Congratulations to my friend and colleague Lindsay Stirton and his co-author T.T. Arvind for winning this year's Society of Legal Scholars annual conference best paper prize. Their paper, titled "Using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explain the reception of the Code Napoléon in Germany", uses an innovative technique called Qualitative Comparative Analysis to analyse factors underlying the adoption of the Code Napoleon by different German states in the 19th century.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis, or more commonly known by its abbreviation QCA, is a structured qualitative technique used in sociology and political science. It was developed by Charles Ragin, a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Arizona, in the 1980s. As far as I know, Lindsay and Arvind's paper is the first attempt of using QCA in the study of law.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Using Field Experiments in Economics
Greg Mankiw points to two interesting talks on field experiments by John List and Michael Kremer.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Tom Ulen on the Future Trajectory of Law and Economics
I have just returned from the 5th Annual Conference of the Asian Law and Economics Association held at Seoul, Korea. Tom Ulen was one of the two keynote speakers at the conference, the other being Isaac Ehrlich.
A few points stood up from Tom's talk. Law schools should recast their role as the place which teaches and researches social governance, since law is viewed as an important tool for social goverance. More importantly, law is the one field which opens its door to other social sciences, while other fields are having territorial fights. Tom cites the example of his institution, the Law School at the University of Illinois, as evidence. All recent faculty recruits now have a Ph.D, and since there are no Ph.Ds in law from American law schools, all these Ph.Ds are in other social sciences such as economics, sociology, political science and philosophy. The fact is, the American law school is the place where scholars with diverse academic background converge to jointly think about social issues.
Another point Tom raised in a discussion was the potential prominence of the Empirical Legal Studies movement, potentially surpassing Law and Economics. Unlike the Law and Economics movement which has its own ideological baggage, the ELS movement is to a large extent ideologically free. Sociologists, political scientists, economists and statisticians could all contribute to the ELS movement with their own techniques, knowledge and underlying philosophy with less conflict. I foresee that ELS could be more important in British law schools than Law and Economics could ever dream of. For example, the Facult of Law in UCL under Dame Hazel Genn has renamed their Centre for Socio-Legal Studies to Centre for Empirical Legal Studies to reflect the current shift of emphasis.
A few points stood up from Tom's talk. Law schools should recast their role as the place which teaches and researches social governance, since law is viewed as an important tool for social goverance. More importantly, law is the one field which opens its door to other social sciences, while other fields are having territorial fights. Tom cites the example of his institution, the Law School at the University of Illinois, as evidence. All recent faculty recruits now have a Ph.D, and since there are no Ph.Ds in law from American law schools, all these Ph.Ds are in other social sciences such as economics, sociology, political science and philosophy. The fact is, the American law school is the place where scholars with diverse academic background converge to jointly think about social issues.
Another point Tom raised in a discussion was the potential prominence of the Empirical Legal Studies movement, potentially surpassing Law and Economics. Unlike the Law and Economics movement which has its own ideological baggage, the ELS movement is to a large extent ideologically free. Sociologists, political scientists, economists and statisticians could all contribute to the ELS movement with their own techniques, knowledge and underlying philosophy with less conflict. I foresee that ELS could be more important in British law schools than Law and Economics could ever dream of. For example, the Facult of Law in UCL under Dame Hazel Genn has renamed their Centre for Socio-Legal Studies to Centre for Empirical Legal Studies to reflect the current shift of emphasis.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Galileo Galilei
I've just started my sabbatical research leave. One of the things I would like to do, apart from working on my writing projects, is to read books at the peripheral of my research interest, which at the moment is mathematics. For a starter, I read Atle Naess's Galileo Galilei: When the World Stood Still. Since this is not meant to be a book review, what I can say is that the one lesson from the book is this: Don't to make unnecessary enemies in academia, for otherwise, it will come back to haunt you!
Monday, 5 May 2008
Preliminary Mathematics for Economics
I'm compiling free resources on the Internet on basic mathematics for students who are going into law and economics research. So far, I've found these :
Get them while they're still there.
Get them while they're still there.
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
SLSA 2008 Manchester
Today marks the first day of the Socio-Legal Studies Association annual conference held at Manchester. The conference is organised by the Manchester School of Law, and I must congratulate the organising committee for a job well done.
We also saw the launch of the Legal Empirical Research Support Network website. A brief introduction was given by Martin Partington who was instrumental in getting the network. I shall be keeping a close eye on the progress of this support network.
We also saw the launch of the Legal Empirical Research Support Network website. A brief introduction was given by Martin Partington who was instrumental in getting the network. I shall be keeping a close eye on the progress of this support network.
Friday, 29 February 2008
Get Rich Quick
Words of wisdom from Hal Varian at the Freakonomics blog:
If you are looking for a career where your services will be in high demand, you should find something where you provide a scarce, complementary service to something that is getting ubiquitous and cheap. So what’s getting ubiquitous and cheap? Data. And what is complementary to data? Analysis. So my recommendation is to take lots of courses about how to manipulate and analyze data: databases, machine learning, econometrics, statistics, visualization, and so on.
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