Economic Development, Legality, and the Transplant Effect

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  • 1 January 2001
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      • Published in RePEc
Abstract
We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from forty-nine countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal orders internally, adapted the transplanted law, and/or had a population that was already familiar with basic principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than countries that received foreign law without any similar pre-dispositions. The transplanting process has a strong indirect effect on economic development via its impact on legality, while the impact of particular legal families is weaker and not robust to alternative legality measures.

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