Today, business executives and lawyers find themselves confronted with a rapidly changing institutional environment, whose complex interplay of the law and the economy is the continuous source of new intellectual and managerial challenges. One response to these challenges may consist of the simple accumulation of information on this "world in progress", namely to "learn" as many of the new legal provisions and court rulings as possible and to hope that the continuous socio-legal development will not outdate the thus acquired knowledge too early.

This is not the approach we offer in our MLE Program. We believe that decision makers in our modern world feel the need for an in-depth understanding of the fundamental problems in the law and the economy. We also believe that only such a profound analysis of these core issues of our socio-legal environment allows one to develop a sound framework of understanding in which ultimately both all the technical legal details and future developments find their place. We are strongly convinced that this framework of understanding, this new "window to the world", provides valuable human capital that is unlikely to depreciate, but which constitutes the basis for a true continuous learning process.

But how to find this new "window to the world"? The current socio-legal environment is not only complicated, it is complex, and the approach applied must be able to cope with this complexity. We, therefore, strongly believe that the "Economic Analysis to the Law", broadly conceived, constitutes the clue to this "window of the world". Awarded with five nobel prices in the last two decades, this new and truly interdisciplinary school of thought allows both for an in-depth theoretical analysis and for an application of these concepts to concrete problems and challenges.

Our carefully selected faculty ensures the accomplishment of these goals. Our MLE faculty encompasses a nobel price laureate in economics, world leading representatives both of the Law and Economics movement and of the Austrian School of Economics, and highly experienced "hybrid" practitioner-academians, guaranteeing thereby highest academic standards and applicability of these theoretical concepts to the "world out there". We take pride in our rigorous experience-based instructional approach and unsurpassed academic excellence. The award of an IMADEC University's International MLE Degree requires the writing of a Masters Thesis in its oral defense.

I hope you will enjoy the learning experience in this innovative and truly challenging program.

Anne-Marie Van den Bossche, Academic Director, IMADEC University^® , School of Law, Vienna, Austria