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Full-Text Articles in Law
"Do Lawyers Need Economists?" Review Of Economic Transplants: On Lawmaking For Corporations And Capital Markets, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
"Do Lawyers Need Economists?" Review Of Economic Transplants: On Lawmaking For Corporations And Capital Markets, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Reviews
Katja Langenbucher’s outstanding book seeks to address the question of why and in what ways have lawyers been importing economic theories into a legal environment, and how has this shaped scholarly research, judicial and legislative work? Since the financial crisis, corporate or capital markets law has been the focus of attention by academia and media. Formal modelling has been used to describe how capital markets work and, later, has been criticized for its abstract assumptions. Empirical legal studies and regulatory impact assessments offered different ways forward. This excellent book presents a new approach to the risks and benefits of interdisciplinary …
Stock Market Manipulation And Its Regulation, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel Rauterberg
Stock Market Manipulation And Its Regulation, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel Rauterberg
Articles
More than eighty years after federal law first addressed stock market manipulation, the federal courts remain fractured by disagreement and confusion concerning manipulation law's most foundational issues. There remains, for example, a sharp split among the federal circuits concerning manipulation law's central question: Whether trading activity alone can ever be considered illegal manipulation under federal law? Academics have been similarly confused-economists and legal scholars cannot agree on whether manipulation is even possible in principle, let alone on how to properly address it in practice.
Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko
Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
We analyze the phenomenon that low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers exhibit a “preference for over-withholding” their taxes, a measure we derive from a unique set of questions administered in a dataset of 1,003 households, which we collected through the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We argue that the relationship between their withholding preference and portfolio allocation across liquid and illiquid assets is consistent with models with present-biased preferences, and that individuals exhibit self-control problems when making their consumption and saving decisions. Our results support a model in which individuals use commitment devices to constrain their consumption. …
Institutions And Inclusion In Saving Policy, Michael S. Barr, Michael Sherraden
Institutions And Inclusion In Saving Policy, Michael S. Barr, Michael Sherraden
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
Credit Where It Counts: Maintaining A Strong Community Reinvestment Act, Michael S. Barr
Credit Where It Counts: Maintaining A Strong Community Reinvestment Act, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has helped to revitalize low- and moderate-income communities and provided expanded opportunities for low- and moderate-income households. Recent regulatory steps aimed at alleviating burdens on banks and thrifts are unwarranted, and may diminish small business lending as well as community development investments and services. This policy brief explains the rationale for CRA, demonstrates its effectiveness, and argues that the recent regulatory proposals should be withdrawn or significantly modified.
Modes Of Credit Market Regulation, Michael S. Barr
Modes Of Credit Market Regulation, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
Credit Where It Counts: The Community Reinvestment Act And Its Critics, Michael S. Barr
Credit Where It Counts: The Community Reinvestment Act And Its Critics, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
Despite the depth and breadth of U.S. credit markets, low- and moderate-income communities and minority borrowers have not historically enjoyed full access to credit. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted in 1977 to help overcome barriers to credit that these groups faced. Scholars have long leveled numerous critiques against CRA as unnecessary, ineffectual, costly, and lawless. Many have argued that CRA should be eliminated. By contrast, I contend that market failures and discrimination justify governmental intervention and that CRA is a reasonable policy response to these problems. Using recent empirical evidence, I demonstrate that over the last decade CRA …
The Deregulation Of International Trucking In The European Union: Form And Effect, Francine Lafontaine, Laura M. Valeri
The Deregulation Of International Trucking In The European Union: Form And Effect, Francine Lafontaine, Laura M. Valeri
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
This paper examines how the deregulation of the international road transport industry in Western Europe has affected 1- the total quantity of cross-border road transport in the region; 2- the degree to which shippers outsource rather than integrate vertically their cross-border transport needs; and 3- the extent to which different countries participate in international road freight transport in Western Europe. Not surprisingly, we find that deregulation has had a large positive effect on the amount of international road transport net of the effect of the trade ties that grew over time among European Union countries. Moreover, consistent with the fact …
Globalization, Law & Development: Introduction And Overview, Michael S. Barr, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Globalization, Law & Development: Introduction And Overview, Michael S. Barr, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
Microfinance And Financial Development, Michael S. Barr
Microfinance And Financial Development, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
The Coordinated Effects Of Mergers In Differentiated Products Market, Kai-Uwe Kuhn
