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Full-Text Articles in Corporate Finance

Corporate Crime And Punishment: An Empirical Study, Dorothy S. Lund, Natasha Sarin Dec 2021

Corporate Crime And Punishment: An Empirical Study, Dorothy S. Lund, Natasha Sarin

All Faculty Scholarship

For many years, law and economics scholars, as well as politicians and regulators, have debated whether corporate criminal enforcement overdeters beneficial corporate activity or in the alternative, lets corporate criminals off too easily. This debate has recently expanded in its polarization: On the one hand, academics, judges, and politicians have excoriated enforcement agencies for failing to send guilty bankers to jail in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis; on the other, the U.S. Department of Justice has since relaxed policies that encouraged individual prosecutions and reduced the size of fines and number of prosecutions. A crucial and yet understudied …


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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


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

The Overstated Promise Of Corporate Governance, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

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


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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …


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

Hedge Funds And Governance Targets, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …


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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Academic Tournament Over Executive Compensation, William W. Bratton Jan 2005

The Academic Tournament Over Executive Compensation, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton Jan 2005

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Case For Repealing The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, Terrence R. Chorvat, Michael S. Knoll Jan 2003

The Case For Repealing The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, Terrence R. Chorvat, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Shareholder Value And Auditor Independence, William W. Bratton Jan 2003

Shareholder Value And Auditor Independence, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article questions the practice of framing problems concerning auditors’ professional responsibility inside a principal-agent paradigm. If professional independence is to be achieved, auditors cannot be enmeshed in agency relationships with the shareholders of their audit clients. As agents, the auditors by definition become subject to the principal’s control and cannot act independently. For the same reason, auditors’ duties should be neither articulated in the framework of corporate law fiduciary duty, nor conceived relationally at all. These assertions follow from an inquiry into the operative notion of the shareholder-beneficiary. The Article unpacks the notion of the shareholder and tells a …


Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton Jan 2003

Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Enron And The Dark Side Of Shareholder Value, William W. Bratton Jan 2002

Enron And The Dark Side Of Shareholder Value, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton Apr 2001

Berle And Means Reconsidered At The Century's Turn, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Corporate Finance, Corporate Law And Finance Theory, Peter H. Huang, Michael S. Knoll Jan 2000

Corporate Finance, Corporate Law And Finance Theory, Peter H. Huang, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


From Legitimacy To Logic: Reconstructing Proxy Regulation, Jill E. Fisch Jan 1993

From Legitimacy To Logic: Reconstructing Proxy Regulation, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

On October 16, 1992, after a comprehensive review of its system of proxy regulation and after two separate amendment proposals that drew more than 1700 letters of comment from the public, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "Commission" or the "SEC") voted to reform the federal proxy rules. The reforms were "intended to facilitate shareholder communications and to enhance informed proxy voting, and to reduce the cost of compliance with the proxy rules for all persons engaged in a proxy solicitation.' The SEC explained the amendments by stating that the rules were "impeding shareholder communication and participation in the corporate …


Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton Jan 1993

Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Bargaining And The Division Of Value In Corporate Reorganization, Howard F. Chang, Lucian A. Bebchuk Jan 1992

Bargaining And The Division Of Value In Corporate Reorganization, Howard F. Chang, Lucian A. Bebchuk

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Interpretation Of Contracts Governing Corporate Debt Relationships, William W. Bratton Jan 1984

The Interpretation Of Contracts Governing Corporate Debt Relationships, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Economics And Jurisprudence Of Convertible Bonds, William W. Bratton Jan 1984

The Economics And Jurisprudence Of Convertible Bonds, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Bratton examines judicial regulation of issuer-bondholder conflicts of interest within three different, but closely related doctrinal frameworks: neoclassical contract interpretation; contract avoidance; and corporate law fiduciary restraint. After discussing the elements of convertible bond valuation and their interaction with issuer actions giving rise to conflicts of interest, he evaluates the case for judicial intervention to protect bondholder interests. He concludes that ·bondholder protective intervention is fair and tolerably efficient, provided it is kept within the bounds of contract interpretation. But he finds that more aggressive judicial intervention under the frameworks of contract avoidance and fiduciary restraint carries an unnecessary …