Econo-Legal Studies: Thinking Through the Lenses of Economics and Law

This book is the first attempt to establish a collaborative and interdisciplinary field of economics and legal studies. It is designed to help readers – advanced undergraduate and graduate students, but also fellow scholars who are interested in interdisciplinarity – to think through the dual lenses of economics and law. “Econo-Legal Studies,” as we call it, is an economics that pays greater attention to the perspective and heritage of legal studies, and at the same time legal studies that fully utilize the views and methods of economics – while “law and economics” is just a one-way economic approach to law focusing on the effects of the latter on efficiency. The aim of this book is to encourage readers to think like economists and, at the same time, legal scholars as they analyze complex real-world issues. It presents stimulating discussions on the intersection of law and economics, the differences and unexpected similarities between the two perspectives, and the new insights to begained when approaching a problem from both angles. For this purpose, the extensive corpus of knowledge produced within the framework of the Econo-Legal Studies interdisciplinary program at Kobe University can be capitalized on. Basic knowledge of both economics and law is also included in this volume, making it an engaging read for beginners in both fields as well.

Takashi Yanagawa is a professor at the Faculty of Economics at Setsunan University and a professor emeritus at Kobe University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and focuses on industrial organization. He was a professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Kobe University until 2021 and was the director of the Interfaculty Initiative in the Social Sciences at Kobe University from 2014 to 2016. As well, he was the vice-dean of the Organization for Advanced and Integrated Research at Kobe University from 2016 to 2020 and the president of the Japan Economic Policy Association from 2016 to 2019. He is a co-editor of the International Journal of Economic Policy Studies (Springer).

Hiroshi Takahashi is a professor at the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University. He received his LL.M. from The University of Tokyo. His major academic focus is the sociology of law. He was the secretary general of the Japanese Association of Sociology of Law from 2017 to 2020, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Japanese Arbitration and ADR from 2016 to 2019, and the vice-dean of the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University from 2019 to 2021.

Shinya Ouchi is a professor at the Graduate School of Law at Kobe University. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo and specializes in labor law and employment policy. He became the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs, Kobe University, in 2020, and is a board member of the Japanese Industrial Relations Research Association (JIRRA). He received the 22nd Annual Award for Research Monographs on Labour from the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT) in 2000. The focus of his recent research includes the impacts of digitalization, robotics, and artificial intelligence on the labor market. Dr. Ouchi's co-edited works include Labour Law in Motion: Diversification of the Labour Forceand Terms and Conditions of Employment (Roger Blanpain and Takashi Araki, co-editors; Kluwer 2004); Decentralizing Industrial Relations and the Role of Labor Unions and Employee Representatives (Roger Blanpain and Takashi Araki, co-editors; Kluwer 2007); Reconsidering unfair dismissal in Japan: Design of the monetary compensation system (Daiji Kawaguchi, co-editor; Yuhikaku, Tokyo, 2018); and Severance Payment and Labor Mobility: A Comparative Study of Taiwan and Japan (Tatsuo Hatta, co-editor; Springer Nature, Singapore, 2018).