The Coordinated Effects Of Mergers In Differentiated Products Market, Kai-Uwe Kuhn
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
Sex, Shame, And The Law: An Economic Perspective On Megan's Law, Doron Teichman
Sex, Shame, And The Law: An Economic Perspective On Megan's Law, Doron Teichman
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
This Article focuses on the question, how should policymakers aiming to minimize the cost of sanctioning utilize legal and nonlegal sanctions when designing a system of criminal sanctions. After presenting the general economic case for the use of nonlegal sanctions the article turns to present a model of shaming, which unlike existing models, incorporates the endogenous effects of legal and nonlegal sanctions. This model demonstrates that tailoring an efficient regime that combines legal and nonlegal sanctions might be more difficult than previously perceived by law and economics scholars. A specific case study presented in this article is of the current …
Economic Theories Of Bundling And Their Policy Implications In Abuse Cases: An Assessment In Light Of The Mircrosoft Case, Kai-Uwe Kuhn
Economic Theories Of Bundling And Their Policy Implications In Abuse Cases: An Assessment In Light Of The Mircrosoft Case, Kai-Uwe Kuhn
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
No abstract provided.
Banking The Poor: Policies To Bring Low-Income Americans Into The Financial Mainstream, Michael S. Barr
Banking The Poor: Policies To Bring Low-Income Americans Into The Financial Mainstream, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
Low-income households in the United States often lack access to bank accounts and face high costs for conducting basic financial transactions through check cashers and other alternative financial service providers. These families find it more difficult to save and plan financially for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck leaves them vulnerable to medical or job emergencies that may endanger their financial stability, and lack of longer-term savings undermines their ability to improve skills, purchase a home, or send their children to college. High-cost financial services and inadequate access to bank accounts may undermine widely-shared societal goals of reducing poverty, moving …
Banking The Poor, Michael S. Barr
Banking The Poor, Michael S. Barr
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
Low-income households often lack access to banking accounts and face high costs for transacting basic financial services through check cashers and other alternative financial service providers. These families find it more difficult to save and plan financially for the future. Living paycheck to paycheck leaves them vulnerable to medical or job emergencies that may endanger their financial stability, and lack of longer-term savings undermines their ability to improve skills, purchase a home, or send their children to college. Additionally, high cost financial services and inadequate access to bank accounts may undermine widely-shared societal goals of reducing poverty, moving families from …
Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
The ideal of individual liberty and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate “post-coercion” to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex-post anti-duress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible—when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party—ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome, to the detriment of the coerced party. Anti-duress relief …
"Agreeing To Disagree": Filling Gaps In Deliberately Incomplete Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar
"Agreeing To Disagree": Filling Gaps In Deliberately Incomplete Contracts, Omri Ben-Shahar
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
This Article develops a new standard for gap filling in incomplete contracts. It focuses on an important class of situations in which parties leave their agreement deliberately incomplete, with the intent to further negotiate and resolve the remaining issues. In these situations, neither the traditional no-enforcement result nor the usual gap filling approaches accord with the parties’ partial consent. Instead, the Article develops the concept of pro-defendant gap-fillers, under which each party is granted an option to enforce the transaction supplemented with terms most favorable (within reason) to the other party. A deliberately incomplete contract with pro-defendant gap fillers transforms …
Behavioral Economics And The Sec, Stephen Choi, Adam C. Pritchard
Behavioral Economics And The Sec, Stephen Choi, Adam C. Pritchard
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
Investors face myriad investment alternatives and seemingly limitless information concerning those alternatives.Not surprisingly, many commentators contend that investors frequently fall short of the ideal investor posited by the rational actor model. Investors are plagued with a variety of behavioral biases (such as, among others, the hindsight bias, the availability bias, loss aversion, and overconfidence). Even securities market institutions and intermediaries may suffer from biases, led astray by groupthink and overconfidence. The question remains whether regulators should focus on such biases in formulating policy. An omnipotent regulatory decisionmaker would certainly improve on flawed investor decisionmaking. The alternative we face, however, is …
Why Tax The Rich? Efficiency, Equity, And Progressive Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Why Tax The Rich? Efficiency, Equity, And Progressive Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Reviews
In Greek mythology, Atlas was a giant who carried the world on his shoulders. In Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Atlas represents the “ prime movers”—the talented few who bear the weight of the world’s economy.1 In the novel, the prime movers go on strike against the oppressive burden of excessive regulation and taxation, leaving the world in disarray and demonstrating how indispensable they are to the rest of us (the “second handers” ).
