Skip Navigation


American Law and Economics Review Advance Access originally published online on April 10, 2008
American Law and Economics Review 2008 10(1):61-89; doi:10.1093/aler/ahn003
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
10/1/61    most recent
ahn003v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Leeson, P. T.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Related Collections
Right arrow F10 - General
Right arrow F53 - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
Right arrow F55 - International Institutional Arrangements
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Law and Economics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

How Important is State Enforcement for Trade?

Peter T. Leeson

George Mason University

Send correspondence to: Peter T. Leeson, Department of Economics, George Mason University, MSN 3G4, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA; E-mail: pleeson{at}gmu.edu

JEL Classification: F10, F53, F55


  Abstract

According to conventional wisdom, state-provided contract enforcement is critical to an expansive, growing trade. This paper estimates state enforcement's impact on international trade for one hundred and fifty-seven countries over the last half a century. I find that state enforcement increases trade between nations by about fifteen to thirty-eight percent. This effect is significant though modest compared to intuition about the importance of government enforcement, the long-run growth of trade, and the estimated effect of trade's other determinants. Thus, while state enforcement appears to enhance trade, it does so less impressively than its status as essential for flourishing trade tends to suggest.

I thank Pete Boettke, Chris Coyne, Tyler Cowen, John Donohue, Michael Makowsky, Andrew Rose, Jesse Shapiro, Andrei Shleifer, Russell Sobel, Thomas Stratmann, Bob Subrick, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks are also owed to the ICC, LCIA, and ICDR for generously providing me with arbitration data.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.