经济学院发展经济学研讨会2024年第18期（总第117期）-张培刚发展研究院

摘要：Legal capacity is a key dimension of state capacity that shapes economic development. This paper examines the role of technology in building legal capacity to enforce contracts in the context of a weak rule of law. We leverage China's recent adoption of E-commerce platforms for judicial auctions to investigate how digital technologies increase auction success rates and improve the quality and effectiveness of court enforcement. Our findings show that the use of digital platforms has significantly increased judicial auction success rates by attracting more users and facilitating easier access to auctions. More importantly, the adoption of this technology reduces judicial corruption through its transparent and impersonal nature, strengthens court enforcement by creating greater incentives to process judicial auctions efficiently, and ultimately enhances public trust in the judicial system. Furthermore, we find evidence that the technology-driven improvement in legal capacity leads to a reduction in deliberate defaults by debtors and enables corporate and individual borrowers to secure more loans at lower interest rates from creditors.

嘉宾介绍：丁海，华中科技大学经济学博士，北京大学光华管理学院博士后研究员。研究领域为法与经济学、发展经济学。研究成果见于《经济学季刊》、《中国工业经济》、《财经研究》、energy economics、land use policy等，主持博士后科学基金面上项目。