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Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World (Former Title: Do Insider Trading Laws Matter? Some Preliminary Comparative Evidence), Laura N. Beny

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The primary goal of this article is to bring empirical evidence to bear on the largely theoretical law and economics debate about insider trading. The article first summarizes various agency cost and market theories of insider trading propounded over the course of this perennial debate. The article then proposes three testable hypotheses regarding the relationship between insider trading laws and several measures of stock market performance. Using international data, the paper finds that more stringent insider trading laws are generally associated with more dispersed equity ownership, greater stock price accuracy and greater stock market liquidity. These results suggest the appropriate …

Criminal Solicitation, Entrapment, And The Enforcement Of Law, Thomas J. Miceli

Economics Working Papers

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through solicitation. The costs are the expense of hiring undercover cops and the greater likelihood of punishment. The optimal use of solicitation balances these factors. The paper also examines the justification for the entrapment defense, which exonerates those caught in a criminal solicitation but who otherwise had no predisposition to commit a crime.

An Economic Theory Of Mortgage Redemption Laws, Matthew J. Baker, Thomas J. Miceli, C. F. Sirmans

Economics Working Papers

Redemption laws give mortgagors the right to redeem their property following default for a statutorily set period of time. This paper develops a theory that explains these laws as a means of protecting landowners against the loss of nontransferable values associated with their land. A longer redemption period reduces the risk that this value will be lost but also increases the likelihood of default. The optimal redemption period balances these effects. Empirical analysis of cross-state data from the early twentieth century suggests that these factors, in combination with political considerations, explain the existence and length of redemption laws.

Labor Supply With Social Interactions: Econometric Estimates And Their Tax Policy Implications, Andrew Grodner, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

Our research fleshes out econometric details of examining possible social interactions in labor supply. We look for a response of a person's hours worked to hours worked in the labor market reference group, which includes those with similar age, family structure, and location. We identify endogenous spillovers by instrumenting average hours worked in the reference group with hours worked in neighboring reference groups. Estimates of the canonical labor supply model indicate positive economically important spillovers for adult men. The estimated total wage elasticity of labor supply is 0.22, where 0.08 is the exogenous wage change effect and 0.14 is the …

Explaining The Value Of Transactional Lawyering, Steven L. Schwarcz

ExpressO

This article attempts, empirically, to explain the value that lawyers add when acting as counsel to parties in business transactions. Contrary to existing scholarship, which is based mostly on theory, this article shows that transactional lawyers add value primarily by reducing regulatory costs, thereby challenging the reigning models of transactional lawyers as “transaction cost engineers” and “reputational intermediaries.” This new model not only helps inform contract theory but also reveals a profoundly different vision than existing models for the future of legal education and the profession.

Playing Poker At The U.N., Paul Herman Brietzke

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Who Decides?: A Critical Look At Procedural Discretion, Robert G. Bone

ExpressO

Federal civil procedure today relies extensively on trial judge discretion to manage litigation, promote settlements, and otherwise tailor process to individual cases. Even those rules with decisional standards leave trial judges considerable interpretive freedom to make case-specific determinations. This Article criticizes these choices and recommends stricter rules. Many judges and procedure scholars applaud the discretionary approach, and the Advisory Committee seems content to draft vague rules that implement it. The assumption seems to be that trial judges have the expertise and experience to do a good job of tailoring procedures to the needs of particular cases. The assumption is wrong, …

Revitalizing Our Urban Core Without Marginalizing Our Core People: Closing Tax Credit Loopholes For The Wealthy While Generating Ethnic Entrepreneurial Self Help Alternatives To Subsidized Gentrification, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

This article provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the New Markets Tax Credits program established by Congress. The purpose of the NMTCs is to use tax credits as incentives for investors to provide equity funds into low income areas. The article reveals that over $2 billion of federal tax subsidies that have been allocated to gentrified projects for the wealthy, rather than the intended beneficiaries – low income residents in the urban core – as Congress intended. The article proposes amendments to the statute and regulations to close unintended loopholes.

