Digital Commons Network^™

December 13, 2009: Time To Buy An American Car, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Time to Buy an American Car“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Down The Rabbit Hole: The Madness Of State Film Incentives As As "Solution" To Runaway Production, Adrian H. Mcdonald

Adrian H. McDonald

This working paper is a "sequel" to my first law review article on runaway productions called "Through the Looking Glass": Runaway Productions and "Hollywood Economics," published in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law in August 2007.

Since 2007, there has been a race to the bottom as virtually every state has enacted significant, if not detrimentally generous, tax incentives to lure film and television production. The efficacy of these incentives is evaluated at length, with particular attention paid to the origin and implementation of tax incentives in California, Massachusetts and Louisiana - states with colorful backgrounds …

Down The Rabbit Hole: The Madness Of State Film Incentives As As "Solution" To Runaway Production, Adrian H. Mcdonald

Adrian H. McDonald

This working paper is a "sequel" to my first law review article on runaway productions called "Through the Looking Glass": Runaway Productions and "Hollywood Economics," published in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law in August 2007.

Since 2007, there has been a race to the bottom as virtually every state has enacted significant, if not detrimentally generous, tax incentives to lure film and television production. The efficacy of these incentives is evaluated at length, with particular attention paid to the origin and implementation of tax incentives in California, Massachusetts and Louisiana - states with colorful backgrounds …

The True Cost Of Economic Rights Jurisprudence, Max Mccann

Max McCann

This Article discusses the distinction between economic and individual rights in contemporary political and legal discourse. As discussed herein, the phrase economic rights typically invokes notions of the ability to spend, save, and transfer wealth freely, as well as other related issues, such as the deregulation of industry and tax reform. In contrast, individual rights conjures ideas of being free in one’s person, including reproductive rights, free speech, and freedom of assembly.

With both historic and recent examples, this Article argues that the distinction between economic and individual rights is problematic at best. Rights spring forth from human interests, and …

An Alternative Approach To Channeling?, Mark P. Mckenna

William & Mary Law Review

Intellectual property law has developed a variety of doctrines to police the boundaries between various forms of protection. Courts and scholars alike overwhelmingly conceive of these doctrines in terms of the nature of the objects of protection. The functionality doctrine in trademark law, for example, defines the boundary between trademark and patent law by identifying and refusing trademark protection to features that play a functional role in a product's performance. Likewise, the useful article doctrine works at the boundary of copyright and patent law to identify elements of an article's design that are dictated by function and to channel protection …

Spillovers Theory And Its Conceptual Boundaries, Brett Frischmann

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toward A Better Competition Policy For The Media, Maurice E. Stucke, Allen P. Grunes

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

It is difficult to formulate meaningful competition policy when there is a fierce debate over the current competitiveness of the media industry. After addressing the importance of the marketplace of ideas in our democracy, our article examines the current state of the media industry, including the response of traditional media to audience declines, the growth of new media, the impact of media consolidation (including its impact on minority and women ownership), and the role of the Internet. In response to recent calls for liberalizing cross-ownership rules to protect traditional media, our article outlines why conventional antitrust policy is difficult to …

Testing The Purchasing Power Parity Between The Hashemite Kingdom Of Jordan And Its Major Trading Partners, Anwar Salameh Gasaymeh

Anwar Salameh Gasaymeh

TESTING THE PURCHASING POWER PARITY BETWEEN THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN AND ITS MAJOR TRADING PARTNERS Anwar Salameh Gasaymeh*, Lee Chin and M. Azali Department of Economics, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia Abstract This study examines the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and investigates the market integration between The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and its major trading partners namely, Japan, United Kingdom, Tunisia, Morocco, Switzerland, Israel, Pakistan, Turkey, Sudan and Iran. Unit root tests, Johansen cointegration test and vector error correction model (VECM) were employed to test the data covering the period of 1990Q1-2006Q4. …

Criminal Insider Trading: Prosecution, Legislation, And Justification, Steven Brody

Steven Brody

Since the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, insider trading has been codified as a federal crime. For many years, however, civil cases were rare, and criminal prosecutions resulting in prison terms were nearly unheard of. Yet during the 1980’s, white collar crime—and insider trading in particular—became the subject of more public scrutiny than it had ever previously received. During this period, major developments occurred in the criminalization, prosecution, and sentencing of those who had committed securities fraud. High profile cases of inside traders like Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine made targets of federal prosecutions household names and …

Slides: Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project, Kathryn Mutz

Best Practices for Community and Environmental Protection (October 14)

Presenter: Kathryn Mutz, Natural Resources Law Center

19 slides

Vietnam's Eligibility To Receive Trade Benefits Under The U.S. Generalized System Of Preferences, Alexander H. Tuzin

