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Articles 1 - 23 of 23
Full-Text Articles in Law
Just Prices, Robert C. Hockett, Roy Kreitner
Just Prices, Robert C. Hockett, Roy Kreitner
Robert C. Hockett
In what sense do market prices represent or convey value? At first glance, such prices might look like the upshot of spontaneous social aggregation without exogenously imposed order: uncoordinated individual trading decisions yield "price information" that is said both to induce socially efficient productive decisions and to set a framework that facilitates coherent and welfare-enhancing consumer choice. But while some trading decisions might well be uncoordinated,far from all of them are; and the rules within which trade is conducted are in any event the product of social choice. When we recognize that these rules of trade and certain public practices …
Putting Distribution First, Robert C. Hockett
Putting Distribution First, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in …
The Way Forward: Moving From The Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy To Renewed Growth And Competitiveness, Daniel Alpert, Robert C. Hockett, Nouriel Roubini
The Way Forward: Moving From The Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy To Renewed Growth And Competitiveness, Daniel Alpert, Robert C. Hockett, Nouriel Roubini
Robert C. Hockett
We argue that the U.S. economy is presently mired in a particularly tenacious, Fisher-style debt-deflation rooted in long term secular trends in the domestic and global economies. Global productive capacity has steadily outpaced global absorptive capacity for several decades now, and the latter will not catch up with the former for a good many years to come -- if ever. In order to avert long-term Japanese-style stagnation at home and quite possibly slowdown and slump worldwide, the U.S. will have both (a) to eliminate private sector debt-overhang from 'both sides' of the same, and (b) to act in concert with …
Debt, Deflation, And Debacle: Of Private Debt Write-Down And Public Recovery, Richard W. Vague, Robert C. Hockett
Debt, Deflation, And Debacle: Of Private Debt Write-Down And Public Recovery, Richard W. Vague, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Most public discussion of the world’s continuing financial and macroeconomic troubles focuses rightly on debt. It focuses wrongly, however, on public debt. The real source of our ills is global-trade-related private debt overhang among millions of households below the top of the wealth distribution in the “developed” world. That is the provenance of both (a) the asset price bubbles and busts in whose aftermath we still struggle, and (b) the fact that we’re still struggling. Public sector debt growth in the developed world since 2009 is merely a symptom – the product of thus far failed treatment – of this …
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional 'Safety And Soundness' To Systematic 'Financial Stability' In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, though not to supplant, institutional ‘safety and soundness’ as a regulatory desideratum. The move from primarily micro- …
Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan, Robert C. Hockett
Insource The Shareholding Of Outsourced Employees: A Global Stock Ownership Plan, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
With the American economy stalled and another federal election campaign season well underway, the “outsourcing” of American jobs is again on the public agenda. Latest figures indicate not only that claims for joblessness benefits are up, but also that the rate of American job-exportation has more than doubled since the last electoral cycle. This year’s political candidates have been quick to take note. In consequence, more than at any time since the early 1990s, continued American participation in the World Trade Organization, in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and in the processes of global economic integration more generally appear …
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics, Robert C. Hockett
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This Article, transcribed from a symposium talk given by the author, examines two critical junctures at which foundational decisions must be made in three areas of theoretical inquiry - mathematics, law, and economics. The first such juncture is that which the Article labels the "arbitrary versus criterial choice" juncture. This is the decision point at which one must select between what is typically called an "algorithmic," "principled," "law-like," or "intensionalist" understanding of those concepts which figure foundationally in the discipline in question on the one hand, and a "randomized," "combinatorial," or "extensionalist" such understanding on the other hand. The second …
Materializing Citizenship: Finance In A Producers' Republic, Robert C. Hockett
Materializing Citizenship: Finance In A Producers' Republic, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This invited essay critically assesses a movement of which I consider myself to be part – the movement to “redemocratize” financial institutions in a manner that restores, to non-wealthy citizens, access to basic financial services comparable to those enjoyed by wealthy citizens. I argue that while financial redemocratization of this sort is necessary to the larger project from which it draws most of its meaning – viz that of redemocratizing access to the resources requisite to productive enterprise and meaningful citizenship more generally – it is far from sufficient to this task. We must therefore take special care not to …
From "Mission-Creep" To Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance, The Ifis, And The Intended Beneficiaries Of Globalization, Robert C. Hockett
From "Mission-Creep" To Gestalt-Switch: Justice, Finance, The Ifis, And The Intended Beneficiaries Of Globalization, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Bringing It All Back Home: How To Save Main Street, Ignore K Street, And Thereby Save Wall Street, Robert C. Hockett
Bringing It All Back Home: How To Save Main Street, Ignore K Street, And Thereby Save Wall Street, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett
Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
The bailout strategy now being pursued by Treasury under the recently authorized Troubled Asset Relief Plan, if “strategy” it can be called, remains obscure and erratic at best. All the while markets remain jittery and credit remains tight, as the underlying source of our present financial jitters—continued decline in the housing market and still mounting foreclosures—goes unaddressed. This piece proposes an interesting and novel approach to solving the financial problem. If it works out, it would eventually minimize the cost to the government.
Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert Hockett
Bretton Woods 1.0: A Constructive Retrieval For Sustainable Finance, Robert Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Global trade imbalance and domestic financial fragility are intimately related. When a nation runs persistently massive current account deficits to maintain global liquidity as has the United States now for decades, its central bank effectively relinquishes exchange rate flexibility to become a de facto central bank to the world. That in turn prevents the bank from playing its essential credit-modulatory role at home, at least absent strict capital controls that are difficult to administer and have long been taboo. And this can in turn render credit-fueled asset price bubbles and busts all but impossible to prevent, irrespective of the nation's …
Why (Only) Esops?, Robert Hockett
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …
Legally Defending Mission-Creep: How The Bretton Woods Charters Anticipate And Justify Imf Attention To "Structural" Variables In Its Oversight Of The Global Financial System, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Human Persons, Human Rights, And The Distributive Structure Of Global Justice, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
It is common for economically oriented transnational legal theorists to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. It is less common for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. Moreover, we effectively define ourselves and our fellow humans by reference to that which we equalize. For it is in virtue of the latter that our global welfare formulations treat us as "counting" for purposes of globally aggregating and maximizing. To analyze maximization language on the one hand, and equalization and identification language …
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett
Why Paretians Can’T Prescribe: Preferences, Principles, And Imperatives In Law And Policy, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Recent years have witnessed two linked revivals in the legal academy. The first is renewed interest in articulating a normative “master principle” by which legal rules might be evaluated. The second is renewed interest in the prospect that a variant of Benthamite “utility” might serve as the requisite touchstone. One influential such variant now in circulation is what the Article calls “Paretian welfarism.” This Article rejects Paretian welfarism and advocates an alternative it calls “fair welfare.” It does so because Paretian welfarism is inconsistent with ethical, social, and legal prescription, while fair welfare is what we have been groping for …
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional “Safety And Soundness” To “Systemic Stability” In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett
The Macroprudential Turn: From Institutional “Safety And Soundness” To “Systemic Stability” In Financial Supervision, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
This Working Paper is no longer available. The published version of this article is available at: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1405/ Since the global financial dramas of 2008-09, authorities on financial regulation have come increasingly to counsel the inclusion of macroprudential policy instruments in the standard ‘toolkit’ of finance-regulatory measures employed by financial supervisors. The hallmark of this perspective is its focus not simply on the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions, as is characteristic of the traditional ‘microprudential’ perspective, but also on certain structural features of financial systems that can imperil such systems as wholes. Systemic ‘financial stability’ thus comes to supplement, …
What The New Treasury Must Do, Robert C. Hockett
What The New Treasury Must Do, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
After a number of heady false starts, against the backdrop of threatened financial catastrophe, Congress and the White House enacted a stopgap financial “bailout”plan early in October 2008. From that point onward the “plan” has repeatedly morphed, morphed again, and morphed back through a string of remarkably fleeting guises. One suspects this dynamic will continue, at least for a while, as a new president and Congress find their footing in the first half of 2009.
What Kinds Of Stock Ownership Plans Should There Be? Of Esops, Other Sops And "Ownership Societies", Robert C. Hockett
What Kinds Of Stock Ownership Plans Should There Be? Of Esops, Other Sops And "Ownership Societies", Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Present-day advocates of an ownership society (OS) do not seem to have noticed the means we have already employed to become an OS where homes and human capital (higher education) are concerned. Nor do they appear to have considered whether these same means - which amount to publicly enhanced private credit markets - might be employed to spread shares in business firms, with a view to completing our OS. This article, the third in a series, seeks tentatively to fill that gap. It does so first by demonstrating how the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, in effect replicates our …
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett
How The International Financial Institutions Can Help To Win Globalization Of More Stakeholders - By Making More Stockholders, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
No abstract provided.
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …
The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett
The Impossibility Of A Prescriptive Paretian, Robert C. Hockett
Robert C. Hockett
Most normatively oriented economists appear to be “welfarist” and Paretian to one degree or another: They deem responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the Pareto criteria, to be a desirable attribute of any social welfare function. I show that no strictly “welfarist” or Paretian social welfare function can be normatively prescriptive. Economists who prescribe must embrace at least one value apart from or additional to “welfarism” and Paretianism, and in fact will do best to dispense with Pareto entirely.