Significant intellectual and financial resources have been committed to decentralization projects in the developing world based on the idea that federal constitutional systems and local government autonomy will encourage economic growth. These efforts have been premised in part on scholars’ claims that the federalism of nineteenth and early twentieth century America generated the nation’s enormous economic growth. This Article challenges the claim that political decentralization promotes economic development in two ways. First, by looking closely at the legal history of local autonomy in the United States, it shows that the shifting legal status of cities vis-a-vis their states — which has resulted in alternative bouts of centralization and decentralization — did not cause economic growth. If anything, shifts in the degree of formal local power can be better understood as a consequence of economic growth. Second, it invokes newer work in economic geography that suggests that economic development is unavoidably uneven across jurisdictions and that the reason some places do well economically and others do poorly may have more to do with luck or path dependency than with particular legal institutions. For lawyers the stakes are high for we are told that law and legal frameworks — like the vertical division of authority — can make a great deal of difference to economic welfare. But this understanding of law does not take into account the spatial reality of economic development or the circular relationship between economic growth and legal change. This does not mean that the vertical distribution of powers does not matter — it does, but not in the ways that the decentralization-growth thesis presumes.
En række amerikanske præsidentkandidater og kongresmedlemmer er i de sidste år begyndt at argumentere for, at USA burde lancere militære angreb mod...
Research correlating stringency in land-use regulation to low housing supply, high housing costs, and segregation relies on surveys of planners about...
There is concern that present-biased agents incur too much debt because of its deferred costs – concern that has influenced regulation of consumer...
Lenders are perfectly free to decide for themselves whether, when, how, to whom and on what terms they will extend credit to a sovereign borrower. But...
False information causes harm, threatening individuals, groups, and society. Many people struggle to judge the veracity of the information around them...
Cities have been largely absent from the theory and legal doctrine of federalism, especially in the United States, where federalism is understood to...
This article examines the impact of Greece retroactively, via legislation, changing the terms in hundreds of billions of euros worth of Greek...
The Supreme Court’s recent expansion of the major questions doctrine has rocked administrative law, throwing into doubt executive agencies’ statutory...
Income inequality is a national preoccupation, and the public’s imagination is captured by the astronomical incomes of Valley tech billionaires and...
There is a live debate going on over whether antitrust should take a broader view of the economics of market concentration. When antitrust reformers...
We examine the legal terms in the market for green bonds, debt instruments in which proceeds are earmarked, directly or indirectly, for projects with...
The SEC mandates that public companies assess new information that changes the risks that they face and disclose these if there has been a “material”...
Countries hit by unexpected crises often look to their overseas diasporas for assistance. Some countries have tapped into this generosity of their...
The conventional view is that standardized boilerplate terms represent an optimal contractual solution to the contracting problems facing parties in...
In an era defined by partisan rifts and government gridlock, many celebrate the rare issues that prompt bipartisan consensus. But extreme consensus...
Consequential damages have been a cornerstone of contract doctrine since the broken crankshaft in Hadley v. Baxendale. And the Hadley rule is one of...
In this article, we examine the relations between risk, the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters), and maturity in the sovereign debt...