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Full-Text Articles in Law
Insider Trading: Hayek, Virtual Markets, And The Dog That Did Not Bark, Henry G. Manne
Insider Trading: Hayek, Virtual Markets, And The Dog That Did Not Bark, Henry G. Manne
ExpressO
This Essay briefly reexamines the great debates on the role of insider trading in the corporate system from the perspectives of efficiency of capital markets, harm to individual investors, and executive compensation. The focus is on the mystery of why trading by all kinds of insiders as well as knowledgeable outsiders was studiously ignored by the business and investment communities before the advent of insider trading regulation. It is hardly conceivable that officers, directors, and controlling shareholders would have remained totally silent in the face of widespread insider trading if they had seen the practice as being harmful to the …
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval 'Law Merchant', Stephen E. Sachs
From St. Ives To Cyberspace: The Modern Distortion Of The Medieval 'Law Merchant', Stephen E. Sachs
ExpressO
Modern advocates of corporate self-regulation have drawn unlikely inspiration from the Middle Ages. On the traditional view of history, medieval merchants who wandered from fair to fair were not governed by domestic laws, but by their own lex mercatoria, or "law merchant." This law, which uniformly regulated commerce across Europe, was supposedly produced by an autonomous merchant class, interpreted in private courts, and enforced through private sanctions rather than state coercion. Contemporary writers have treated global corporations as descendants of these itinerant traders, urging them to replace conflicting national laws with a law of their own creation. The standard history …
Price, Path & Pride: Third-Party Closing Opinion Practice Among U.S. Lawyers (A Preliminary Investigation), Jonathan C. Lipson
Price, Path & Pride: Third-Party Closing Opinion Practice Among U.S. Lawyers (A Preliminary Investigation), Jonathan C. Lipson
ExpressO
This article presents the first in-depth exploration of third-party closing opinions, a common but curious – and potentially troubling -- feature of U.S. business law practice. Third-party closing opinions are letters delivered at the closing of most large transactions by the attorney for one party (e.g., the borrower) to the other party (e.g., the lender) offering limited assurance that the transaction will have legal force and effect.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of legal opinions are delivered every week. Yet, lawyers often complain that they create needless risk and cost, and produce little benefit. Closing opinions thus pose a basic question: …
Patterns In A Complex System: An Empirical Study Of Valuation In Business Bankruptcy Cases, Bernard Trujillo
Patterns In A Complex System: An Empirical Study Of Valuation In Business Bankruptcy Cases, Bernard Trujillo
ExpressO
This Article applies complex systems research methods to explore the characteristics of the bankruptcy legal system, presenting the results of an empirical study of twenty years of bankruptcy court valuation doctrine in business cramdown cases. These data provide solid descriptions of how courts exercise their discretion in valuing firms and assets.
This Article accomplishes two objectives: First, using scientific methodology, this Article explains the content of bankruptcy valuation doctrine. Second, this Article uses doctrine as a variable to explore system dynamics that govern the processes of change over time.
