The report on visiting study experience in the U.S.A. ----Professor Weijian

Weijian

Center for Economic Research Shandong University

8/2007

I studied law-economics and learned a lot as a visiting scholar following prominent law-economics professor Thomas Ulen and up-and-coming young professor Tom Ginsburg at the law School of Illinois University in the USA from July 2006 to July 2007.

A. the courses I chose

I chose four courses concerning law-economics in the two semesters, and they are Professor Ulen’s law-economics, advanced law-economics, Doctor Carlson’s law-economics, and Doctor Mattias Polborn’s the application of Game Theory.

Professor Ulen’s law-economics is suitable for postgraduates, which specifically presents the scientific system of law-economics including property law, contract law, tort law, procedure law and criminal law, etc. Through such course I have a better understanding of the present development of law-economics in America.

Professor Ulen’s advanced law-economics is a doctorate course in the form of inviting American excellent scholars in law-economics to publicize and explain their own theses. Before the lecture, the speaker would distribute the copies of his thesis and other materials concerning the lecture to all the students for reading and thinking. And students were required to raise questions on all the materials and tell the speaker before the lecture, and then the professor would send all the questions to the author. When the speech began, the professor would spend half an hour introducing the theme, the train of thought, methods and conclusion of the thesis, and then it was the time for the author to answer the questions posed by audience and for discussion, by which they could communicate with one another and stimulate each other’ thought. After class, every student would write a comment on this thesis. According to their questioning and their comments, the professor would give scores to them. (instead, students could also write an essay on law-economics). In this course, ten pieces of theses have been publicized including behavior law-economics, laws and development, trial practice, discrimination and mandatory physical examination and so on to broaden my vision of research. And these theses all utilize typical methods of economics, most of which are eco-metrics and the experiment methods.

Doctor Carlson’s law-economics is for the undergraduates with the teaching material edited by Cooter and Ulen. There were not too many knowledge of leading edge, but it was quiet benefit for students to establish a solid theoretic foundation of law-economics. Because of the humor of doctor Carlson who always illustrated theoretic problems on law-economics with lots of real phenomena in American society, his class was very lively and interesting. Students who chose this course almost all majored in economics, and from their performance in class I was acknowledged that law-economics became the basic course for the economic majors.

Doctor Mattias Polborn’s Application of Game Theory is the course for economi