The article also creates a model for a …

Recent Defined Benefit Pension Reform: Reasons And Results, Daniel B. Klaff

ExpressO

In the face of corporate bankruptcies, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (“PBGC”) assures workers that their defined benefit pensions will be protected. It is this fact which has motivated recent reform of the PBGC and the overarching defined benefit plan system by Congress. This paper explores those reforms by addressing the reasons for and results of the most recent reform which had as its primary aim restoring the fiscal solvency of the PBGC. The paper challenges popular accounts of the reform process while examining the results of such reform for important stakeholders without resorting to an overly technical discussion of …

The "Benefits" Of Non-Delegation: Using The Non-Delegation Doctrine To Bring More Rigor To Benefit-Cost Analysis, Victor B. Flatt

ExpressO

This article examines the problems of benefit-cost (or cost-benefit) analysis in our regulatory system and posits that a more nuanced version of the “non-delegation” doctrine (made famous in Schechter Poultry) could improve many of the problems associated with the use of benefit-cost analysis. In particular this article notes that many of the problems with benefit-cost analysis are its use by agencies to make large policy decisions, which could be characterized as legislative. The article also notes that though the “non-delegation” doctrine may appear to be dead or dormant, that a form of it, in separation of powers doctrine, exists in …

Revitalizing Our Urban Core Without Marginalizing Our Core People: Closing Tax Credit Loopholes For The Wealthy While Generating Ethnic Entrepreneurial Self Help Alternatives To Subsidized Gentrification, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

This article provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the New Markets Tax Credits program established by Congress. The purpose of the NMTCs is to use tax credits as incentives for investors to provide equity funds into low income areas. The article reveals that over $2 billion of federal tax subsidies that have been allocated to gentrified projects for the wealthy, rather than the intended beneficiaries – low income residents in the urban core – as Congress intended. The article proposes amendments to the statute and regulations to close unintended loopholes.

The article also creates a model for a …

Financial Accounting And Corporate Behavior, David I. Walker

ExpressO

The power of financial accounting to shape corporate behavior is underappreciated. Positive accounting theory teaches that even cosmetic changes in reported earnings can affect share value, not because market participants are unable to see through such changes to the underlying fundamentals, but because of implicit or explicit contracts that are based on reported earnings and transaction costs. However, agency theory suggests that accounting choices and corporate responses to accounting standard changes will not necessarily be those that maximize share value. For a number of reasons, including the fact that executive compensation often is tied to reported earnings, managerial preferences for …

Hurricane Damage To The Ocean, Charles S. Colgan, Jefferey Adkins

Publications

In 2005, insured losses from hurricanes and other catastrophes were greater than in any other year in U.S. history. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center estimates that $85 billion of total damages resulted from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone. One year later, the region affected by these two hurricanes still struggles to recover, both as a place to live and as a viable economy. Using data from the BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, the National Ocean Economics Program has developed a data series that allows the economic damage to coastal regions to be seen in a new light: what happens …

Copyright Distributive Injustice, Daniel Benoliel

ExpressO

By design, copyright is a legal field that is not distinctively designed for redistribution. And yet, numerous fairness scholars and other critics of the economics paradigm quite markedly argue that copyright law should be based upon some measure of distribution, not efficiency.

This essay argues that copyright law should not promote distributive justice concerns, subject to narrow exceptions and that other more efficient law such as taxation and welfare laws should do that instead. It does so in accordance to the prevailing welfare economics interpretative approach to copyright jurisprudence, with emphasis on the latest Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing litigation.

It …

Automatic Stabilizer Feature Of Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes In Emerging Markets, Uluc Aysun

Economics Working Papers

This paper shows that countries characterized by a financial accelerator mechanism may reverse the usual finding of the literature -- flexible exchange rate regimes do a worse job of insulating open economies from external shocks. I obtain this result with a calibrated small open economy model that endogenizes foreign interest rates by linking them to the banking sector's foreign currency leverage. This relationship renders exchange rate policy more important compared to the usual exogeneity assumption. I find empirical support for this prediction using the Local Projections method. Finally, 2nd order approximation to the model finds larger welfare losses under flexible …

Determinants And Effects Of Maturity Mismatches In Emerging Markets: Evidence From Bank Level Data, Uluc Aysun

Economics Working Papers

Despite the extensive work on currency mismatches, research on the determinants and effects of maturity mismatches is scarce. In this paper I show that emerging market maturity mismatches are negatively affected by capital inflows and price volatilities. Furthermore, I find that banks with low maturity mismatches are more profitable during crisis periods but less profitable otherwise. The later result implies that banks face a tradeoff between higher returns and risk, hence channeling short term capital into long term loans is caused by cronyism and implicit guarantees rather than the depth of the financial market. The positive relationship between maturity mismatches …

