ABSTRACT
More recently the debate has been essentially empirical. 1 The so-called legal origins theory sees law as exogenous to the analysis, since historically most countries received their law through colonial transplantation. Its proponents divided countries on group adhering to common law or to three distinct families of civil law, French, German and Scandinavian, and tried to fi nd correlations between such groups and economic indicators. This new literature defends the premise that legal systems with origins in the English common law have superior institutions for economic growth and development than those of French civil law for two reasons. 2 First, common law provides more adequate institutions for fi nancial markets and business transactions, which in turn fuels more economic growth. 3 Second, French civil law presupposition of a greater role for state intervention is detrimental for economic freedom and market effi ciency. 4 For a clearer view of the world division based on legal families see the image hereunder.
