Law and economics is a significant field of analysis in legal studies and in economics, although there have been a number of controversies about how best to understand the relationship between economic relations and the regulatory role of law. Rather than surveying this field and offering a criticism of various theories and engaging in the dispute between different perspectives on the relationship between the two, in this article I take an approach rooted in neither mainstream economics nor in formal legal philosophy. Rather drawing on a recent well-rounded statement of behavioural economics and a synthesis of previous work on the narrative of the rule of law, I seek to explore how and why contemporary capitalism seems to have become so tied up with the rule of law, and what this might tell us more generally about the role of law in market relations. This analysis goes beyond the relatively commonplace observation that capitalism requires property rights, contract law and market institutionalisation to function, to ask ‘what exactly is it about the rule of law that seems so necessary to establishing and maintaining market exchange(s)?’

中文翻译：

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市场交易与法治：对可预测性的信心

法律和经济学是法律研究和经济学中一个重要的分析领域，尽管关于如何最好地理解经济关系与法律的调节作用之间的关系存在许多争议。在本文中，我没有研究这个领域，没有提出各种理论的批评，也没有就两者之间的关系引起不同观点之间的争执，而是采取了既不扎根于主流经济学又不扎根于正式法律哲学的方法。我宁愿借鉴最近关于行为经济学的全面报告和对法治叙事的先前工作的综合，而试图探索当代资本主义如何和为什么如此与法治联系在一起，以及这可能更全面地告诉我们法律在市场关系中的作用。这种分析超越了相对普遍的观察，即资本主义需要财产权，合同法和市场制度化才能发挥作用，而是要问：“对于建立和维持市场交换看来必要的法治到底是什么？”