Testing For Balance Sheet Effects In Emerging Market Countries, Uluc Aysun

Economics Working Papers

This paper tests the presence of balance sheets effects and analyzes the implications for exchange rate policies in emerging markets. The results reveal that the emerging market bond index (EMBI) is negatively related to the banks' foreign currency leverage, and that these banks' foreign currency exposures are relatively unhedged. Panel SVAR methods using EMBI instead of advanced country lending rates find, contrary to the literature, that the amplitude of output responses to foreign interest rate shocks are smaller under relatively fixed regimes. The findings are robust to the local projections method of obtaining impulse responses, using country specific and GARCH-SVAR …

Modeling Small Business Growth, Migration Behavior, Local Public Services And Household Income In Appalachia: A Spatial Simultaneous Equations Approach, Gebremeskel H. Gebremariam

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In an effort to analyze the interdependences among small business growth, migration behavior, local public services, and median household income, this study developed a simultaneous-equation system under the assumptions of profit maximization of firm and utility maximization of households as well as the neoclassical assumption of equilibrium growth in a partial lag-adjustment growth-equilibrium framework. This model is an extension of the "jobs follow people or people follow jobs" literature and it improved previous models in the growth-equilibrium tradition by explicitly modeling local government and regional income in the growth process. It also explicitly modeled gross in-migration and gross out-migration separately …

An Analysis Of Institutions, Economic Freedom, And The Quality Of Life, Nathan J. Ashby

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The impact of economic freedom on the quality of life is the subject of interest for this dissertation. Three separate studies are conducted. The first of these studies in Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of economic freedom on the quality of life in an international panel data study between 1985 and 2000. It is found that economic freedom and in particular well-defined property rights and limited regulation lead to improvement in the quality of life using the Index of Human Progress, an index made up income, health and education indicators, and access to modern technology for individuals in a given …

Network Effects And Spatial Autoregression In Mode Choice Models: Three Essays In Urban Transportation Economics, Frank Goetzke

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Network analysis in transportation economics has traditionally focused on congestion as a negative externality stemming from supply-side capacity constraints. In my first paper paper, an analytical mode choice model is developed to examine the demand-side network effects. The assumption behind the approach is that, because of social network effects, the utility of people taking the mode increases with its mode share. It is found that social network effects change the modal aggregate demand curve for the mode to an inverted u-shape. This result has far-reaching policy consequences, since multiple equilibria become a possibility, causing positive externalities and path-dependency.;Transportation planners have …

Transition Economies: A Look At Russia, Ukraine And Poland, Andrey Androshchuk

Honors College Theses

The following paper examines transition economies of Russia, Ukraine and Poland. It takes a look at their transition period into a market economy for the period between 1989 and 1997. It looks at the initial transformation policiies implemented by these countries. The effects of these policies determined the recovery of each nation. Poland was able to implement broad reforms on the macro and micro level and as a result had a small contraction period which was followed by a rapid recovery. Russia and Ukraine failed to fully implement its reforms and as a result suffered economic downturn throughout this period. …

Ringing The Bell On The Nyse: Might A Nonprofit Stock Exchange Have Been Efficient?, Stephen F. Diamond

ExpressO

Abstract

This spring the New York Stock Exchange, Inc. (Exchange or NYSE) completed an historic restructuring. On March 7, 2006, the NYSE completed its merger with Archipelago Holdings Inc. (Archipelago), a publicly traded electronic trading platform. As a result, the old NYSE itself became the New York Stock Exchange LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of NYSE Group, Inc. (NYSE Group). The former members, or seat holders, of the NYSE received one of three forms of consideration: all cash, all stock in NYSE Group, or a package of cash and stock. The NYSE Group then allowed those former members to offer …

Sheep Updates 2006 - Part 4, K. G. Geenty, A. A. Swan, A. J. Smith, J. L. Smith, Chris Oldham, R. G. Woodgate, R. A. Love, E. Dobbe, H. M. Hoult, J. Pearson, S. Hill, A. Van Burgel, R. B. Besier, R. Warburton, L. Mathwin, D. Rogers, E. Crossley, Allan Herbert, P. Nichols, Tony Albertsen, Darryl Mcclements, Graeme Martin, Penny Hawken, Caroline Vinoles, Beth Paganoni, Dominique Blanche