Significant findings include (i) courts tend to “split the difference” in …
The Legal Status Of “Dump & Sue”: Should Plaintiffs And Their Attorneys Be Prohibited From Trading The Stock Of Companies They Sue? – A Law And Economics Approach, Moin A. Yahya
ExpressO
There is some evidence that plaintiffs and their attorneys are profitably short-selling the stock of the companies they intend to sue. The status of such short sales is undecided in the law. Lawsuits against companies can cause large drops in market value, and hence such an action by the plaintiff should cause concern. Plaintiffs, however, are not traditional insiders, and they do not owe the shareholders any fiduciary duties. They can therefore consent to their attorneys also short-selling the stock of the defendant corporation. The attorneys need to receive such permission to avoid misappropriating the information concerning their client’s decision …
The Deep Structure Of Law And Morality, Robin B. Kar
The Deep Structure Of Law And Morality, Robin B. Kar
ExpressO
This Article argues that morality and law share a deep and pervasive structure, an analogue of what Noam Chomsky calls the “deep structure” of language. This structure arises not to resolve linguistic problems of generativity, but rather from the fact that morality and law engage psychological adaptations with the same natural function: to allow us to resolve social contract problems flexibly. Drawing on and extending a number of contemporary insights from evolutionary psychology and evolutionary game theory, this Article argues that we resolve these problems by employing a particular class of psychological attitudes, which are neither simply belief-like states nor …
The "Duty" To Be A Rational Shareholder, David A. Hoffman
The "Duty" To Be A Rational Shareholder, David A. Hoffman
ExpressO
How and when do courts determine that corporate disclosures are actionable under the federal securities laws? The applicable standard is materiality: would a (mythical) "reasonable investor" have considered the disclosures important. As I establish through empirical and statistical testing of 500 cases analyzing the materiality standard, judicial findings of immateriality are remarkably common, and have been stable over time. Materiality's scope results in the dismissal of a large number of claims, and creates a set of cases in which courts attempt to explain and defend their vision of who is, and is not, a "reasonable investor." Thus, materiality provides an …
The Missing Preferred Return, Victor Fleischer
The Missing Preferred Return, Victor Fleischer
ExpressO
Managers of buyout funds typically offer their investors an 8% preferred return on their investment before they take a share of any additional profits. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, rarely offer a preferred return. Instead, VCs take their cut from the first dollar of nominal profits. This disparity between venture funds and buyout funds is especially striking because the contracts that determine fund organization and compensation are otherwise very similar. The missing preferred return might suggest that agency costs pose a larger problem in venture capital than previously thought. Is the missing preferred return evidence, perhaps, that VCs are …
Taxing Utility, Terrence Chorvat
Taxing Utility, Terrence Chorvat
George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series
In order to assess the efficiency of a tax, we should examine its effect on the behavior of individuals. In general, the less a tax affects behavior, the more efficient it is thought to be. The standard example of a non-distorting tax is a lump-sum tax, which does not change with the behavior of the taxpayer. However, this article demonstrates that behavioral distortions can and do arise from a change in even a lump-sum tax. The only truly non-distortionary tax would be one based on utility itself. Utility, which has been used as a norm for distributional analysis, is also …
What Is A Tragedy Of The Commons? Overfishing And The Campaign Spending Problem, Shi-Ling Hsu
What Is A Tragedy Of The Commons? Overfishing And The Campaign Spending Problem, Shi-Ling Hsu
ExpressO
Over the thirty-seven years since its publication, Garden Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" has clearly become one of the most influential writings of all time. The tragedy of the commons is one of those rare scholarly ideas that has had an enormous impact in academia and is also commonly used outside of academia. In legal scholarship, the tragedy of the commons has been used to characterize a wide variety of resource problems, including intellectual property rights, overcrowding of telecommunications spectra, air and water pollution, and of course, the classic environmental commons problem, overfishing. But I suggest this embarrassment of citation …
Western Institution Building: The War, Hayek’S Cosmos And The Wto, M. Ulric Killion
Western Institution Building: The War, Hayek’S Cosmos And The Wto, M. Ulric Killion
ExpressO
Despite the shortcomings of Hayek’s spontaneous order, there is a positive side, perhaps even a positive feedback. Hayek left us with a “what if” question and returns us to that initial opening of Pandora’s Box, or perhaps the initial onset of neo-realism, neo-liberalism, developmentalism, globalism, transnationalism and other concepts, precepts and adjectives justifying institution building by bargaining and military force. In terms of new world order, institution building by necessity requires fundamental changes in governmental structures in non-western cultures and nation-states such as China, Afghanistan and Iraq. Such changes are being prompted by means of political, economic and military powers …
Knowledge And Power In The Mechanical Firm: Planning For Profit In Austrian Perspective, Richard Adelstein
Knowledge And Power In The Mechanical Firm: Planning For Profit In Austrian Perspective, Richard Adelstein
Richard Adelstein
A theory of central planning employing Austrian themes and applied to private firms and Taylorism.