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Welcome to ALACDE

About ALACDE

Established in 1995, the Latin American and Caribbean Law and Economics Association (ALACDE) is a private, nonprofit organisation. A principal activity of the ALACDE, which groups all the main countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, is the organisation's annual law-and-economics meeting, held throughout the continent. This meeting is designed to provide an open-door forum for academic exchanges beyond borders and to enhance cross-border understanding in the legal profession. Founded by a group of legal scholars led by Andrés Roemer, its stated mission is to promote awareness, advancement and development of legal research employing the tools of economic analysis; and to keep law schools in Latin America and the Caribbean abreast with the latest findings and ground-breaking work in the field. The organisation maintains its own Web site, disseminates research, teaching tools, and information on law and economics, translates scholarly literature in the field into Spanish and Portuguese, and collaborates with others to promote inter-university cooperation between the law faculties of Europe and the Americas.

Board 2007/2008

President:
    Flavia Santinoni Vera

Secretary:
    Ivo Teixeira Gico Júnior

Past-Presidents:
    Horacio Spector
    Robert D. Cooter
    Rafael Mery Nieto
    Alfredo Bullard
    Andrés Roemer
    Edgardo Buscaglia

 

Why combine the fields of law and economics?

As a combined field, "law and economics" attempts to apply the scientific methods of mainstream economics (including statistics, price theory, cost-benefit analysis, the modern assumption of ordinal utility and revealed preference, transaction cost economics, blackboard game theory) to behaviors that previously had been analysed solely by appeal to the history and intuitions of the law. Law-and-economics scholars are preoccupied with the consequences of laws and judicial decisions in a variety of fields. The consequences of the legal system, in terms of economic development, and, eventually, on our standard of living, can be drastic.

Mainstream economics in the 21st century no longer boasts of being able to reduce the world to mathematical certainty; all it can do is attach probabilities to possible states of the world. It is a modest, chastened social science. Accordingly, mainstream economic analysts of law are quintessentially pragmatists and mistrust grand theories and sweeping propositions.

 

Suggested Literature

One of the most common requests made of the ALACDE is for book recommendations. The following recommended bibliography by Caribbean and Latin American authors may be helpful for those who want to read further on the subject in Spanish or Portuguese:

     
| Contacts: alacde@interlegis.gov.br | alacde@ajsl.us |