Bibliographie sélective OHADA

Regional economic integration arrangements have their own purpose, legal framework, institutional set-up, history, and trajectory, and this paper aims to study these factors in relation to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). When dealing with regional integration, it is important to consider governance, trade liberalization, and its social impact. The paper focuses on the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) to analyze labour law harmonization, poverty reduction strategies for development, gender empowerment, and democratic participation. Suggestions to strengthen socio-economic development include promoting social dialogue and how the International Labour Organization and other institutions' can help with better integration in Western Africa. Ultimately, identifying and understanding the unique economic integration arrangements of certain communities can help develop their paths towards a fairer globalization for all.

A critical and in-depth discussion of the powers of the labour court to review arbitration awards of the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, the application of the author's findings relating to common-law, legislation and case law and a critical analysis thereof. Special reference is made to the provisions of sections 145 and 158(1)(g) of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 including, in particular, the alternative application thereof in practice and scope for improvement in order to address potential prejudice to parties occasioned by the compulsory nature of (certain) dispute resolutions. This thesis incorporates a comparative study of the British and German labour law systems with reference to the relevant appeal and/or review procedures (as applied in their tribunals/courts), together with a discussion and application of certain other provisions relevant to South Africa labour law.

This thesis seeks to address corporate governance from both a practical as well as an academic perspective. It searches for solutions to self-interest and agency costs, problems that it is posited are innate to the anthropomorphism of the corporation and to the separation of management and ownership of widely held, publicly traded, corporations. Practically, this dissertation is anchored in experience, garnered from empirical research, based on in depth and general surveys, as well as detailed interviews. It examines the workings of corporations, including their boards of directors, of gatekeepers, of checks and balances and of shareholders and the relative importance and rationale for the roles that they play. Based on the academic and empirical efforts it is posited that self-interest and the funneling syndrome, (a process whereby information required for decision making is constrained and managed by those in control), almost always predetermines the outcome of the corporate formal decision making process involving the board of directors. This facilitates abuse. When it occurs and there appears to be no accountability, confidence essential to the capital markets, quite understandably, suffers. A hypothesis is advanced to explain the complexity of a potential failure of corporate governance through a relatively simple formula. It draws conclusions as to what is required to help address the challenges raised by the breakdown in effective corporate governance and to help instill greater investor confidence. A self-assessment mechanism to help quantify how effectively a corporation is dealing with corporate governance, both on an absolute basis (comparing itself year over year) and on a relative basis (compared to one's peers) is proffered. This tool of more effective corporate governance, seeks to identify the causes for breakdowns in corporate governance and to assist a board of directors in dealing more proactively with this challenge.

Defence date: 8 March 2004

Online reputation mechanisms are emerging as a promising alternative to more established mechanisms for promoting trust and cooperative behavior, such as legally enforceable contracts. As information technology dramatically reduces the cost of accumulating, processing and disseminating consumer feedback, it is plausible to ask whether such mechanisms can provide an economically more efficient solution to a wide range of moral hazard settings where societies currently rely on the threat of litigation in order to induce cooperation. In this paper we compare online reputation to legal enforcement as institutional mechanisms in terms of their ability to induce cooperative behavior. Furthermore, we explore the impact of information technology on their relative economic efficiency. We find that although both mechanisms result in losses relative to the maximum possible social surplus, under certain conditions online reputation outperforms litigation in terms of maximizing the total surplus, and thus the resulting social welfar

The past two decades has seen a growing interest, from both policy makers and scholars, in the legal regulation of work performed by self-employed workers. Increases in non-agricultural selfemployment in industrialised countries, together with political and ideological shifts, have fuelled interest in self-employment as a means of increasing employment. The attractions of selfemployment are manifold. To firms, self-employment is part of a two-fold change in the way firms operate: the move towards more flexibility as to the size and composition of the workforce, marked by an increased use of atypical workers and the disintegration of firms by arranging production through outsourcing, subcontracting and franchising. To workers, self-employment offers the greater autonomy connected with being their own boss, a chance of higher returns, or, at least, opportunities of gainful employment in times of high unemployment. To governments, self-employment has been seen as a means of increasing the number of small businesses, supposedly beneficial to the creation of new employment. Encouraging and removing barriers to self-employment is, therefore, a priority for many governments.