The Economic Analysis Of Evidence Law: Common Sense On Stilts, Richard O. Lempert
The Economic Analysis Of Evidence Law: Common Sense On Stilts, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
There was a time when the empire of Law was not overrun by economists. The economists had their own fiefdoms to be sure-there was the Duchy of Antitrust and the Kingdom of Regulatory Law-but the economists lived in peace within these borders, welcoming many unlike themselves into their midst, only gently proselytizing their students in the first few classes of a term, and swearing fealty to the law. It is true that a few marauders from beyond the borders saw the wealth of the empire and sought to colonize it, but even the most daring, Archbishop Coase and Duke Gary …
A Presumption Of Innocence, Not Of Even Odds, Richard D. Friedman
A Presumption Of Innocence, Not Of Even Odds, Richard D. Friedman
Articles
Now I know how the Munchkins felt. Here I have been, toiling in the fields of Evidenceland for some years, laboring along with others to show how use of Bayesian probability theory can assist in the analysis and understanding of evidentiary problems.' In doing so, we have had to wage continuous battle against the Bayesioskeptics-the wicked witches who deny much value, even heuristic value, for probability theory in evidentiary analysis.2 Occasionally, I have longed for law-and-economics scholars to help work this field, which should be fertile ground for them.3 So imagine my delight when the virtual personification of law and …
Economic Analysis Of Evidentiary Law: An Underused Tool, An Underplowed Field (Symposium: The Economics Of Evidentiary Law), Richard D. Friedman
Economic Analysis Of Evidentiary Law: An Underused Tool, An Underplowed Field (Symposium: The Economics Of Evidentiary Law), Richard D. Friedman
Articles
The law and economics movement has had a major impact on many areas of law, but rather little on the law of evidence. This is not to say that there have been no attempts to analyze evidentiary issues through an economic lens,' but such efforts are far more scattered in evidence than in other legal fields, including the closely related one of civil procedure.2 Believing that economics has value for evidentiary analysis, I suggested to the Executive Committee and Advisory Board of the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"), when I was chairman of the section, …
Takings From Freund To Fischel." Review Of Regulatory Taking: Law, Economics, And Politics, By W. A. Fischel, James E. Krier
Takings From Freund To Fischel." Review Of Regulatory Taking: Law, Economics, And Politics, By W. A. Fischel, James E. Krier
Reviews
The regulatory takings problem is easy to describe but difficult to resolve. The government enacts restrictions on land use that reduce the market value of the targeted parcels by a considerable amount. The restrictions are couched in terms of the police power, but actually they might amount to a taking that requires compensation, not because any of the land has been wrested away (it hasn't), but because much of the value has. Through the police power the government gets to govern for free, whereas with takings it's pay as you go. On what does the distinction-police power or taking-depend?