The purpose of the Companion is to provide a reference work for the active researcher in law and economics. In so doing, care has been taken to avoid a possible overlap with other works in the field. In particular, the Companion does not intend to duplicate the ambitious New Palgrave, which aims to balance its pointedly formal focus by emphasizing institutional economics (Newman, 1998). The comprehensive set of chapters in the Companion, mainly in the Chicago tradition of law and economics (Posner and Parisi, 1997), allows us to focus on other mainly European aspects of law and economics and the historical sources of law and economics research, which explains.
