한국의 법경제학 30+년과 학회 20년

It has been more than thirty years since research in the field of law and economics was launched in Korea. Also, the Korean Law and Economics Association is looking forward to celebrating soon its twentieth birthday. The purpose of this essay is to recollect the course of various law-and-economics research efforts and the relevant people, which have ultimately become the pillar of a firm academic community in Korea. While the beginnings were fairly humble three decades ago, I endeavor to retrace, progresses have been increasingly deepened until recently in this country as a combined result of the patience, creativity, collaborations, and dedications at each critical moment. Furthermore, I offer three suggestions concerning the future research direction as the whole community is now encountering the fourth decade of the law-and-economics research in Korea. First, it is imperative to accelerate the integration of jurisprudence and economics, particularly with the help of ‘collective research activities’ in a broader sense. Second, we should now take the lead in ‘research in the globalized fashion’ in the sense that our findings and arguments can readily shed generalized implications across other countries, or can provide even specifically beneficial guidelines for a certain countries. Third, I courteously propose to take higher priority to analyze the ‘fundamental factors’ that most closely constitute the well-beings of ordinary citizens just like us, such as eating, breathing, moving, and staying away from accidents, crimes, or infection, etc. I finally conclude this essay with a premise that, after all, the quality of our research may be nothing more than the degree to which we explain well and also actually help the reality.