Law Commons^™

Reconsidering Realization-Based Accounting For Equity Compensation, David I. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. equity compensation landscape continues to evolve. Recent innovations have improved the linkage between pay and firm-specific performance, but have added complexity. Against that backdrop, this Article urges reconsideration of the accounting rules for equity pay. Under current rules, most equity pay awards are expensed based on grant date valuation with no updating for changes in value post grant. This Article advocates the adoption of a mark-to-market or realization-based approach under which the expense recorded for all equity pay awards would ultimately be trued to the value received by employees. Increasingly, equity pay awards are more analogous to commissions …

Roger Blair And Intellectual Property, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

Although intellectual property is just a sidelight of Roger Blair's work, he has published at least seven articles and coauthored a book on this subject. Blair's work sets out robust economic models that address nearly all of the significant economic issues in intellectual property. Moreover, by using the property rules framework, he has offered a useful counterweight to the reward-to-loss theory that dominates the literature.

Bonding Bankers: Notes Toward A Governance Approach To Risk Regulation, Frederick Tung

Faculty Scholarship

Important regulatory failures have been identified in the wake of the recent financial crisis, and comprehensive regulatory reform has been much on the minds of policymakers. Reform proposals call for a number of significant changes to the scope and structure of financial regulation to address systemic risk. With banking regulation, however, the twin tools of capital requirements and external supervision seem to remain the dominant regulatory levers. In this short discussion, I introduce the contours of an important supplement to the existing approach, a governance approach that uses bank executives' compensation arrangements as a policy lever. I propose that bank …

Medical Malpractice Liability Crisis Or Patient Compensation Crisis?, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

Tort reform has been a hot topic among those interested in assessing whether and how well the tort system aids injured plaintiffs in achieving civil justice. The debate has been especially heated when it comes to medical malpractice liability. Until recently, rhetoric about the liability system and its relationship to insurance markets and physician supply dominated tort reform debates. While claims made by both proponents and opponents can seem intuitive, they are often unsubstantiated. In recent years, however, academics and others have acquired or created datasets to perform analyses to enhance our understanding of the relationship between the tort system …

Corrective Justice, Equal Opportunity, And The Legacy Of Slavery And Jim Crow, David B. Lyons

Faculty Scholarship

Chattel slavery was a brutally cruel, repressive, and exploitative system of racial subjugation. When it was abolished, the former slaveholders owed the freedmen compensation for the terrible wrongs of enslavement. Ex-slaves sought reparations, especially in the form of land, but few received any sort of recompense. The wrongs they suffered were never repaired.

No one alive today can be held accountable for the wrongs of chattel slavery, and those who might now be called upon to pay reparations were not even born until many decades after slavery ended. For some scholars, the lack of accountable parties makes current reparations claims …

Executive Compensation In America: Optimal Contracting Or Extraction Of Rents?, Lucian A. Bebchuk, Jesse M. Fried, David I. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops an account of the role and significance of rent extraction in executive compensation. Under the optimal contracting view of executive compensation, which has dominated academic research on the subject, pay arrangements are set by a board of directors that aims to maximize shareholder value by designing an optimal principal-agent contract. Under the alternative rent extraction view that we examine, the board does not operate at arm's length; rather, executives have power to influence their own compensation, and they use their power to extract rents. As a result, executives are paid more than is optimal for shareholders and, …

Taking Notes: Subpoenas And Just Compensation, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Few cases from the October 1997 Supreme Court term received as much public attention as Swidler & Berlin v United States, which held that the attorney-client privilege survives the death of the client in federal criminal proceedings. If one focuses solely on the issue actually decided in the case, that degree of attention is surprising. The issue had not generated a split among the federal circuits, and there were relatively few decisions-federal or state-squarely on point. The Court's holding was thus unlikely to have a major impact on American law; the paucity of prior case law demonstrates that the question …

Letter To Professor Eric Neisser, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

It was good talking to you. As you know, I gained a great deal from the initial conversations with you and Jon on the Daniels/Davidson issue, and I appreciate your willingness to provide more feedback.

Letter To Prof. John Hyman Re: Daniels/Davidson Article, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

It was good talking to you. As I said, I profited a great deal from our initial conversations on the Daniels/Davidson issue, and I appreciate your willingness to be provide more feedback.