In the first module of the course, Transaction Cost Economics and Private Law, participants will discuss the basic assumptions underlying the market model.
In debating the realism of these assumptions, participants will analyze how information about products, sellers, and buyers is often extremely costly to acquire in the market.
These transaction costs,
participants will discover, often prevent socially beneficial exchanges. With a heavy reading load introducing participants to internationally recognized classics,
like Ronald Coase’s "The Problem of Social Cost," daily problem sets, and lively classroom discussions, participants will analyze how properly designed legal rules can facilitate
social welfare by reducing these costs. (See Appendix I for a detailed description of each class).
During the second module, Negotiating in an Imperfect Legal Environment, participants will apply their newly honed analytical
skills in an intensive negotiation seminar taught by the National University of Singapore Law Faculty.
Working in teams, participants will develop negotiation skills as they encounter problems of information asymmetry,
opportunistic behavior by adverse parties, and poorly designed legal rules. By applying their skills to real life situations in Vietnam,
the negotiation module will reinforce the role of legal policymakers as problem solvers.
In the third module, Corporate Governance and Regulating the Market, participants will transition from the consideration of individual economic actors to analyzing firm organization.
If the market is efficient, why are so many commercial activities organized within a firm? Discussing the theory of corporate organization, limited investor liability,
and competition policy from an economic perspective, the corporate module will expand participant’s ability to apply transaction cost economics to various legal institutions and organizational arrangements.
In the final module, Case Analysis for Law and Economics, participants will work in groups to analyze a current issue facing Vietnam’s legal policymakers.
The issue, framed in a fact-based case implicating real life problems, will require participants to apply their new tools for economic analysis of legal rules.
Next, on the final day of the intensive two-week course, participants will prepare questions based on the case analysis in preparation for an interactive panel discussion with distinguished Vietnamese legal and economic policy makers.
In addition to classroom discussions, negotiation seminars and case analyses, The Economic Foundations and Public Policy Implications of Legal Rules short-course will host a series of working lunches with leading investors, bankers,
policymakers and lawyers. During these informal lunches, participants will have the opportunity to explore how legal rules directly effect, for better and worse, decisionmaking in the business sector.
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