so that a group of candidates, or an assembly, is selected. Typically in these elections, voters cast their ballots on a seat-by-seat basis. We show that these seat-by-seat procedures are efficient only under extreme conditions.