Alexander H. Tuzin

Last year, Vietnam officially requested to receive trade benefits under the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) as a beneficiary developing country. The accompanying article initially examines the role of GSP programs within the WTO system, and then provides a comprehensive analysis of Vietnam’s prospects for receiving trade benefits under the U.S. GSP system. Vietnam remains a very poor country, and it could benefit considerably from preferential treatment under the U.S. GSP program. However, Vietnam’s compliance with the GSP eligibility criteria is problematic. In particular, Vietnam’s protections for both intellectual property rights and worker rights are inadequate. Ultimately, this article …

A Few Drops Of Oil Will Not Be Enough, Stephen James

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn provide a rich description of the various kinds of violence, deprivation, depredation and exploitation that women experience on a vast scale in the developing world. They write of sex trafficking, acid attacks, “bride burning,” enslavement, spousal beatings, unequal healthcare (something the USA still struggles with), insufficient food, gendered abortions and infant and maternal mortality. They are right to identify the education of women and girls as part of the solution to the widespread “gendercide.” However, their approach focuses too much on the capacity, indeed the virtue or heroism, of individual women. It does not take …

"The Female Entrepreneur"?, Cath Collins

Human Rights & Human Welfare

I read the “Women’s Crusade” article that forms the centrepiece of this month’s roundtable with initial interest, gradually turning to a vague sense of disquiet spiced with occasional disbelief. After a few more readings, I tried highlighting the passages that bothered me and stringing them together. Countries “riven by fundamentalism”— that’s presumably the Islamic variety, rather than the Christian variant which holds such sway in the US. The suggestion that “everyone from the World Bank to the US [...] Chiefs of Staff to [...] CARE” now thinks that women are the answer to global extremism hides too many questionable assumptions …

How Do Local-Level Legal Institutions Promote Development?, Varun Gauri

Varun Gauri

This paper develops a framework and some hypotheses regarding the impact of local-level, informal legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a set of stylized differences between formal and informal legal justice systems, identifies the pathways through which formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of informal legal institutions on economic outcomes, and looks at extant case studies to examine the plausibility of the arguments presented. The paper concludes that local-level, informal legal institutions can support social substitutes for the enforcement of contracts, though …

Implications Of Reputation Economics Of Regulatory Reform Of The Credit Rating Industry, Paul Lasell Bonewitz

Paul Lasell Bonewitz

Credit rating agencies have for years maintained that they would never intentionally issue or maintain inaccurate ratings due to the damage their reputation, and therefore their business, would suffer as a result. The reputation of credit rating agencies perhaps never suffered more than when thousands of structured debt securities proved to hold inflated ratings in the run-up to the credit crisis. Yet credit rating agencies remain as engrained as ever in the global financial system. What is more, Congressional testimony shows that credit rating agencies had the ability to rate more accurately than they did, but intentionally failed to do …

21st Century Trade Agreements: Implications For Development Sovereignty, Rachel D. Thrasher, Kevin P. Gallagher

Rachel D Thrasher

This paper examines the extent to which the emerging world trading regime leaves nations the “policy space” to deploy effective policy for long-run diversification and development and the extent to which there is a convergence of such policy space under global and regional trade regimes. We examine the economic theory of trade and long-run growth and underscore the fact that traditional theories lose luster in the presence of the need for long-run dynamic comparative advantages and when market failures are rife. We then review a “toolbox” of policies that have been deployed by developed and developing countries past and present …

African Regional Trade Agreements As Flexible Legal Regimes, James Thuo Gathii

James Thuo Gathii

Based on the types of treaty commitments contained in African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) and how these RTAs are understood by their members, this article argues these RTAs are flexible legal regimes. Flexibility here refers to the following defining features of African RTAs. First, these RTAs are regarded as establishing flexible regimes of cooperation as opposed to containing rules requiring scrupulous and rigorous adherence. Second, African RTAs incorporate as a central feature the principle of variable geometry according to which different speeds towards meeting time tabled and other commitments are adopted. Third, African RTAs adopt a broad array of social, …

Licensing Complementary Patents: ‘Patent Trolls’, Market Structure, And ‘Excessive’ Royalties, Anne S. Layne-Farrar, Klaus Schmidt

Anne S. Layne-Farrar

The infamous Blackberry case brought new attention to so-called “patent trolls” and began the general association of trolls with “non-practicing” patent holders. This has had important legal consequences: Namely, patent holders have been denied injunctive relief because they did not practice the patents themselves. In this paper we analyze how patent holders –– both non-practicing and vertically integrated –– choose their royalties depending on the structure of the upstream and downstream markets and the types of licensing agreements available. We show that a vertically integrated firm has an incentive to raise its rivals’ costs and to restrict entry on the …

Commerical Logic And The Doha Round: Will Pope's Encyclical Letter Impact Global Trade And Development Planning, Karen A. O'Rourke

Karen A. O'Rourke

Abstract: Relying on the Church’s principles of social doctrine , the Encyclical Letter released June29,2009, underscore the needed policy focus to create new forms of engagement both at the level of international “private” economics and at the level of private -public partnerships that support international commerce and development. Emphasis is placed on the broad concepts of authentic human development within a new context of a fully humane global economy where forms of future commercial enterprise can be based on reciprocity and where commercial logic and the current notions of economic utility are not opposed to new forms of economic democracy. …