Sheep Updates

This session covers seven papers from different authors:

MANAGEMENT

1. Wool and meat traits in Merino flocks in different regions, K.G. Geenty, A.A. Swan, A.J. Smith, J.L. Smith, Sheep CRC and CSIRO Livestock Industries, Armidale

2. Fat score or Condition score? - It all depends on what you want to do! Chris Oldham, Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia

3. Sheep worm control - the latest for Western Australia, RG Woodgate, RA Love, E Dobbe, HM Hoult, J Pearson, S Hill, A van Burgel and RB Besier, Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia

PASTURES

4. Rethinking pasture production …

Property Condition Disclosure Law: Does 'Seller Tell All' Matter In Property Values?, Anupam Nanda

Economics Working Papers

At the time when at least two-thirds of the US states have already mandated some form of seller's property condition disclosure statement and there is a movement in this direction nationally, this paper examines the impact of seller's property condition disclosure law on the residential real estate values, the information asymmetry in housing transactions and shift of risk from buyers and brokers to the sellers, and attempts to ascertain the factors that lead to adoption of the disclosur law. The analytical structure employs parametric panel data models, semi-parametric propensity score matching models, and an event study framework using a unique …

The Economic Implications Of A North Korean Nuclear Test, Marcus Noland

Marcus Noland

This essay analyzes the economic implications that a North Korean nuclear test would have on Northeast Asia. Main Argument: A North Korean nuclear test would likely have a negative, though noncatastrophic, economic impact on the region: -South Korea would likely suffer from capital flight, consequent declines in asset prices and investment, and possibly a minor budgetary loss associated with existing investment guarantees to companies operating in North Korea. - Japan’s economy would also suffer from capital flight, asset price declines, and a reduction in investment. The most radical consequence, however, would be political: a nuclear test might strengthen Japanese attitudes …

Optimization Of Grazing Management For Watershed Sediment Control, Y. Duan, P. Heilman, D. Phillip Guertin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grazing on rangelands can increase erosion that is a major source of nonpoint source pollution. Grazing management is important in maintaining vegetation cover, which consequently impacts erosion and sediment yield. This paper uses a representative ranch model to define grazing management from an economic perspective. The model maximizes the profit of a representative ranch that can utilize all grazing lands in a watershed with constraints on forage resources, sustainable utilization, and production technology and sediment yield control objectives. A case study for the Walnut Gulch Watershed in Arizona showed a shift of the spatial distribution of optimal stocking rates with …

Optimization Of Grazing Management For Watershed Sediment Control, Y. Duan, P. Heilman, D. Phillip Guertin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grazing on rangelands can increase erosion that is a major source of nonpoint source pollution. Grazing management is important in maintaining vegetation cover, which consequently impacts erosion and sediment yield. This paper uses a representative ranch model to define grazing management from an economic perspective. The model maximizes the profit of a representative ranch that can utilize all grazing lands in a watershed with constraints on forage resources, sustainable utilization, and production technology and sediment yield control objectives. A case study for the Walnut Gulch Watershed in Arizona showed a shift of the spatial distribution of optimal stocking rates with …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Phase I Florida's Ocean And Coastal Economies Report, Judith T. Kildow Dr

Publications

This report was prepared for and funded by the Florida State Department of Environmental Protection with the encouragement of members from the Florida Ocean Alliance, Florida Oceans and Coastal Resources Council and other groups with deep interests in the future of Florida’s coast. It is a preliminary study of Florida’s Ocean and Coastal Economies based only on information currently found within the datasets of the National Ocean Economics Program (NOEP). It reflects only a portion of the value of Florida’s coastal-related economy and should not be considered comprehensive. A more customized study based on the unique coastal and ocean-dependent economic …

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy And Novel Search Technologies: An Economic Approach, Steven Penney

ExpressO

The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, which defines the scope of constitutional protection from governmental privacy intrusions in both the United States and Canada, is notoriously indeterminate. This indeterminacy stems in large measure from the tendency of judges to think of privacy in non-instrumentalist terms. This “moral” approach to privacy is normatively questionable, and it does a poor job of identifying the circumstances in which privacy should prevail over countervailing interests, such as the deterrence of crime.

In this paper, I develop an alternative, economically-informed approach to the reasonable expectation of privacy test. In contrast to the moral approach, which …