The Center for the Economic Analysis of Law (CEAL) is a non-profit research institute that provides legal and economic analysis of public policy issues. It emphasizes the economic analysis of legal policy options and the development of alternative legal approaches that have more desirable economic consequences. CEAL undertakes these projects under contract with governments, international agencies, and non-governmental bodies or, where appropriate, from its own resources. CEAL has undertaken projects with the Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, U.S. Library of Congress (GLIN), the Harvard Law School, and with the Governments of Honduras, Nicaragua, Romania, Jamaica, Ukraine, and El Salvador.

This year, CEAL's work program will focus on the legal and regulatory framework for property rights, including secured transactions, legal impediments to private sector development, and on the development of indicators of reform in these areas.

I. Lending and Access to Credit:

This work includes the legal and regulatory environment for secured loans and guarantees -- using both personal property and real estate as collateral. As extensions of this work, CEAL plans efforts on the impact of the legal and regulatory environment on access to credit by the poor; the effects of laws and regulations on investment and production decisions that affect land use, conservation, and timber; and the modernization and linking of legal registry systems.

CEAL has mounted its Model Filing Archive for Secured Transactions, a system that has been implemented, with World Bank support, in Romania.

II. Commercial Registration:

In these projects, CEAL analyzes the public policy issues involved in different legal and regulatory frameworks for the registration of businesses. Successful reforms simplify business creation, facilitate investment, and promote the formalization of enterprises previously operating without legal sanction. CEAL's emphasis is on legal systems of commercial registration that achieve sound economic objectives and that permit technically advanced solutions to the problems of registration, including the one-stop shop (ventanilla única).

III. Civil Registration:

Civil registration systems crucially affect the ability of citizens to participate in the formal economic system in their countries, as well as to vote. CEAL's approach applies legal and economic research together with programming and systems analysis that permit achieving key public policy objectives in economically sound ways, while using the full range of current technologies.

IV. The CEAL Method

CEAL's approach broadly rests on the view that legal solutions must be subject at each stage of drafting to a careful economic analysis of their consequences in the particular country setting. While the desirability of different legal approaches often cannot be settled by their economic consequences, political consensus can typically be achieved more rapidly when the public policy consequences of each approach are well understood. Similarly, CEAL examines the law and technical options simultaneously, because the barrier to many new technologies arises mainly from legal impediments that rest on concerns about public policy issues that must be resolved before the new technique is delivered. CEAL projects, therefore, typically rely on a mixed team of economists, attorneys, and technical experts and the techniques at which they are expert.

V. CEAL's Research Associates:

Ronald C.C. Cuming, Professor Law, University of Saskatchewan
Fernando Cantuarias Salaverry, Dean of the Law School, Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas
Heywood Fleisig, Economist, Washington, DC
Alejandro Garro, Professor of Law, Columbia University
Lance Girton, Professor of Economics, University of Utah
Roberto A. Muguillo, Mascheroni, Couso & Muguillo, Buenos Aires
Nuria de la Peña, Attorney, Washington, DC
J. A. Spanogle, Professor of Law, The George Washington University
Peter A. Winship, Professor of Law, Southern Methodist University

VI. Projects Underway:

CEAL and its associates are actively involved in projects in the following countries:

CEAL and its associates have completed projects in these countries:

V. Further Information:

For further information about CEAL and a list of its publications, contact the Administrative office at the address below or by E-mail at CEAL@CEAL.ORG. Many of CEAL’s publications and draft laws are available at this website, www.ceal.org.

Last updated 03/2005