Transnationalizing Private Law – The Public and the Private Dimensions of Transnational Commercial Law

Abstract

Transnational Commercial Law is an interdisciplinary research field which is concerned with the institutional organization of global economic exchange processes. From the perspective of institutional economics there are basically four different types of governance mechanisms which may be employed to institutionally support exchange. These are (1) uniform governance, where exchange is organized outside the market as intra-firm-trade and problems are solved by virtue of hierarchical coordination, (2) bilateral governance, where exchange between independent parties is self-stabilizing as long as the value of a continued relationship is higher than the profit from defecting, (3) trilateral private governance, where third-party institutions such as arbitration, reputation-based sanctions, and private norms are involved, and finally (4) trilateral public governance, where conflicts are solved by reference to state commercial law, courts, and public enforcement.