Kevin E Davis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3598152 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin E Davis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin E |
| FAMILY NAME | Davis |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIS K E |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York Law School |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9278-6439 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 172 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The Significance of Foreign Law: A Jamaican Case Study
Analyses of the relationships between law and society often focus exclusively on domestic laws, meaning laws that emanate from domestic sources. This approach is not necessarily appropriate in contexts that involve significant cross-border flows of ideas, information, goods, services, people, or legal authority. In these cases, there are both practical and intellectual reasons to define the set of laws to be analyzed as including all of the laws,…
Corruption and controlling shareholders
Controlling shareholders have been directly involved in some of the largest and most consequential bribery scandals in the world over the course of the last decade. Nevertheless, the academic literature and the dominant international model of anticorruption law have neglected the dynamics and implications of controlling shareholder involvement in the payment of bribes. We argue that controlling shareholders, especially in family-controlled firms,…
Legal Disagreement
Individuals within the same jurisdiction often have different perceptions of the legal system, a phenomenon we call legal disagreement. Cross-country analyses of legal institutions generally ignore this kind of within-country variation. This article defines the concept of legal disagreement, identifies its potential causes and consequences, and shows that it can be measured using data from cross-country surveys. We argue that legal disagreement i…
The limits of evidence-based anti-bribery law
Evidence-based regulation is a term of art that refers to the process of making decisions about regulation based on evidence generated through systematic research. There is increasing pressure to treat evidence-based regulation as a global best practice, including in the area of anti-bribery law. Too little attention has been paid to the fact that under certain conditions evidence-based regulation is likely to be a less appealing method of decisi…
Coordinating the Enforcement of Anti-Corruption Law: South American Experiences
One of the most pressing challenges in anti-corruption law is whether and how to coordinate enforcement across multiple agencies, that is to say, under conditions of institutional multiplicity. One approach is modular enforcement, which involves dividing responsibility for enforcement among multiple institutions that are able, but not required, to coordinate their activities. The relatively impressive performance of Brazil's anti-corruption agenc…
Between Impunity and Imperialism: The Regulation of Transnational Bribery
Between Impunity and Imperialism: The Regulation of Transnational Bribery describes the legal regime that regulates transnational bribery, identifies and explains the rationales that have guided its evolution, and suggests directions for reform. The broad argument is that the current regime embodies a set of values, theories, and practices labeled the “OECD paradigm.” A key premise is that transnational bribery is a serious problem which merits a…
Corruption as a Violation of International Human Rights: A Reply to Anne Peters
Anne Peters proposes to use international human rights law as a lens for analysing corrupt acts or omissions.1 Her proposal fits squarely within the tradition of thinking that ‘every little bit helps’ when it comes to combatting corruption.2 Peters does not offer, however, any convincing reason to believe that human rights analysis is helpful in this context. In other words, she fails to explain how human rights analysis adds value, especially gi…
The World Bank Legal Review, Volume 7 Financing and Implementing the Post-2015 Development Agenda: The Role of Law and Justice Systems
The newly adopted post-2015 development agenda is centered on 17 sustainable development goals to be reached by 2030. This volume of the World Bank Legal Review looks at how law and justice systems can support the financing and implementation of these goals, including the role of the rule of law and economic and social rights. The contributors, including legal scholars, development practitioners, and financial experts, analyze the goals, explore …
The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law
Using a power-knowledge framework, this volume critically investigates how major global indicators of legal governance are produced, disseminated and used, and to what effect. Original case studies include Freedom House's Freedom in the World indicator, the Global Reporting Initiative's structure for measuring and reporting on corporate social responsibility, the World Justice Project's measurement of the rule of law, the World Bank's Doing Busin…
Law and Development of Middle-Income Countries: Avoiding the Middle-Income Trap
In 1960, there were 101 middle-income countries. By 2008, only thirteen of these had become high-income countries. Why do so many middle-income countries fail to develop after a promising start, becoming mired in the so-called middle-income trap? This interdisciplinary volume addresses the special challenges that middle-income countries confront from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. It is the first volume that addresses law and dev…
Legal Indicators: The Power of Quantitative Measures of Law
