From 20 to 22 July 2016, the 14th annual congress took place at Andrássy University Budapest, organized by Professor Dr. Martina Eckardt, who has been a board member of the Association since 2014.

In the opening session, Professor Dr. Stefan Okruch, Dean of the Faculty of International Relations, and Professor Dr. Roland Kirstein, President of the German Law and Economics Association, welcomed more than 30 participants from four continents. During the two conference days, the participants shared their research findings at the crossroads of law and economics in three parallel sessions.

The presentations covered a broad variety of topics, ranging from the empirical analysis of violations of human rights to contract enforcement, environmental taxation, individual and collective copyrights, and open access in academia. The presentations highlighted the diverse interrelations of law and economics in various fields.

Professor Shubha Ghosh, one of the leading researchers in the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) from Syracuse University College of Law, held the key note lecture. He elaborated on the influence of precedence on IPRs in the Anglo-Saxon common law system. Against the background of differential treatment of obligations to pay patent royalties after the expiration of a patent, Professor Ghosh discussed the influence of precedence on trust, competition, and contract design. According to Professor Gosh, the Anglo-Saxon law system cannot be considered to lead to more efficient innovations in law than the continental European one, as counter to the prevailing opinion, the differences between the two law systems are matters of degree rather than kind.

During the following general assembly, Professor Dr. Hans-Bern Schäfer from Bucerius Law School Hamburg, one of the founding fathers of the German Law and Economics Association, was awarded the honorary membership for his contributions to the Association. An informal get-together and a conference dinner completed the conference program.

Jutta Berg