Transaction Costs, Default Rules and Regulating Contracts in Islam: An Introduction to Economic Analysis of Islamic Contract Law

Sharifzadeh, Mohammad Javad; Naderan, Elyas

doi:10.30497/ies.2011.1095

Transaction Costs, Default Rules and Regulating Contracts in Islam: An Introduction to Economic Analysis of Islamic Contract Law

Authors

Mohammad Javad Sharifzadeh

Elyas Naderan

10.30497/ies.2011.1095

Abstract

In this paper this question is tried to be answered: How did the Islamic Contract Law
affect transaction costs? Our first approach for answering this question is a historical
approach which compares the prevailing contract laws in the Northern Arabian
Peninsula before and after the dawn of Islam. In the second approach which is an
analytical approach we explained the role of Islamic legal teachings in filling the
gaps of incomplete contracts. For this reason we explained how the Islamic
jurisprudential rules could fulfill the mission of the default rules. Also, by referring
to the informational problems we described how the Islamic teachings had regulated
contracts. We studied the prohibition of some contractual forms that privileged in
the pre-Islamic era as an obvious example of Islamic regulation of contracts. The
findings of the paper show that we cannot accept the hypothesis that asserts:
\"Islamic Contract Law did not decrease the transaction costs.\"

Keywords

law and economics

Transaction Costs

Islamic contract law

default rules

contract regulation

history of Arabian Peninsula