We are grateful to you for sharing in our celebration of this Element series. Why write on this topic?  Because we are excited about the series and what it represents to scholars. This series is about the freedom to take risks and research topics that may be passion projects. We believe that through the unique features of Cambridge Elements in Law, Economics and Politics, scholars have a chance to not only collaborate and learn from interdisciplinary research but also tocreate and disseminate knowledge with the potential to have meaningful impact.

The Elements in Law, Economics and Politics  series was founded in 2021 and is aimed at organizing the existing knowledge as well as guiding future research on the origins and evolution of economic, legal, and political institutions and their role as a determinant of economic phenomena. 

To achieve this goal, we focus on two types of contributions:

1. critical analyses of the existing literature based on innovative theoretical and empirical models and/or novel datasets;
2. original formal theoretical and/or empirical pieces opening ground-breaking streams of literature or reshaping in an unexpected way the mainstream.

We share two features with the other Elements series, which make the Element model unique:

1. Each contribution is indexed as a Cambridge University Press monograph and should range between 20,000 and 30,000 words but cannot be shorter than 10,000 words. It will be made available in online, e-book and printed versions and offered open access for the first two weeks after publication.
2. Each contribution encompasses a piece of extra material such as a summary video, theoretical exercises, an unpublished data set, policy prescriptions, and reading lists facilitating its inclusion in graduate and undergraduate courses.

The below three features distinguish our editorial project from other Element series:

1. Our editorial board is composed by a group of young but highly recognized scholars who have developed methodologies at the crossroads among archaeology, computer science, economics, geoscience, history, law, finance, management science, political science, psychology and sociology. Building on this unique mix of expertise, we invite interdisciplinary contributions enhancing our understanding of the origins and impact of legal and political institutions.
2. We strive to publish high-quality Elements through an engaged editorial process and, notably, the feedback of two co-editors, two associate editors and one external reviewer.
3. We publicly recognize and celebrate published authors’ success by bringing visibility to each published Element through our blog and social media channels (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn).

So far, we have published four excellent Elements with more to come in 2023:

1. “The Strategic Analysis of Judicial Behavior” by Lee Epstein and Keren Weinshal;
2. “Can Blockchain Solve the Hold-up Problem in Contracts?” by Richard Holden and Anup Malani;
3. “Deep IV in Law” by Zhe Huang, Xinyue Zhang, Ruofan Wang and Daniel L. Chen;
4. “Reform for Sale” by Perrin Lefebvre and David Martimort.

Thanks to the high impact of these pieces, on average, our Elements receive 24 tweets per year, 1324 abstract views and 899 full text views per year, and a growing number of post-publication citations. Our next goals are further improve the quality our editorial process and increase our visibility metrics.