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Full-Text Articles in Law
Strengthening The Passivity Default, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox
Strengthening The Passivity Default, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox
Articles
In The Prudence of Passivity, Bryon Harmon and Laura Fisher (hereafter HF) argue that "passive management become the default approach for the investment of trust funds, to be abandoned only when circumstances specifically dictate the use of active management."' In this comment we argue that their thesis could be strengthened (i) by more clearly distinguishing between default law and default investment practices, (ii) by more clearly articulating their favored altering rules.
Alpha Duties: The Search For Excess Returns And Appropriate Fiduciary Duties, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox
Alpha Duties: The Search For Excess Returns And Appropriate Fiduciary Duties, Ian Ayres, Edward Fox
Articles
Modern finance theory and investment practice have shifted toward “passive investing.” The current consensus is that most savers should invest in mutual funds or ETFs that are (i) well-diversified, (ii) low-cost, and (iii) expose their portfolios to age-appropriate stock market risk. The law governing trustees, investment advisers, broker–dealers, 401(k) plan managers, and other investment fiduciaries has evolved to push them gently toward this consensus. But these laws still provide broad scope for fiduciaries to recommend that clients invest instead in specific assets that they believe will produce “alpha” by outperforming the market. Seeking alpha comes at a cost, however, in …
Uncertain Futures In Evolving Financial Markets, Anita K. Krug
Uncertain Futures In Evolving Financial Markets, Anita K. Krug
Articles
Today's publicly offered investment funds, including mutual funds, have ever more diverse investment strategies, as they increasingly invest in financial instruments that, in earlier years, had been the province of only the most sophisticated investors. Although the new landscape of investment possibilities may substantially benefit retail investors, one financial instrument attracting increasing amounts of retail investors' assets is acutely troublesome: the commodity futures contract. Futures originated as a means for farmers and other producers of agricultural commodities to ensure that their products could be sold at reasonable prices. Early on, the goals of futures regulation centered on one particular risk …
Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine
Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine
Articles
This article sets out to analyze both intellectual property laws and tax systems as applied to computer software. It analyzes software within intellectual property's established doctrinal framework, a difficult task due to the fact that software can encompass some combination of the traits of copyrights, trade dress, patents, and trade secrets. It then examines both the federal and state tax systems governing software. It shows that fitting software within current tax schemes presents unique challenges, as software contains both tangible and intangible elements, is subject to varying intellectual property protections, and can be delivered through various media. The article argues …
Treasure Islands, James R. Hines Jr.
Treasure Islands, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
In movies and novels, tax havens are often settings for shady international deals; in practice, they are rather less flashy. Tax havens are countries and territories that offer low tax rates and favorable regulatory policies to foreign investors. For example, tax havens typically tax inbound investment at zero or very low rates and further encourage investment with telecommunications and transportation facilities, other business infrastructure, favorable legal environments, and limited bureaucratic hurdles to starting new firms. Tax havens are small: most are islands; all but a few have populations below one million; and they have above-average incomes. Tax havens are also …
Domestic Effects Of The Foreign Activities Of U.S. Multinationals, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Domestic Effects Of The Foreign Activities Of U.S. Multinationals, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
Do firms investing abroad simultaneously reduce their domestic activity? This paper analyzes the relationship between the domestic and foreign operations of US manufacturing firms between 1982 and 2004 by instrumenting for changes in foreign operations with GDP growth rates of the foreign countries in which they invest. Estimates produced using this instrument indicate that 10 percent greater foreign investment is associated with 2.6 percent greater domestic investment, and 10 percent greater foreign employee compensation is associated with 3.7 percent greater domestic employee compensation. These results do not support the popular notion that expansions abroad reduce a firm’s domestic activity, instead …
Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny
Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny
Articles
This article characterizes insider trading as an agency problem in firms that have a controlling shareholder. Using a standard agency model of corporate value diversion through insider trading by the controlling shareholder, I derive testable hypotheses about the relationship between corporate value and insider trading laws among such firms. The article tests these hypotheses using firm-level cross-sectional data from twenty-seven developed countries. The results show that stringent insider trading laws and enforcement are associated with greater corporate valuation among the sample firms in common law countries, a result that is consistent with the claim that insider trading laws mitigate agency …
China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson
China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson
Articles
In the past year or so, the world has observed with seeming trepidation what appears to be a new phenomenon-China's "stepping out" into the world economy. The move, labeled the "Going Out Strategy" by Chinese policy makers, sees China acting in the world not just as a trader of commodities and raw materials, or the provider of inexpensively-produced consumer goods for every corner of the globe, but as a driven and sophisticated acquirer of foreign assets and the equity interests in the legal entities that control such assets. The New Yorker magazine, ever topical and appropriately humorous, highlighted this attention …
Globalization, Law And Development: Introduction And Overview (Globalization, Law And Development Conference), Michael S. Barr, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Globalization, Law And Development: Introduction And Overview (Globalization, Law And Development Conference), Michael S. Barr, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The current period of globalization (defined loosely as increasing global economic integration), which began with the liberalization of exchange and capital controls and lowering of trade and investment barriers in the 1980s, is not the first time the world got economically smaller. The period from 1870 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 was by some measures (such as the percentage of GNP in developed countries derived from overseas investment, and labor migration) marked by more extensive globalization than the post-1980 one. This earlier globalization came to a halt with the hostilities of World War I, followed by …
National Regulation Of Multinational Enterprises: An Essay On Comity, Extraterritoriality, And Harmonization, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
National Regulation Of Multinational Enterprises: An Essay On Comity, Extraterritoriality, And Harmonization, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
Despite the economic importance of multinational enterprises ("MNEs"), there is a surprising paucity of law governing foreign direct investment ("FDI"), especially in comparison with the abundance of law governing trade. There is no multilateral legal arrangement governing FDI that is similar to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ("GATT"), no organization similar to the World Trade Organization, and almost no courses in law schools on FDI law. The goal of this Article is to begin to remedy this state of affairs by proposing a conceptual model for analyzing the application of the national laws of home and host countries …