A Number Of Issues. Maritime Economic Analysis

Many researches on concrete legal systems of maritime law are usually devoted to discussing what the system should be, which mainly focus on studying how to use maritime law and how to solve practical problems. As for research methods they also follow the traditional law research method of abstract reasoning on rules and concepts. No doubt, such angle and method of research are important to maritime law, but for further research and development, we need to expand our perspectives and exploit new research method. As a try, this paper places particular emphasis on studying reasonable aspects and efficiency of the systems of maritime law, and mainly uses the method of economic analysis of law.This paper firstly gives the economic analysis of law a brief account of its history, fundamental of theory and basic concepts and assumptions, then analyzes some issues of three systems of maritime law in economic view.Through game theory and establishment of concrete model, this paper argues that both comparative negligence rule and equally divided damages rule are efficient in the field of both to blame collisions, and then compare their efficiency.The new institutional economics is a branch of economics mainly studying institution, including legal system. This paper analyzes two issues of legal system of bills of lading from the view of the new institutional economics. One is the contribution of the system of bills of lading to the cut in transaction cost; the other is some subjects regarding whether to abolish the exemption rule of nautical fault, which discusses the standard that how to assign the duty of nautical fault from the view of reciprocity of issues, explains why the exemption rule of nautical fault would exist in a long term from the perspective of path dependence of institutional change and analyzes the costs and incomes caused by the institutional change of abolishing the exemption rule of nautical fault.Salvage at sea is a particular system of maritime law. This paper doesn'tdiscuss the practical problems about Salvage at sea, but mainly analyzes its ration, explaining why maritime law could not make salvage at sea a duty of civil law from the perspectives of law and economics, and how to inspire people to salvage at sea.This paper tentatively analyzes some issues of maritime law through the research method of economic analysis of law. It may be unilateral and skin-deep and a certain gap between theories and practices may exist. But these analyses are expected to contribute to our understanding of the mainly- introduced maritime law, and benefit the progress of our research and practice of maritime law.Han Bin (international law) Directed by Professor Yin Dongnian...