The fifth workshop of the Economic Assessment of International Commercial Law Reform Project

The fifth workshop of the Economic Assessment of International Commercial Law Reform Project was held on 10-11 April 2019 at the headquarters of Unidroit in Rome, Italy.

 

This project is a joint undertaking between the UNIDROIT Foundation, the Commercial Law Centre of Harris Manchester College at Oxford University, and the Global Business Law Institute at the University of Washington. Its purpose is to develop a uniform analytical framework for economic assessments of international commercial law reform so as to  improve the quality of economic assessments underpinning international commercial law reform. Higher quality assessments will allow international organisations and national governments to identify and prioritise reforms that will have the most significant economic benefits.

The fifth workshop was chaired jointly by Professor Ignacio Tirado, Secretary-General of Unidroit, and Professor Jeffrey Wool, President of the Unidroit Foundation.It sought to build upon the outcomes of the first, second, third and fourth workshops, and work towards delineating the specific scope of the variables which form part of the analytical framework produced by the project group. Invited experts presented papers on specific issues within the framework, these included:

•  ‘The Relationship between the framework’s variables’ (Andrew Myburgh, IFC, and Professor Jordi Paniagua University of Valencia).
• ‘The application of the framework during different phases of a commercial law reform project’ (Unidroit Secretariat, with comments from Dr Juan Mora Sanguinetti, Bank of Spain).
•  ‘Applying the Economic Assessment of International Commercial Law Reform Project Framework to Domestic Assessments’ (Professor John Linarelli, University of Durham)
• A discussion on the elements within Variable D of the framework, led by Professor Jeffrey Wool.

The workshop brought together lawyers, economists, and academics from various international organisations, national banks and leading universities from across the world. The participants discussed each of the framework’s variables individually in small focus groups to refine their scope and operation. At the conclusion of the workshop, the framework was updated to reflect this discussion. The next step in the project will be the creation of a Best Practice Guide which will explain how the framework should be applied to different types of commercial law reform instruments. The Guide will also consider the scope and relationship of each variable in further detail, as well as their applicability in ex ante and ex post economic assessments.

A full report for this meeting will be made available in August 2019.

The sixth workshop for this project is scheduled to take place in 2020. For more information, please contact info@unidroitfoundation.org.