The Puzzling Underuse of Arbitration in Post-Communism: A Law and Economics Analysis

The paper attempts to explain the failure of postcommunist traders exemplified by Balkan traders to make use of arbitration courts by means of the rational choice of forum approach offered by the law and economics movement. Conjectures about traders? behaviour derived by combining this approach with the constraints set by institutional features of Balkan countries, in particular Bulgaria and Croatia, are confronted with experience. As it turns out the successes yielded by the rational choice of forum approach are very limited. This may be a dissapointment to its most fervent advocates, but is nevertheless useful, because it suggests a more flexible approach.