The Third Meeting of the Economic Assessment of International Commercial Law Reform Project

The Project is a joint undertaking between the Commercial Law Centre of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford and the UNIDROIT Foundation with the aim of systematically and rigorously assessing the economic impact (EA) of international commercial law reform (ICLR) through examining the empirical effects of legal change. The objective of this meeting was to agree on the revised analytic framework (the framework) and notes to the framework; to promote the use of the framework by international organisations and governments and to examine its practical application; and to continue work on the best practice guidelines.

The meeting was chaired by Professor Jeffrey Wool (Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College) who led the discussion on the revised framework and its key variables (reproduced below). This was followed by an introduction to the MAC Protocol EA (William Brydie-Watson, UNIDROIT), and a discussion of the EA process and how this relates to the framework by economists Ken Warwick (Warwick Economics) and Peter Dodd (Vital Economics). The meeting concluded with a discussion of the framework application document (examining the application of the framework to contract, arbitration, secured transactions, and insolvency law) and the revised best practice guidelines (Jenifer Varzaly, Cambridge University). Together, the framework and best practice guidelines aim to ensure that the EA process will be a central part of the international commercial law decision making process, will systematically quantify benefits and costs (ex ante and ex post), and will result in better regulation.