About Alacde

Established in 1995, the Latin American and Iberian Law and Economics Association (Alacde) is a private, nonprofit organization. A principal activity of the Alacde, which groups all the main countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and Iberia, is the organization's annual law-and-economics meeting.   This meeting is designed to provide an open-door forum for academic exchanges beyond borders and to enhance cross-border understanding in the legal profession. Founded by a group of legal scholars led by Andrés Roemer, Edgardo Buscaglia and Robert Cooter, its stated mission is to promote awareness, advancement and development of legal research employing the tools of economic analysis; and to keep law schools in Latin America, the Caribbean and Iberia abreast with the latest findings and ground-breaking work in the field. The organization maintains this web site, disseminates research, teaching tools, and information on law and economics, translates scholarly literature in the field into Spanish and Portuguese, and collaborates with others to promote inter-university cooperation between the law faculties of Europe and the Americas.

Why combine the fields of law and economics?
As a combined field, "law and economics" attempts to apply the scientific methods of mainstream economics (including statistics, price theory, cost-benefit analysis, the modern assumption of ordinal utility and revealed preference, transaction cost economics, blackboard game theory) to behaviors that previously had been analysed solely by appeal to the history and intuitions of the law. Law-and-economics scholars are preoccupied with the consequences of laws and judicial decisions in a variety of fields. The consequences of the legal system, in terms of economic development, and, eventually, on our standard of living, can be drastic.

Mainstream economics in the 21st century no longer boasts of being able to reduce the world to certainty; all it can do is attach probabilities to possible states of the world. It is a modest, chastened social science. Accordingly, mainstream economic analysts of law are quintessentially pragmatists and mistrust grand theories and sweeping propositions.

Organizers of Annual Meetings
1995: Andres Roemer and Honorary President Miguel de la Madid, Mexico City
1996: Avelino Porto and Edgardo Buscaglia, University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1997: Julia Barragon, Universidad Central de Venezuela
1998: Valeria Merino, Pontifícia Universidad Católica Equador
1999: Emilio Jose Archila Penalosa, Universidad Externado de Colombia
2002: Rafael Mery and Ricardo Predes, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile
2004: Alfredo Bullard, Facultad de Drecho de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru
2005: Robert Cooter, University of Califórnia at Berkeley
2006: Juan Vicente Sola and Horacio Spector, Universidad Torcuato di Tella and Facultad de Derecho de la UBA, Argentina
2007: Flavia Santinoni Vera, Instituto Brasiliense de Direito Publico e UNILEGIS, Brasília, Brasil
2008: Juan Javier del Granado, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
2009: Pablo Salvador, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
2010: Rafael Barraza, La Escuela Superior de Economía y Nogocios, ESEN, El Salvador 2011: Fernando Castillo Cadena, Alfonso Miranda Londoño, Departamento de Derecho Económico (CEDEC), Facultad de Derecho, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia
2012: César A. Gúzman Halberstadt, Universidad San Martín de Porres, Lima, Perú

TERM 2012 - 2014

Board of Directors

1) Executive Board
Hugo Acciarri, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina
Giácomo Balbinotto Neto, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS, Brasil
Edgardo Buscaglia, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México; The International Law and Economics Development Center
Robert Cooter, University of California at Berkeley
César A. Guzmán Halberstadt, Universidad San Marin de Porres, Lima, Peru
Monika Infante, Saxum Legal, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Rafael Mery, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile
Andres Roemer, Poder Cívico C.A., Mexico
Pablo Salvador Coderch, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Thomas S. Ulen, University of Illinois
Flavia Santinoni Vera, Instituto Brasiliense de Direito Publico - IDP, Brasília, Brasil

TERM 2009 – 2011