This is the version of record of an article authored by Michael Trebilcock and published by the Cambridge University Press. The official publisher's version can be accessed at: doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511494833.006

Los modelos de negociación con opciones exteriores normalmente suponen que los pagos de estas opciones son independientes de las acciones que los negociadores toman durante el proceso negociador. Sin embargo, en muchos contextos, la opción exterior depende de lo que las partes hagan durante la fase negociadora. Uno de estos contextos es el de aquellas negociaciones que se llevan a cabo en presencia de un árbitro. Esta tesis realiza algunas contribuciones a la teoría de la negociación con opciones exteriores, enfatizando aquellas situaciones donde las opciones exteriores aparecen por la intervención de árbitros. En el capítulo 2 analizo los efectos del arbitraje en las negociaciones cuando su uso es voluntario. Considero un modelo de negociación por concesiones donde las partes tienen la posibilidad de llamar a un árbitro con el consentimiento del oponente. Demuestro que la introducción del arbitraje distorsiona el resultado de la negociación. Esta distorsión depende de los costes relativos de implementar una partición mediante un proceso negociador versus un proceso arbitral. Si los costes del arbitraje son pequeños en relación a los costes de la negociación, entonces la partición negociada se aproxima a la propuesta por el árbitro, y en casos extremos el arbitraje es utilizado en equilibrio. Sin embargo, los jugadores no eligen siempre el método más eficiente de resolver su disputa: a veces negocian cuando es más eficiente acudir al arbitraje. En el capítulo 3 estudio los efectos de diferentes procedimientos arbitrales en el resultado de una negociación, en un modelo donde los jugadores realizan demandas no crecientes y el árbitro es llamado solo cuando las negociaciones se declaran rotas. Dos procedimientos arbitrales son analizados: el arbitraje convencional, donde el árbitro es libre de elegir su acuerdo y el arbitraje de oferta final, donde el árbitro está obligado a elegir una de las últimas ofertas de los jugadores. Demuestro que si los jugadores son suficientemente pacientes y el árbitro sigue un procedimiento de oferta final, en equilibrio, los jugadores negocian una partición pero toma algún tiempo llegar a ella. Sin embargo, si el árbitro sigue un procedimiento convencional, en equilibrio los jugadores utilizarán esta institución para resolver su disputa. Finalmente, en el capítulo 4 discuto el papel que juegan las opciones exteriores inciertas en las negociaciones cuando existe información incompleta acerca de su existencia. Examino una guerra de desgaste donde los jugadores disfrutan de información privada acerca de sus posibilidades de dejar la mesa de negociación para tomar una opción exterior. Hay dos tipos de jugadores: los tipos débiles, que no tienen opciones exteriores y prefieren conceder que salirse del juego, y los tipos fuertes que tienen opciones exteriores tales que prefieren salirse que conceder. El principal mensaje que surge del análisis de este juego es que la incertidumbre acerca de la posibilidad de que el oponente se vaya, mejora la eficiencia porque incrementa la probabilidad de concesión. Más precisamente, si la probabilidad de que el oponente sea fuerte es relativamente alta, la negociación acaba con una concesión segura. En el otro extremo, si la probabilidad de que el oponente sea débil es alta, los tipos fuertes dejarán en algún momento el juego con probabilidad igual a 1, dejando a los débiles jugando, desde ese momente en adelante el ineficiente equilibrio de la guerra de desgaste clásica. Incluso en este caso, la probabilidad de concesión a lo largo de la fase de incertidumbre del juego se incrementa.

Societies have, since time immemorial, traded real goods and services for expectations of goods and services in some future. These expectations have been associated with tangible and, lately, intangible property - which is generally called money. From the crude quantity theory of money, the purchasing power of a monetary unit is given as 1/ P = T/(Mv). P is the price of the traded goods and services T, M is the total money supply and its turnover rate is v. The total money supply M is dominated by bank credit. In the South African law (and elsewhere) the judicial recognition given to bank credit (1) as money seems to have happened as an unintended side-effect to accepting cheques as delivery vehicles in a cash transfer without any tangible money moving from the transferor to the transferee. In payment of money, the law of property and the law of contract overlap and become inseparable. Both the English and South African laws define payment as performance of a preceding duty. The Supreme Court of Appeal, in the Vereins- und Westbank case seems to have declared an abstract transfer of ownership of money to be payment even though no preceding duty to pay was found. The profit of a financial investment is called interest and is calculated from a simple or compound interest formula. Despite medieval legal, theological and ethical objections, neither is illegal in the South African positive law. The last remnant of the medieval protection of a guilty debtor (often the ruler) at the expense of an innocent creditor is the in duplum rule. This is particularly obnoxious during modern rampant inflation that was unknown and could not be predicted when only metallistic money was in use. The influence of the in duplum rule is being limited by recent restrictive judgments in South Africa and in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the Government has a constitutional duty to ensure that its subjects are not deprived of property. Specifically, the Constitution prescribes in Section 224(1) that the South African Reserve Bank must 'protect the value of the currency'. It is shown that the recent Reserve Bank policies, unless urgently modified, are in conflict with the publicly promised inflation rate of no greater than 6%. The exchange rates depend fundamentally on the price levels of the traded or tradable goods and services in the respective economies. This leads to the concept of purchasing power parity, which is most accurately reflected in the relationship between interest rates in different states and their relative foreign exchange depreciation rates. It is submitted that the South African Exchange Control Regulations have outlived their usefulness (if ever they had any) and are unconstitutional - at least in so far as they interfere with the South African Reserve Bank's obligation to pursue its primary object 'independently and without fear'. In the main, the South African Courts have applied restrictive interpretation to the Exchange Control Regulations and they have justifiably ignored the public international law obligation of the Republic to recognise the Exchange Control Regulations of fellow IMF members extraterritorially. (1) To money related claims on banks - see the body of the thesis for the two-creditor-two-debtor legal aspects in the 'bank credit'.