Myths About Mutual Fund Fees: Economic Insights On Jones V. Harris, D. Bruce Johnsen

D. Bruce Johnsen

Mutual funds stand ready at all times to sell and redeem common stock to the investing public for the net value of their assets under management. In the language of transaction cost economics, they are open-access common pools subject to virtually free investor entry and exit. The Investment Company Act (1940) requires mutual funds to be managed by an outside advisory firm pursuant to a written contract, which normally pays the adviser a small share of net asset value, say, one-half of one percent per year. Following 1970 amendments to the Investment Company Act imposing a fiduciary duty on advisers …

September 11th, John Maynard Keynes, Kenneth J. Arrow, And Me: The Nexus, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins, Ph.D.

African Regional Trade Agreements As Flexible Legal Regimes, James Thuo Gathii

James Thuo Gathii

Based on the types of treaty commitments contained in African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) and how these RTAs are understood by their members, this article argues these RTAs are flexible legal regimes. Flexibility here refers to the following defining features of African RTAs. First, these RTAs are regarded as establishing flexible regimes of cooperation as opposed to containing rules requiring scrupulous and rigorous adherence. Second, African RTAs incorporate as a central feature the principle of variable geometry according to which different speeds towards meeting time tabled and other commitments are adopted. Third, African RTAs adopt a broad array of social, …

Tying, Price Discrimination And Antitrust Policy, Herbert Hovenkamp

Herbert Hovenkamp

ABSTRACT

A tying arrangement is a seller’s requirement that a customer may purchase its “tying” product only by taking its “tied” product. In a variable proportion tie the purchaser can vary her purchases of the tied product. For example, a customer might purchase a single printer, but either a contract or technological design requires her to purchase varying numbers of printer cartridges from the same manufacturer. Such arrangements are widely considered to be price discrimination devices, but their economic effects have been controversial.

Price discrimination comes in various “degrees.” In third degree price discrimination the seller isolates two or more …

Does The Nba Still Have Market Power? Exploring The Implications Of An Increasingly Global Market For Men's Basketball Player Labor, Marc Edelman

Marc L Edelman

In the March 2002 case Fraser v. Major League Soccer, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a jury’s finding that America’s twelve Major League Soccer clubs (“MLS”) compete in an international market for men’s professional soccer labor. The court then held that the MLS clubs do not have enough market power to collude illegally under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. At the time when Fraser was decided, few believed the case would become relevant to America’s other professional sports leagues. Indeed, at that time, most other American sports clubs did not compete with foreign clubs for premier men’s …

September 9, 2009: How Did Corporations Get Constitutional Rights?, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “How Did Corporations Get Constitutional Rights?“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

September 4, 2009: Blurring Of Church And State On Healthcare, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Blurring of Church and State on Healthcare“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

The Unnatural Disaster: Who Will Pay For The Next Major Hurricane, Bradley Bodiford

Bradley G. Bodiford

Since Hurricane Katrina, most state’s hurricane insurance programs have become increasingly political in an effort to control rapidly rising insurance rates. These legislative efforts often create their desired short-term effects, but only at the expense of harming millions of insurance customers in the long-term. Florida provides a perfect laboratory for examining the current crisis with its heavy coastal population and high vulnerability to hurricanes. By using a case study of a state with a more conservative hurricane insurance system, the article attempts to bridge the gap between the current system and the self-sustaining system. Specifically, the article proposes a glide …

Human Rights Law On Trial In The Drc, William Paul Simmons

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing tragedy in Eastern Congo contains so many tragic lessons that it should shake to their very foundations all comfortable ideologies about human rights and politics. The atrocities in the DRC should implicate all but have so far resulted in almost limitless impunity. Here, I briefly put human rights law on trial for its role in perpetuating this tragedy.

Natural Resources And Wealth Of The Democratic Republic Of Congo (Drc): Of Benefit To Whom?, Nicola Colbran

Human Rights & Human Welfare

When asked to discuss the humanitarian tragedy in the DRC, the question really is where to start? The article by Adam Hochschild discusses some of the most horrific events and experiences imaginable: widespread killings of unarmed civilians, rape, torture and looting, the recruitment of child soldiers, and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. The immediate human response is who is to blame, how did it happen and how can the world apparently do nothing?

If They Just Weren't So Rich!, Anja Mihr

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The deadliest war on earth-as it is called-in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will only end when the country's richness fades or is kept under surveillance. Human rights and peace might have a chance if Congo's lucrative diamond, gold or coltan mines were under shared control by non-profit agencies or international organizations with the intention to spread the mines' benefits and wealth among the Congolese people. Wishful thinking? Most likely it is, but what other alternative is there? The country's extraordinary wealth in natural resources is the main reason for the immense corruption, the extermination of entire villages, the …