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A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Jun 2011

A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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Most legal historians speak of the period following classical legal thought as “progressive legal thought.” That term creates an unwarranted bias in characterization, however, creating the impression that conservatives clung to an obsolete “classical” ideology, when in fact they were in many ways just as revisionist as the progressives legal thinkers whom they critiqued. The Progressives and New Deal thinkers whom we identify with progressive legal thought were nearly all neoclassical, or marginalist, in their economics, but it is hardly true that all marginalists were progressives. For example, the lawyers and policy makers in the corporate finance battles of the …


At The Conjunction Of Love And Money: Comment On Julie A. Nelson, Does Profit-Seeking Rule Out Love? Evidence (Or Not) From Economics And Law, William W. Bratton Jan 2011

At The Conjunction Of Love And Money: Comment On Julie A. Nelson, Does Profit-Seeking Rule Out Love? Evidence (Or Not) From Economics And Law, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.


The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter Jan 2011

The Political Economy Of Fraud On The Market, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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No abstract provided.


The New Financial Deal: Understanding The Dodd-Frank Act And Its (Unintended) Consequences, David A. Skeel Jr. Oct 2010

The New Financial Deal: Understanding The Dodd-Frank Act And Its (Unintended) Consequences, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Contrary to rumors that the Dodd-Frank Act is an incoherent mess, its 2,319 pages have two very clear objectives: limiting the risk of the shadow banking system by more carefully regulating derivatives and large financial institutions; and limiting the damage caused by a financial institution’s failure. The new legislation also has a theme: government partnership with the largest Wall Street banks. The vision emerged almost by accident from the Bear Stearns and AIG bailouts of 2008 and the commandeering of the bankruptcy process to rescue Chrysler and GM in 2009. Its implications for derivatives regulation could prove beneficial: Dodd-Frank will …


The Overstated Promise Of Corporate Governance, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2010

The Overstated Promise Of Corporate Governance, Jill E. Fisch

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Review of Jonathan Macey, Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken (Princeton, 2008)


When The Government Is The Controlling Shareholder: Implications For Delaware, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock Jan 2010

When The Government Is The Controlling Shareholder: Implications For Delaware, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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No abstract provided.


Assessing The Chrysler Bankruptcy, Mark J. Roe, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2010

Assessing The Chrysler Bankruptcy, Mark J. Roe, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of its main assets to a new government-funded entity. The unevenness of the compensation to prior creditors raised considerable concerns in capital markets, which we evaluate here. We conclude that the Chrysler bankruptcy cannot be understood as complying with good bankruptcy practice, that it resurrected discredited practices long thought interred …


A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff Jan 2010

A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff

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No abstract provided.


The Case Against Shareholder Empowerment, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter Jan 2010

The Case Against Shareholder Empowerment, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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No abstract provided.


Bankruptcy Or Bailouts?, Kenneth M. Ayotte, David A. Skeel Jr. Mar 2009

Bankruptcy Or Bailouts?, Kenneth M. Ayotte, David A. Skeel Jr.

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The usual reaction if one mentions bankruptcy as a mechanism for addressing a financial institution’s default is incredulity. Those who favor the rescue of troubled financial institutions, and even those who prefer that their assets be promptly sold to a healthier institution, treat bankruptcy as anathema. Everyone seems to agree that nothing good can come from bankruptcy. Indeed, the Chapter 11 filing by Lehman Brothers has been singled out by many the primary cause of the severe economic and financial contraction that followed, and proof that bankruptcy is disorderly and ineffective. As a result, ad-hoc rescue lending to avoid bankruptcy …


Hedge Fund Activism In The Enforcement Of Bondholder Rights, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock Jan 2009

Hedge Fund Activism In The Enforcement Of Bondholder Rights, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

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Activist hedge funds have transformed how bondholders respond to violations of their contractual rights. Insurance companies and mutual funds, the traditional investors in bonds, often slept on their rights and turned active only little and late. Hedge funds, by contrast, seek out opportunities for activism in order to make profits. In the wake of their activism, hedge funds have not only benefitted themselves, but their fellow bondholders as well. Alas, the remedy scheme for violations of bondholders rights – in particular, the centrality of the acceleration remedy – introduces its own set of imperfections. When treasury interest rates have increased …


Confronting The Circularity Problem In Private Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2009

Confronting The Circularity Problem In Private Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch

