EMLE study guide
EMLE · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The European Master in Law and Economics (EMLE) is an interdisciplinary graduate programme that trains students to apply economic reasoning to legal rules and institutions. The entrance examination is designed to identify candidates who can handle both sides of that programme: they need enough microeconomic theory to analyse incentives and market outcomes, enough legal doctrine to understand what rules actually do, and enough analytical and written skill to connect the two. The EMLE study guide has 7 sections and about 3,130 words.
01Microeconomics: Consumer Theory, Producer Theory and Market Structure
The Microeconomics domain tests whether you can move fluently between preference-based consumer theory, cost-based producer theory and the equilibrium predictions of the canonical market structures, then carry that apparatus into the law-and-economics domains. A consumer maximises u(x₁,x₂) subject to p₁x₁+p₂x₂=m.
439 words, about 2 min02Law and Economics: Coasean Bargaining, Efficiency and Externalities
This domain tests whether you can state the Coase theorem precisely, distinguish the efficiency criteria, and choose the correct instrument for an externality rather than reciting slogans. A Pareto improvement makes at least one person better off and nobody worse off; a Pareto-efficient allocation leaves no such improvement available.
467 words, about 2 min03Institutional and Comparative Law Foundations: Civil Law and Common Law
This domain tests your grasp of the sources, reasoning style and institutional architecture of the civil-law and common-law traditions, and of the economic literature explaining those differences. Common law treats precedent as a binding source: courts extract the ratio decidendi, distinguish materially different facts, and follow stare decisis.
460 words, about 2 min04Contract, Tort and Property: Economic Analysis
This domain tests whether you can apply efficiency reasoning to the core private-law remedies and identify which margin of behaviour each remedy actually regulates. Contract law supplies default rules that save transaction costs and mandatory rules that police failures of consent or third-party effects.
443 words, about 2 min05Public Law, Regulation and Competition Law: Economic Analysis
This domain tests applied institutional economics: why powers are allocated across levels of government, when regulation beats markets or liability, and how competition authorities define markets and screen mergers. Oates's decentralisation theorem assigns public goods to the lowest level whose benefits do not spill over; Tiebout sorting supplies a market-like discipline on local provision.
433 words, about 2 min06Quantitative and Analytical Reasoning: Statistics, Game Theory and Graphs
This domain tests the quantitative literacy the rest of the exam presumes: reading data summaries critically, solving small games, and interpreting graphs of economic relationships. Mean, median and mode differ in sensitivity to outliers; report the median for skewed distributions such as income.
471 words, about 2 min07Academic English and Argumentative Writing for Law and Economics
This domain tests whether your written answers argue rather than describe: whether a thesis is identifiable, claims are evidenced, counterarguments are met, and legal-economic vocabulary is used precisely. State a contestable thesis in the introduction and announce the route.
417 words, about 2 min