Timely justice as a determinant of economic growth

Djankov, Simeon (author), Melcarne, Alessandro (author), Battista Ramello, Giovanni (author), Spruk, Rok (author)

We investigate how timeliness in enforcing legal contracts affects economic growth across countries. We focus on judicial timeliness as a proxy for courts’ performance in a large panel of 169 countries over the 2004–2019 period. We show that, by raising uncertainty and promoting opportunistic behaviors in business transactions, slower courts hinder economic development. The relationship is robust to diverse model specifications and appears stronger for business environments more heavily relying on judiciaries such as economies undergoing rapid growth, countries characterized by low human capital and civil law jurisdictions.

• Language: English
• Keywords: economic growth, legislation, institutions, judicial timeliness
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: EF - School of Economics and Business
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 16 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 238, article no. ǂ107235
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-179564
• UDC: 330.3
• ISSN on article: 0167-2681
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107235
• COBISS.SI-ID: 249695491
• Publication date in RUL: 17.02.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of economic behavior & organization
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0167-2681
• COBISS.SI-ID: 28670209

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: ekonomska rast, zakonodaja, institucije