On Economic Analysis of International Law/ Analyse Economique de la Loi Internationale (Report‪)‬

1. INTRODUCTION It could be traced back 1930s when the economic analysis was applied for domestic laws. (2) It has been more than thirty years since Richard Posner published his famous book Economic Analysis of Laws in 1973. (3) But, it was the recent development in last decade that economic analysis was applied for international laws. In spring of 1995, a symposium was held in the United States to discuss the economic analysis of international laws, and then the collection of seventeen papers was published entitled as The Economic Dimension of International Law (4) focused on international trade laws from perspectives of micro-economics, normative economic analysis, game theory and theory of public choice. As the matter of fact, people began to apply economic analysis for international law when the World Trade Organization (WTO) was established in 1995 due to global harmonization of the trade laws and policies. For example, Professor John Jackson, the chief editor of book Legal Problems of International Economic Relations (5), was widely regarded as one of the institutional designers of the WTO. He prefers economic analysis of legal issues in respect of government regulations of international trade based on traditional theory of comparative advantages and modern theory of market failure. He encourages applying the New Institutional Economics of two winners of Nobel Rewards of Economics, Professor Ronald Coase and Professor Douglas North, for the research of future development of the world trading system. (6) John Jackson's idea has been taken to initiate "the revolution of international economic law" because of its implication of theories of transaction costs and institutional evolution for study of international economic law. (7) In 1999, two American international lawyers, Jeffery L. Dunoff and Joel P. Trachtman contributed their landmark article on economic analysis of international law with more applications of economics of transaction costs, theory of games and economics of information for the legal disciplines of international treaty and international organization, (8) which was of great significance for its extension to the wide coverage of international laws although its focus was still on international economic relations. In July 2004,Professor Alan O. Syke, the co-editor of mentioned books The Economic Dimension of International Law and Legal Problems of International Economic Relations, presented his paper on economics of public international laws at the seminar of Law & Economics held by Chicago Law School. It extends economic analysis further into many subjects of public international laws such as protection for human rights. (9) Therefore, it seems to the Law & Economics scholars that there are no limitations in applications of economic analysis for international laws.