Social Capital and the Formal Legal System
―Evidence from Prefecture-Level Data in Japan―
March 20, 2014 6:30 PM (finished)
J. Mark Ramseyer
(Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard Law School; Visiting Professor, University of Tokyo Faculty of Law)
| Date/Time | March 20, 2014 6:30 PM |
|---|---|
| Location | Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo [map] |
| Abstract | Verifiable proxies for social capital potentially provide an empirically tractable way to identify environments where social norms both constrain behavior and substitute for judicial enforcement. Using regression and factor analysis with Japanese prefecture-level data, I test several facets of this proposition. First, people in prefectures with high levels of social capital more readily comply with a range of low-level legal mandates. Second, reflecting the fact that social norms need not point toward government-approved ends, taxpayers in high social-capital prefectures (particularly in the agricultural sector) are more -- not less -- likely to evade taxes. Third, conditional on levels of economic welfare: (a) firms in prefectures with low levels of social capital are more likely to default on their contracts; (b) residents in low social-capital prefectures are probably (the results are ambiguous) more likely to litigate; (c) distressed debtors in low social-capital prefectures are more likely to file in court for bankruptcy protection; and (d) creditors of distressed debtors in low social-capital prefectures are more likely to apply in court for enforcement orders. |
| Bio | Mark Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard Law School and Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law. He spent most of his childhood in provincial towns and cities in southern Japan, attending Japanese schools for K-6. He returned to the U.S. for college. Before attending law school, he studied Japanese history in graduate school. Ramseyer graduated from HLS in 1982. He clerked for the Hon. Stephen Breyer (then on the First Circuit), worked for two years at Sidley & Austin (in corporate tax), and studied as a Fulbright student at the University of Tokyo. After teaching at UCLA and the University of Chicago, he came to Harvard in 1998. He has also taught or co-taught courses at several Japanese universities (in Japanese). In his research, Ramseyer primarily studies Japanese law, and primarily from a law & economics perspective. In addition to a variety of Japanese law courses, he teaches the basic Corporations course. With Professors Klein and Bainbridge, he co-edits a Foundation Press casebook in the field. |
