Courts in a Transition Economy: Case Disposition and the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Bulgaria

Arbeitspapier

The lack of effective judiciary in post-socialist countries has been a pervasive concern and successful judicial reform an elusive goal. Yet to date, little empirical research exists on the functioning of courts in the post-socialist world. We draw on a new court-level panel dataset from Bulgaria to study the determinants of court case disposition and to evaluate whether judicial decision-making is subject to a quantity-quality tradeoff. Addressing endogeneity concerns, we find that case disposition in Bulgarian courts is largely driven by demand for court services. The number of serving judges, a key court resource, matters to a limited extent only in a subsample of courts, a result suggesting that judges adjust their productivity based on the number of judges serving at a court. We do not find evidence implying that increasing court productivity would decrease adjudicatory quality. We discuss the policy implications of our findings.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 5283

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Legal Institutions; Illegal Behavior ; Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior: General ; Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
• Subject: courts ; post-socialist countries ; case disposition ; quantity-quality tradeoff

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Dimitrova-Grajzl, Valentina ; Grajzl, Peter ; Slavov, Atanas ; Zajc, Katarina
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2015

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/110800
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET