Here one would like to rephrase the general argument in favor of using law and economics to investigate comparative law topics (and any other legal topics in the vein of any law and legal institution can be studied under the methodology of law and economics). One perceives the field as offering a set of tools that provide a helpful and productive addition to the more standard and traditional legal toolkit. Many of the concepts in microeconomics have legal applications, including comparative law: transaction costs, cooperative surplus, Pareto efficiency, Kaldor–Hicks efficiency, game theory and strategic considerations and behavioral concepts (such as the availability heuristic, confirmation bias and overoptimism). The importance of empirical work is growing in the study of comparative law.

The recent examples of comparative constitutional law, comparative corporate law and comparative antitrust law (commonly under the label “global antitrust”), three thriving comparative fields at the moment, highlight the importance of access to massive datasets in order to test the innumerable theories out there. However, although data availability is an important factor to consider, it is not the only relevant dimension in this discussion. Important developments in U.S. scholarship, the growing competition of other legal systems in offering alternative solutions to U.S. traditional concepts (in constitutional law, in corporate law or in antitrust law) and significant (and healthy) disagreements in U.S. legal debates—all these induce U.S. scholars to look for answers elsewhere. It could be that these two factors, data availability and looking for answers elsewhere, in combination, explain why constitutional, corporate and antitrust laws have taken the lead while other fields, such as contracts or property, are being slow to catch the trend.

Law and economics has not impacted all fields of law in the same way. While it is difficult to study corporate, antitrust, tax, contract or tort law in the United States without recognizing the insights from law and economics, it is less so in criminal, immigration or family law. This is not the place to argue, positively or normatively, the consequences of that observation. However, the same observation carries to comparative law and economics. Business-related areas (presumably because scholars recognize the importance of market transactions in these fields), when discussed from a comparative perspective, are more likely to be influenced by law and economics.