Ep.102 – Sadie Blanchard on Contracts Without Courts or Clans

Sadie Blanchard, associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Contracts Without Courts or Clans: How Business Networks Govern Exchange. In this article Blanchard explains that under some conditions contracts can be formed and successfully carried out without enforcement by public courts or tight-knit social groups. She presents a case study of the reinsurance trade circa 1980 to demonstrate this point, which shows that the reinsurance industry long thrived on an international basis that did not require judicial or localized reputational enforcement. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.