Abstract
This study aims to examine the impact of the transition of Polish commercial courts to remote working via online proceedings. To achieve this goal, we will exploit the natural experiment in 2020—the COVID-19 pandemic—which forced many areas of human activity (including the justice system) to move to the internet. Using data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis, we will show that the switch had no significant impact on the efficiency of Polish commercial courts. However, these results are to be treated with some caution. The efficiency benefits of the new technology may have been reduced by the steep learning curve and the fact that the decision to change was made suddenly and under the pressure of the disease. The topic requires, therefore, further scientific attention.
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- 1.
Sourdin et al. (2020, pp. 447–453).
- 2.
McIntyre et al. (2020, pp. 197–201).
- 3.
Legg (2021, pp. 161–184).
- 4.
Criscuolo et al. (2021, pp. 1–36).
- 5.
Yang et al. (2022, pp. 43–54).
- 6.
Bao et al. (2021, pp. 1–15).
- 7.
Judiciary of England and Wales (2022, pp. 21–25). The number of claims issued in the Commercial Court in 2020 (802) has reduced slightly from 2019 (860). The number of hearings listed and heard in the Commercial Court during 2020 has remined broadly similar to previous years: 1,394 listed compared to 1,476 (there is no significant change).
- 8.
Judiciary of England and Wales (2022, p. 34).
- 9.
Delaware Judiciary (2021, pp. 2, 21–22).
- 10.
Van Dijk et al. (2022, p. 12).
- 11.
Szolc-Nartowski (2020, pp. 173–174).
- 12.
Szolc-Nartowski (2020, pp. 174–175).
- 13.
Charnes et al. (1978, pp. 429–444).
- 14.
Lewin et al. (1982, pp. 401–411).
- 15.
Kittelsen and Førsund (1992, pp. 277–306).
- 16.
E.g. Deyneli (2012, pp. 477–493).
- 17.
Aigner et al. (1977, pp. 21–37).
- 18.
Bełdowski et al. (2020, pp. 179–184).
- 19.
This is done to avoid the problem of nonexistence of ln(0).
- 20.
Wang and Ho (2010, pp. 286–296).
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Baum, I., Bełdowski, J., Dąbroś, Ł. (2023). Online Commercial Courts and Judicial Efficiency: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland. In: Mathis, K., Tor, A. (eds) Law and Economics of the Digital Transformation. ILEC 2023. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25059-0_5
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