Legal indicators, sometimes known as rule of law indicators, governance indicators, or indicators of public service performance, are quantitative measures of the performance of legal systems. They are used both as sources of knowledge about societies and as means of governing them (technologies of governance). As a result, these indicators have begun to attract considerable attention from scholars, policy makers, and other actors. Key issues incl…
Transnational Anticorruption Law in Action: Cases from Argentina and Brazil
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the “institutional complementarity theory.” The first case stud…
Governance by Indicators: Global Power through Classification and Rankings
The use of indicators as a technique of global governance is increasing rapidly. Major examples include the World Bank's Doing Business Indicators, the World Bank's Good Governance and Rule of Law indicators, the Millennium Development Goals, and the indicators produced by Transparency International. Human rights indicators are being developed in the UN and regional and advocacy organizations. The burgeoning production and use of indicators has n…
Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance
The use of indicators is a prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Indicators are used to compare and rank states for purposes as varied as deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment and determining whether states have complied with their treaty obligations. This article defines the concept of an indicator, analyzes distinctive features of indicators as technologies of governance, and identifies various ways in which the use …
Institutions and Economic Performance
The field of institutional economics has witnessed a surge in interest over recent years and has attracted the attention of a growing number of social scientists. This topical and highly informative collection brings together critical writings on the relationship between institutions and economic performance. The included works encompass seminal cross-country studies of ‘whether institutions matter’, as well as leading examples of within-country …
Legal Universalism: Persistent Objections
This essay addresses the question of whether there is any set of legal institutions that invariably promotes development. ‘Universalistic’ arguments answer this question in the affirmative. The essay begins by rehearsing classic objections to legal universalism. It then shows how those objections apply to even relatively sophisticated examples of legal universalism that can be derived from the Legal Origins school of thought, the Doing Business p…
Institutions and Economic Performance
Preface * Introduction Part One: History * The Impact of Administrative Power on Political and Economic Developments: Toward a Political Economy of Implementation Avner Greif * The Institutional Origins of the Industrial Revolution Joel Mokyr * Institutions and the Resource Curse in Early Modern Spain Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth * Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas: An Examination of the Engerman-Sokoloff …
The Relationship between Law and Development: Optimists versus Skeptics
Over the past two decades there has been a resurgence of interest, on the part of both academics and practitioners, in using law to promote development in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia. The level of academic interest in the topic is reflected in the publication of three recent books on law and development by prominent American scholars: Thomas Carothers (ed.), PROMOTING THE RULE OF LAW ABROAD: IN SEARCH O…
Taking the Measure of Law: The Case of the Doing Business Project
This article analyzes a number of yearly reports from the World Bank's Doing Business project, an ambitious international effort to measure various aspects of law and development, analyze their interrelationship, develop benchmarks for assessment of legal systems, and suggest legal reforms. After describing the methodology used, we analyze the strengths and limitations of the project, both as a scholarly enterprise and as a set of proposals for l…
Regulation of Technology Transfer to Developing Countries: The Relevance of Institutional Capacity
This article revisits the debate over appropriate approaches to the regulation of technology transfer to developing countries. It begins by contrasting two stylized approaches, labeled for convenience the “New International Economic Order” model and the “Globalization” model, which have historically struggled for acceptance. It then explores the implications for the choice between these or alternative models of the fact that many developing count…
The rules of capitalism
One of the most prominent recent phenomena in the development field is the resurgence of interest in legal institutions. Three decades ago the first law and development movement disintegrated as its leading figures loudly renounced their prior conviction that legal institutions were crucial determinants of a society's prospects for development. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Inspired by the work of scholars such as Douglass North, the ne…
Legal reforms and development
This paper canvasses the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the role that legal institutions play in development. The first part outlines six influential theoretical perspectives on development and their implications for the relationship between law and development. The second part surveys the relevant empirical literature. There is surprisingly little conclusive evidence that reforms in particular substantive areas of law such as pr…
Vicarious Liability, Judgment Proofing, and Non-Profits
