Transaction Costs, Neighborhood Effects, and the Diffusion of the Uniform Sales Act, 1906-47

Coordination in Heterogeneous Federal Systems

“…In the case I = 2, Proposition 8 shows that no symmetry condition is necessary. 26 See Berman (1965) and Honnold (1999) on international sales law, Ribstein and Kobayashi (1996) and Smythe (2008) on the diffusion of uniform laws in the U.S., and Kerr (1929) on the history of the Law Merchant. See also Cooper (1994) for more examples of spontaneous international policy coordination.…”

“…41 A natural conjecture is that legal practitioners and domestic firms will lobby against legal harmonization if it threatens their local monopoly while international firms will lobby in favor of harmonization. See Ribstein and Kobayashi (1996) or Smythe (2008) for an empirical estimate of the influence of legal practitioners on state adoption of uniform laws. See also Redoano (2007) for a model of lobbying in a fiscal federalism setup.…”

“…On legal convergence, see Berman (1965) on international sales law, Hansmann and Kraakman (2001) on corporate governance, Legrand (1996) on the E.U. and Smythe (2008) on the uniform sales act in the U.S. Garoupa and Ogus (2006) and Carbonara and Parisi (2007) propose game-theoretic models of legal convergence.…”

“…Since its founding in 1892, it has drafted over 200 model laws including the Uniform Sales Act. See Ribstein and Kobayashi (1996) on the N.C.C.U.S.L or Smythe (2008) on the Uniform Sales Act. The American Law Institute (ALI) is a group of U.S. legal practitioners that promotes the clarification, simplification, and uniformization of the American common law.…”