Encyclopedia of Law and Economics

The holy grail of online reference works is a Web site that duplicates a valuable print source but with improved functionality at a lower price The online Encyclopedia of Law and Economics is just such a deal. While the print edition weighs in at a hefty $1,390, the online incarnation is totally free.

Law and Economics is a somewhat obscure multidisciplinary field that applies economic analysis to the study and development of law. The movement has adherents among American law professors and supporters among academic economists, but it has made few strides outside the US academy. The editors and contributors involved with the Encyclopedia of Law and Economics hope to change this by making the scattered law and economics literature more accessible.

The Encyclopedia includes articles and bibliographies dedicated to specific subjects in law and economics. In five volumes spanning more than 4,000 pages, it covers every major topic in the discipline. The articles consist of literature reviews written by eminent scholars from both the USA and abroad. These reviews are academic in both tone and subject, but non‐technical and quite well written. Each article includes an impressive bibliography that lists relevant law review and journal articles, conference proceedings, treatises and book chapters.

The online Encyclopedia provides all of the material in the print edition as individual PDF files that can be viewed using Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader plug‐in. While the articles are not searchable, the bibliographies are, turning the online Encyclopedia into an impressive database of law and economics sources. Unfortunately, the search interface is not especially intuitive and may confuse some users. Furthermore, the material is arranged according to a unique subject classification scheme. This scheme was designed as a compromise between arrangements based on Anglo‐American common law and Continental civil law systems. This compromise may well confuse legal scholars from both traditions and leave other users quite bewildered. Luckily, the table of contents is short enough to scan without using the classification system.

Online, the Encyclopedia is available both from the University of Ghent in Belgium, where the editors are located, and through FindLaw, a free legal Web site owned by the West Group publishing company. I suggest using the FindLaw version. It has a cleaner, more attractive interface, and FindLaw has a strong reputation as a premier legal research site. Whichever version you choose, I strongly recommend the online Encyclopedia of Law and Economics for all academic libraries and other libraries that support public policy making. The Encyclopedia is the best available introduction to the literature in this growing field. While the online implementation is not perfect, it is at least as useful as the print edition at a much better price.

This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 1 2002.