This paper addresses the related questions of whether non-profit organizations should be held vicariously liable for the acts of their agents and whether those organizations should be able to avoid liability by engaging in judgment proofing. The central claim is that permitting a non-profit enterprise to engage in judgment proofing should not be presumed to undermine the deterrent effects of imposing vicarious liability. In the context of a for-p…
Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance
The use of indicators is a prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Indicators are used to compare and rank states for purposes as varied as deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment and determining whether states have complied with their treaty obligations. This article defines the concept of an indicator, analyzes distinctive features of indicators as technologies of governance, and identifies various ways in which the use …
Taking the Measure of Law: The Case of the Doing Business Project
This article analyzes a number of yearly reports from the World Bank's Doing Business project, an ambitious international effort to measure various aspects of law and development, analyze their interrelationship, develop benchmarks for assessment of legal systems, and suggest legal reforms. After describing the methodology used, we analyze the strengths and limitations of the project, both as a scholarly enterprise and as a set of proposals for l…
The Relationship between Law and Development: Optimists versus Skeptics
Over the past two decades there has been a resurgence of interest, on the part of both academics and practitioners, in using law to promote development in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia. The level of academic interest in the topic is reflected in the publication of three recent books on law and development by prominent American scholars: Thomas Carothers (ed.), PROMOTING THE RULE OF LAW ABROAD: IN SEARCH O…
Legal Indicators: The Power of Quantitative Measures of Law
Legal indicators, sometimes known as rule of law indicators, governance indicators, or indicators of public service performance, are quantitative measures of the performance of legal systems. They are used both as sources of knowledge about societies and as means of governing them (technologies of governance). As a result, these indicators have begun to attract considerable attention from scholars, policy makers, and other actors. Key issues incl…
Legal reforms and development
This paper canvasses the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the role that legal institutions play in development. The first part outlines six influential theoretical perspectives on development and their implications for the relationship between law and development. The second part surveys the relevant empirical literature. There is surprisingly little conclusive evidence that reforms in particular substantive areas of law such as pr…
Legal Universalism: Persistent Objections
This essay addresses the question of whether there is any set of legal institutions that invariably promotes development. ‘Universalistic’ arguments answer this question in the affirmative. The essay begins by rehearsing classic objections to legal universalism. It then shows how those objections apply to even relatively sophisticated examples of legal universalism that can be derived from the Legal Origins school of thought, the Doing Business p…
Coordinating the Enforcement of Anti-Corruption Law: South American Experiences
One of the most pressing challenges in anti-corruption law is whether and how to coordinate enforcement across multiple agencies, that is to say, under conditions of institutional multiplicity. One approach is modular enforcement, which involves dividing responsibility for enforcement among multiple institutions that are able, but not required, to coordinate their activities. The relatively impressive performance of Brazil's anti-corruption agenc…
Transnational Anticorruption Law in Action: Cases from Argentina and Brazil
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the “institutional complementarity theory.” The first case stud…
The limits of evidence-based anti-bribery law
Evidence-based regulation is a term of art that refers to the process of making decisions about regulation based on evidence generated through systematic research. There is increasing pressure to treat evidence-based regulation as a global best practice, including in the area of anti-bribery law. Too little attention has been paid to the fact that under certain conditions evidence-based regulation is likely to be a less appealing method of decisi…
Regulation of Technology Transfer to Developing Countries: The Relevance of Institutional Capacity
This article revisits the debate over appropriate approaches to the regulation of technology transfer to developing countries. It begins by contrasting two stylized approaches, labeled for convenience the “New International Economic Order” model and the “Globalization” model, which have historically struggled for acceptance. It then explores the implications for the choice between these or alternative models of the fact that many developing count…
Vicarious Liability, Judgment Proofing, and Non-Profits
This paper addresses the related questions of whether non-profit organizations should be held vicariously liable for the acts of their agents and whether those organizations should be able to avoid liability by engaging in judgment proofing. The central claim is that permitting a non-profit enterprise to engage in judgment proofing should not be presumed to undermine the deterrent effects of imposing vicarious liability. In the context of a for-p…
