Did the French reform of the judicial map affect conciliation activities?

Abstract

In France, the reform of the judicial map, initiated in mid-2007 and completed in 2010, led to a large reduction in the number of courts of first instance, from almost 500 to around 300. This led to an increase of about eight kilometers in the distance litigants should travel to courts in the treated jurisdictions. In this paper, we examine the impact of this reform on conciliation activity. We use a panel data set of courts covering the period 2003–2015 and consider a synthetic difference-in-differences strategy to compare changes in the number of referrals, conciliators, and conciliations between courts affected by the reform and those unaffected. We find that the number of conciliators decreased more significantly in treated courts than in control courts. Evidence is less clear for the number of referrals, showing a slightly higher increase in the courts where distance increased the most. Estimation of a production function shows that the reform had no effect on the number of conciliations once inputs are controlled for.