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Many critics argue that private securities litigation fails effectively either to deter corporate misconduct or to compensate defrauded investors. In particular, commentators reason that damages reflect socially inefficient transfer payments—the so-called circularity problem. Fox and Mitchell address the circularity problem by identifying new reasons why private litigation is an effective deterrent, focusing on the role of disclosure in improving corporate governance. The corporate governance rationale for securities regulation is more powerful than the authors recognize. By collecting and using corporate information in their trading decisions, informed investors play a critical role in enhancing market efficiency. This efficiency, in turn, allows …


Top Cop Or Regulatory Flop? The Sec At 75, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2009

Top Cop Or Regulatory Flop? The Sec At 75, Jill E. Fisch

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In their forthcoming article, Redesigning the SEC: Does the Treasury Have a Better Idea?, Professors John C. Coffee, Jr., and Hillary Sale offer compelling reasons to rethink the SEC’s role. This article extends that analysis, evaluating the SEC’s responsibility for the current financial crisis and its potential future role in regulation of the capital markets. In particular, the article identifies critical failures in the SEC’s performance in its core competencies of enforcement, financial transparency, and investor protection. The article argues that these failures are not the result, as suggested by the Treasury Department Blueprint, of a balkanized regulatory system. Rather, …


Bankruptcy Boundary Games, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2009

Bankruptcy Boundary Games, David A. Skeel Jr.

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For the past several decades, Congress has steadily expanded the exclusion of securities market operations from core bankruptcy protections. This Article focuses on three of the most important of these issues: the exclusion of brokerage firms from Chapter 11; the protection of settlement payments from avoidance as preferences or fraudulent conveyances; and the exemption of derivatives from the automatic stay and other basic bankruptcy provisions. In Parts I, II and III of the Article, I consider each of the issues in turn, showing that each has had serious unintended consequences. Both Drexel Burnham and Lehman Brothers evaded the brokerage exclusion, …


Taxation And The Competitiveness Of Sovereign Wealth Funds: Do Taxes Encourage Sovereign Wealth Funds To Invest In The United States?, Michael S. Knoll Jan 2009

Taxation And The Competitiveness Of Sovereign Wealth Funds: Do Taxes Encourage Sovereign Wealth Funds To Invest In The United States?, Michael S. Knoll

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Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) control vast amounts of capital and have made and are continuing to make numerous large, high-profile investments in the United States, especially in the financial services industry. Those investments in particular and SWFs in general are highly controversial. There is much discussion of the advantages and disadvantages to the United States of investments by SWFs and there is an intense and ongoing debate over what should be the United States’ policy towards investments by SWFs. In the course of that debate, some critics have called upon the US government to abandon its long-held public position of …


Neoclassicism And The Separation Of Ownership And Control, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Jan 2009

Neoclassicism And The Separation Of Ownership And Control, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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"Separation of ownership and control" is a phrase whose history will forever be associated with Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means' The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), as well as with Institutionalist economics, Legal Realism, and the New Deal. Within that milieu the large publicly held business corporation became identified with excessive managerial power at the expense of stockholders, social irresponsibility, and internal inefficiency. Neoclassical economists both then and ever since have generally been critical, both of the historical facts that Berle and Means purported to describe and of the conclusions that they drew. In fact, however, within …


The Taxation Of Private Equity Carried Interests: Estimating The Revenue Effects Of Taxing Profit Interests As Ordinary Income, Michael S. Knoll Nov 2008

The Taxation Of Private Equity Carried Interests: Estimating The Revenue Effects Of Taxing Profit Interests As Ordinary Income, Michael S. Knoll

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In this Article, I estimate the tax revenue effects of taxing private equity carried interests as ordinary income rather than as long-term capital gain as under current law. Under reasonable assumptions, I conclude that the expected present value of additional tax collections would be between 1 percent and 1.5 percent of capital invested in private equity funds, or between $2 billion and $3 billion a year. That estimate, however, makes no allowance for changes in the structure of such funds or the composition of the partnerships, which might substantially reduce tax revenues below those estimates.


International Competitiveness, Tax Incentives, And A New Argument For Tax Sparing: Preventing Double Taxation By Crediting Implicit Taxes, Michael S. Knoll Aug 2008

International Competitiveness, Tax Incentives, And A New Argument For Tax Sparing: Preventing Double Taxation By Crediting Implicit Taxes, Michael S. Knoll

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Tax sparing occurs when a country with a worldwide tax system grants its citizens foreign tax credits for the taxes that they would have paid on income earned abroad, but that escapes taxation by virtue of foreign tax incentives. The supporters of tax sparing argue that it is a form of foreign aid, an obligation owed to developing countries, and a legitimate means of improving the competitiveness of resident investors. Tax sparing, however, has long been opposed by the United States on the grounds that it is an expensive and problematic concession to developing countries, inconsistent with basic and fundamental …


Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter Jan 2008

Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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No abstract provided.


Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton Jan 2008

Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.


Governance In The Ruins, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2008

Governance In The Ruins, David A. Skeel Jr.

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What gets an economy up and running after a catastrophic war or a period of oppressive rule? While there are nearly as many answers to these questions as experts, one of the most prominent for the past century has been law. Nearly every page of Law and Capitalism, a remarkable new book by Curtis Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor, stands in implicit or explicit dissent from the prevailing view. Milhaupt and Pistor’s countermodel begins a matrix consisting of two axes. The first contrasts a purely protective regime on one end, with a pervasively “coordinative” approach on the other. The second axis …


Hedge Funds And Governance Targets, William W. Bratton Jan 2007

Hedge Funds And Governance Targets, William W. Bratton

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Corporate governance interventions by hedge fund shareholders are triggering debates between advocates of management empowerment and advocates of aggressive monitoring by actors in the capital markets. This Article intervenes with an empirical question: What, based on the record so far, have the hedge funds actually done to their targets? Information has been collected on 130 domestic firms identified in the business press since 2002 as targets of activist hedge funds, including the funds’ demands, their tactics, and the results of their interventions for the targets’ governance and finance. The survey results show that the hedge funds have an enviable record …


Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton Jan 2007

Private Standards, Public Governance: A New Look At The Financial Accounting Standards Board, William W. Bratton

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The Financial Accounting Standards Board (the “FASB”) presents a puzzle: How has this private standard setter managed simultaneously (1) to remain independent, (2) to achieve institutional stability and legitimacy, and (3) to operate in a politicized context in the teeth of op-position from its own constituents? This Article looks to governance design to account for this institutional success. The FASB’s founders made a strategic choice to create a regulatory agency that sought independence rather than political responsiveness. The FASB also set out a coherent theory of accounting, the “Conceptual Framework,” to contain and direct its decisions. The Conceptual Framework contributed …


The Essential Role Of Securities Regulation, Zohar Goshen, Gideon Parchomovsky Jan 2006

The Essential Role Of Securities Regulation, Zohar Goshen, Gideon Parchomovsky

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This Article posits that the essential role of securities regulation is to create a competitive market for sophisticated professional investors and analysts (information traders). The Article advances two related theses-one descriptive and the other normative. Descriptively, the Article demonstrates that securities regulation is specifically designed to facilitate and protect the work of information traders. Securities regulation may be divided into three broad categories: (i) disclosure duties; (ii) restrictions on fraud and manipulation; and (iii) restrictions on insider trading-each of which contributes to the creation of a vibrant market for information traders. Disclosure duties reduce information traders' costs of searching and …


The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery Jan 2006

The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery

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No abstract provided.


The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton Jan 2005

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.


The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2004

The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.

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Chapter 11's distinctive post-petition financing rules trace their ancestry back to the origins of large scale corporate reorganization in America in the nineteenth century. In this sense, post-petition financing has always been with us. But in the past decade, the role of the financers has changed. After a century in the shadows, post-petition lenders have stepped onto center stage. The DIP loan agreement has become the single most important governance lever in many large Chapter 11 cases. Why have these formerly bashful financers suddenly started hogging the spotlight? I argue in this article that the generous terms offered to DIP …


Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile Jan 2004

Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile

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The market for sovereign debt differs from the market for corporate debt in several important ways including the risk of opportunistic default by sovereign debtors, the importance of political pressures, and the presence of international development organizations. Moreover, countries are subject to neither liquidation nor standardized processes of debt reorganization. Instead, negotiations between a sovereign debtor and its creditors lead to a voluntary restructuring of the sovereign's debt. One of the greatest difficulties in restructuring claims against sovereign debtors is balancing the interests of the majority of the creditors with those of minority creditors. Holdout creditors serve as a check …


Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton Jan 2004

Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Securities Exchange Commission move too quickly ·when they prod the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard setter for US GAAP, to move immediately to a principles-based system. Priorities respecting reform of corporate reporting in the US need to be ordered more carefully. Incentive problems impairing audit performance should be solved first through institutional reform insulating the audit from the negative impact of rent-seeking and solving adverse selection problems otherwise affecting audit practice. So long as auditor independence and management incentives respecting accounting treatments remain suspect. the US reporting system holds out no actor plausibly positioned …


Gaming Delaware, William W. Bratton Jan 2004

Gaming Delaware, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.