Defence date: 20 April 2002

This is an accepted manuscript of an article authored by Michael Trebilcock, and later published in International Economic Governance and Non-Economic Concerns.

This is the version of record of a paper presented at the Third EnviReform Conference, authored by Michael Trebilcock.

There has been a dramatic shift in the focus of trade policy concerns in recent years from the barriers that lie at the border to the barriers which exist “within the border.” The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) and other regional trading arrangements have been largely successful in reducing both the levels of tariffs worldwide and the scale of other border measures such as quotas. This has revealed a new and more subtle category of measures which restrict trade – the numerous regulations which governments enact to protect the health and safety of their citizens and the environment in which they live. Such regulations vary tremendously across borders: one nation's bunch of grapes is another nation's repository of carcinogenic pesticide residue. These efforts to protect citizens from the hazards of everyday life have become a virtual minefield for trade policy makers, in part because such differences can often be manipulated or exploited to protect domestic industry from international competition, and in part because even when there is no protectionist intent on the part of lawmakers, through a lack of coordination, mere differences in regulatory or standard-setting regimes can function to impede trade through increasing multiple compliance costs. It has thus become increasingly difficult to delineate the boundaries between a nation's sovereign right to regulate and its obligation to the international trading community not to restrict trade.

From an economic perspective, globalization is dismantling national barriers to entry and is transforming domestic markets into a global market. To meet the challenges posed by the integration of markets, corporations are joining forces with their former competitors to expand their presence in the global market. Rapid growth in transnational mergers to create global corporations is one of the key features of globalization. As multinational corporations are uniting, so should antitrust agencies that regulate them. Antitrust agencies around the world are realizing that the consumers whom they are mandated to protect are being adversely affected by decisions made beyond their national borders. By using the "effects" test, countries bring within their jurisdiction review of any merger or acquisition involving foreign companies with significant revenue or assets within their jurisdiction. The proliferation of merger control laws, in the absence of a mechanism to coordinate the transnational merger review, places an unnecessary burden on merging parties, and runs the risk of divergent outcomes, which at times cause friction among nation-states. Both to alleviate unnecessary burdens imposed on corporations and to reduce inefficiencies produced by the disparate review of a single transnational merger by several countries, this thesis proposes an International Merger Control Regime integrated into the WTO. The proposal focuses on ways to operationalize a "Lead Jurisdiction" model of oversight rather than on the creation of a new supranational decision-making agency. WTO dispute settlement and arbitration would be used to resolve conflicts arising out of the inability of a Lead Jurisdiction to arrive at an outcome satisfactory to other significantly affected jurisdictions.

The commercial lease has historically been treated as a conveyance of an interest in land which creates a property-based relationship between the lessor and lessee, despite the fact that the relationship is created by contract and could be seen as a contract for the ongoing use of the land. Some Canadian cases, however, have applied "partial contractualization " — using both property and contract rules and concepts to interpret leases. The article examines the historical development of the lease and its treatment in Canadian courts, as well as in other common law courts. The authors argue that the property/contract hybrid should be eliminated in favour of "complete contractualization " — using pure contract principles to interpret the commercial lease. The article points out how contract principles would serve the parties to the lease just as well, or better, than property principles and offers solutions for the anticipated problem area of security of tenure for the tenant.

This thesis has found out that the court does not have an efficient means of coercion to apply delivered decisions, there by making the enforcement of the court’s decision cumbersome; decision of the court dealing with sanctions on member state who fail to fulfil their obligations are more complex than the interpretation of ECOWAS text; the research showed that the court also did not provide for the time limit in which an application can be reacted or responded to or time limit in which an annulment decision must be enforced. This thesis has put forth suggestions for the court. The suggestions essentially call for full subregional integration process by the court like all other ECOWAS institutions. The research revealed that the place of the court in the subregional integration will be more important if the decisions delivered by it can be enforced without encumbrance within the ECOWAS region; and that member states and some national institutions should not hold on tightly to their sovereignty but rather try to put enough zeal into facilitating rapid and efficient execution of decisions made by the court. This research work highlighted the extent of the powers of the Community Court of Justice and the factors that have led to it a judicial body with limited powers as regards the lack of access to court being by individual citizens, with the expansion of the provisions of the protocol, the court is bound to blossom in the scope of jurisdiction. It is hoped that this will help to move the sub-region towards greater integration so as to be able to compete in the new competitive global market. The ECOWAS Court has consistently demonstrated courage in the discharge of its vital role in putting an end to violation of all human rights and impunity of perpetrators in the sub region