This course provides a general introduction to law and the study of law. In addition, the students are made familiar with basic economic concepts and approaches that are necessary for understanding the economic analysis of law. Required mathematical knowledge is also imparted.

The economic analysis of law examines legal regulations and their enforcement from an efficiency perspective. The main objective of this course is to provide students with the basic conceptual tools of microeconomics that can be applied to various economic and regulatory problems. After an in-depth analysis of decisions made by consumers and producers, the most important market structures and questions of risk and uncertainty as well as market failure are discussed.

The modern economic analysis of law is inconceivable without empirical research. This course familiarizes students with the most important aspects of such analyses, from conception to data collection to the actual estimation of simple econometric models. It is a “hands on” course with lots of practical exercises. Participants in this course will learn to think creatively about research design, describe the data, perform OLS regressions, and interpret the data in terms of causality.

The course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of the economic analysis of law. She illustrates the broad benefits of these tools through their application to the analysis of various core areas of law. This course does not aim to develop practical skills or new insights, but rather to demonstrate the broad benefits of economic analysis of law. By combining examples from different areas of law, students learn that the economic approach provides a unified view of law that brings together different areas of law into a common theoretical structure.

This course offers an introduction to the economic analysis of regulation, which is interpreted in the broadest sense as state intervention in market processes. The course illustrates the purposes of regulatory interventions from a welfare economics perspective and discusses the tension between public and private interests in regulatory decisions. A particular focus of the course is on issues of European/international regulation and on cost-benefit analysis.

Competition policy (also called “antitrust policy”) is a broad term for government intervention to ensure competition in markets for goods and services. The aim of this course is to familiarize students with the application of economic arguments in competition law. Comparisons to US antitrust law are included where appropriate to better understand the cases and the impact of laws and court decisions on economic efficiency.

In this course, the goals and functions of contract law are examined from an economic perspective. In addition, a functional understanding of the range of conceivable contracts and their application in legal practice should be conveyed.

The economic analysis of international law is a relatively young area of the Law & Economics department. The course begins by formulating a series of key questions on key issues in international law from an economic perspective. The course looks at the sources of international law and the role of international organizations in its implementation. In addition, the importance of domestic institutions for the implementation of international law is discussed. A large part of the course is devoted to analyzing specific areas of international law (such as investment, trade, but also human rights and refugee law) from an economic perspective.

In this course, the students are familiarized with the basic guidelines and rules that must be observed and followed when writing a thesis. Students learn to view and categorize subject-specific sources of literature.

The students know the relevant specialist literature and relevant sources on the topic of the course attended.
• The students are familiar with the application of economic methods to various legal norms in an international context and can independently analyze the respective differences.
• The students are able to apply the theoretical knowledge they have already learned in practice, e.g. in management consulting.
• The students can identify existing regulatory gaps and formulate policy recommendations.
• The students are familiar with the application of the content in the “Arab region”.

The course Economic Analysis of Corporate Law discusses corporate law and financial market regulation from the perspective of correcting financial market failures. The course focuses on the various legal, contractual and extra-legal mechanisms available to protect (minority) shareholders and other stakeholders from the self-interested behavior of managers and controlling shareholders. In addition, the course deals with the problem of financial distress and its consequences for the financing of private and public companies as well as for financial stability.

In the Economic Analysis of the Judiciary course, students learn about differences in the organization of judicial systems and can analyze their consequences using economic methods.

In this course, the students find a suitable topic for their thesis and formulate a draft (exposé).