The high reactivity of ethyl 4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylates is governed by the simultaneous presence of the 4-OH and 2-C=O groups in the pyridine part of the molecule.Ethyl 4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylates are known to be quite powerful acylating agents. They readily react with primary and many secondary aliphatic, aromatic, and heterocyclic amines to form the corresponding amides in high yields [2][3][4][5]. The almost unlimited potential for modification of the quinolone and amide parts of the molecule allows a targeted change to the physicochemical and hence biological properties of the indicated compounds. This has led to increased interest from the viewpoint of chemists and pharmacologists engaged in a search for novel biologically active compounds based on them and which can give rise to medicinal compounds with improved properties There is also interest in the theoretical question regarding the reason for the high reactivity of the ethyl 4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylates which are key in such investigations because the reason remains unclear. Our report attempts to answer the question.The first step in our investigation was a comparative analysis of the steric structural features of the simplest member of the homologous series, i.e. ester 1 and of the isomers 4-ethoxycarbonyl-3-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline (2) and 3-ethoxycarbonyl-4-hydroxy-1-oxo-1,2-dihydroisoquinoline (3) stable to amidation. With this aim, all three esters were studied by X-ray structural analysis. Hence in the case of the isoquinoline derivative 3 it was found that the heterocyclic fragment is planar to within 0.022 Å (see Fig.