The rules of capitalism
One of the most prominent recent phenomena in the development field is the resurgence of interest in legal institutions. Three decades ago the first law and development movement disintegrated as its leading figures loudly renounced their prior conviction that legal institutions were crucial determinants of a society's prospects for development. Recently, however, the tide has turned. Inspired by the work of scholars such as Douglass North, the ne…
Legal reforms and development
This paper canvasses the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the role that legal institutions play in development. The first part outlines six influential theoretical perspectives on development and their implications for the relationship between law and development. The second part surveys the relevant empirical literature. There is surprisingly little conclusive evidence that reforms in particular substantive areas of law such as pr…
Regulation of Technology Transfer to Developing Countries: The Relevance of Institutional Capacity
This article revisits the debate over appropriate approaches to the regulation of technology transfer to developing countries. It begins by contrasting two stylized approaches, labeled for convenience the “New International Economic Order” model and the “Globalization” model, which have historically struggled for acceptance. It then explores the implications for the choice between these or alternative models of the fact that many developing count…
Taking the Measure of Law: The Case of the Doing Business Project
This article analyzes a number of yearly reports from the World Bank's Doing Business project, an ambitious international effort to measure various aspects of law and development, analyze their interrelationship, develop benchmarks for assessment of legal systems, and suggest legal reforms. After describing the methodology used, we analyze the strengths and limitations of the project, both as a scholarly enterprise and as a set of proposals for l…
Institutions and Economic Performance
Preface * Introduction Part One: History * The Impact of Administrative Power on Political and Economic Developments: Toward a Political Economy of Implementation Avner Greif * The Institutional Origins of the Industrial Revolution Joel Mokyr * Institutions and the Resource Curse in Early Modern Spain Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth * Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas: An Examination of the Engerman-Sokoloff …
The Relationship between Law and Development: Optimists versus Skeptics
Over the past two decades there has been a resurgence of interest, on the part of both academics and practitioners, in using law to promote development in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia. The level of academic interest in the topic is reflected in the publication of three recent books on law and development by prominent American scholars: Thomas Carothers (ed.), PROMOTING THE RULE OF LAW ABROAD: IN SEARCH O…
Institutions and Economic Performance
The field of institutional economics has witnessed a surge in interest over recent years and has attracted the attention of a growing number of social scientists. This topical and highly informative collection brings together critical writings on the relationship between institutions and economic performance. The included works encompass seminal cross-country studies of ‘whether institutions matter’, as well as leading examples of within-country …
Legal Universalism: Persistent Objections
This essay addresses the question of whether there is any set of legal institutions that invariably promotes development. ‘Universalistic’ arguments answer this question in the affirmative. The essay begins by rehearsing classic objections to legal universalism. It then shows how those objections apply to even relatively sophisticated examples of legal universalism that can be derived from the Legal Origins school of thought, the Doing Business p…
Governance by Indicators: Global Power through Classification and Rankings
The use of indicators as a technique of global governance is increasing rapidly. Major examples include the World Bank's Doing Business Indicators, the World Bank's Good Governance and Rule of Law indicators, the Millennium Development Goals, and the indicators produced by Transparency International. Human rights indicators are being developed in the UN and regional and advocacy organizations. The burgeoning production and use of indicators has n…
Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance
The use of indicators is a prominent feature of contemporary global governance. Indicators are used to compare and rank states for purposes as varied as deciding how to allocate foreign aid or investment and determining whether states have complied with their treaty obligations. This article defines the concept of an indicator, analyzes distinctive features of indicators as technologies of governance, and identifies various ways in which the use …
Law and Development of Middle-Income Countries: Avoiding the Middle-Income Trap
In 1960, there were 101 middle-income countries. By 2008, only thirteen of these had become high-income countries. Why do so many middle-income countries fail to develop after a promising start, becoming mired in the so-called middle-income trap? This interdisciplinary volume addresses the special challenges that middle-income countries confront from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. It is the first volume that addresses law and dev…
Legal Indicators: The Power of Quantitative Measures of Law
Legal indicators, sometimes known as rule of law indicators, governance indicators, or indicators of public service performance, are quantitative measures of the performance of legal systems. They are used both as sources of knowledge about societies and as means of governing them (technologies of governance). As a result, these indicators have begun to attract considerable attention from scholars, policy makers, and other actors. Key issues incl…
Transnational Anticorruption Law in Action: Cases from Argentina and Brazil
Debates over whether transnational and international legal institutions are fair, effective, or legitimate responses to corruption of local public officials have an important empirical dimension. We use case studies to examine whether foreign legal institutions serve as fair, effective, and legitimate complements to local anticorruption institutions. We refer to this set of claims as the “institutional complementarity theory.” The first case stud…
The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law
Using a power-knowledge framework, this volume critically investigates how major global indicators of legal governance are produced, disseminated and used, and to what effect. Original case studies include Freedom House's Freedom in the World indicator, the Global Reporting Initiative's structure for measuring and reporting on corporate social responsibility, the World Justice Project's measurement of the rule of law, the World Bank's Doing Busin…
The World Bank Legal Review, Volume 7 Financing and Implementing the Post-2015 Development Agenda: The Role of Law and Justice Systems
The newly adopted post-2015 development agenda is centered on 17 sustainable development goals to be reached by 2030. This volume of the World Bank Legal Review looks at how law and justice systems can support the financing and implementation of these goals, including the role of the rule of law and economic and social rights. The contributors, including legal scholars, development practitioners, and financial experts, analyze the goals, explore …
Corruption as a Violation of International Human Rights: A Reply to Anne Peters
Anne Peters proposes to use international human rights law as a lens for analysing corrupt acts or omissions.1 Her proposal fits squarely within the tradition of thinking that ‘every little bit helps’ when it comes to combatting corruption.2 Peters does not offer, however, any convincing reason to believe that human rights analysis is helpful in this context. In other words, she fails to explain how human rights analysis adds value, especially gi…
Between Impunity and Imperialism: The Regulation of Transnational Bribery
Between Impunity and Imperialism: The Regulation of Transnational Bribery describes the legal regime that regulates transnational bribery, identifies and explains the rationales that have guided its evolution, and suggests directions for reform. The broad argument is that the current regime embodies a set of values, theories, and practices labeled the “OECD paradigm.” A key premise is that transnational bribery is a serious problem which merits a…
The limits of evidence-based anti-bribery law
Evidence-based regulation is a term of art that refers to the process of making decisions about regulation based on evidence generated through systematic research. There is increasing pressure to treat evidence-based regulation as a global best practice, including in the area of anti-bribery law. Too little attention has been paid to the fact that under certain conditions evidence-based regulation is likely to be a less appealing method of decisi…
Coordinating the Enforcement of Anti-Corruption Law: South American Experiences
One of the most pressing challenges in anti-corruption law is whether and how to coordinate enforcement across multiple agencies, that is to say, under conditions of institutional multiplicity. One approach is modular enforcement, which involves dividing responsibility for enforcement among multiple institutions that are able, but not required, to coordinate their activities. The relatively impressive performance of Brazil's anti-corruption agenc…
Legal Disagreement
Individuals within the same jurisdiction often have different perceptions of the legal system, a phenomenon we call legal disagreement. Cross-country analyses of legal institutions generally ignore this kind of within-country variation. This article defines the concept of legal disagreement, identifies its potential causes and consequences, and shows that it can be measured using data from cross-country surveys. We argue that legal disagreement i…
Corruption and controlling shareholders
Controlling shareholders have been directly involved in some of the largest and most consequential bribery scandals in the world over the course of the last decade. Nevertheless, the academic literature and the dominant international model of anticorruption law have neglected the dynamics and implications of controlling shareholder involvement in the payment of bribes. We argue that controlling shareholders, especially in family-controlled firms,…
The Significance of Foreign Law: A Jamaican Case Study
Analyses of the relationships between law and society often focus exclusively on domestic laws, meaning laws that emanate from domestic sources. This approach is not necessarily appropriate in contexts that involve significant cross-border flows of ideas, information, goods, services, people, or legal authority. In these cases, there are both practical and intellectual reasons to define the set of laws to be analyzed as including all of the laws,…
Political science (21 works) · Law (16 works) · Business (13 works) · Corruption and Economic Development (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Law and economics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Politics (8 works) · Corporate governance (7 works)