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Full-Text Articles in Law
Transaction Cost-Benefit Analysis, With Applications To Financial Regulation, D. Bruce Johnsen
Transaction Cost-Benefit Analysis, With Applications To Financial Regulation, D. Bruce Johnsen
D. Bruce Johnsen
As Coase convincingly showed, transaction costs inhibit the ability of market participants to achieve first-best outcomes. This paper proposes a novel and relatively simple alternative to traditional cost-benefit analysis when regulated parties face sufficiently low transaction costs that they can bargain directly or rely on competitive markets to set efficient terms of trade. In these settings, the only informational burdens financial market regulators need bear to assess corrective rules is to identify the relevant parties, the “good” they hope to exchange, and the transaction costs that inhibit them from maximizing joint gains from trade. A rule is justified only if …
Who Captures The Rents From Unionization? Insights From Multiemployer Pension Plans, D. Bruce Johnsen
Who Captures The Rents From Unionization? Insights From Multiemployer Pension Plans, D. Bruce Johnsen
D. Bruce Johnsen
From 1945 to 2010 the proportion of private-sector workers covered by collective bargaining agreements declined from 36 percent to a once unthinkable 6.9 percent. The decline raises the question of how well labor unions serve their rank and file. This study addresses the economics of labor unions in an attempt to determine who captures the rents from unionization. Among other things, it examines the generosity of multiemployer defined benefit pension plans for rank-and-file union members and the officer and staff plans for the union that administers them. For given wage, it finds that union officers and staff enjoy pensions and …
Myths About Mutual Fund Fees: Economic Insights On Jones V. Harris, D. Bruce Johnsen
Myths About Mutual Fund Fees: Economic Insights On Jones V. Harris, D. Bruce Johnsen
D. Bruce Johnsen
Mutual funds stand ready at all times to sell and redeem common stock to the investing public for the net value of their assets under management. In the language of transaction cost economics, they are open-access common pools subject to virtually free investor entry and exit. The Investment Company Act (1940) requires mutual funds to be managed by an outside advisory firm pursuant to a written contract, which normally pays the adviser a small share of net asset value, say, one-half of one percent per year. Following 1970 amendments to the Investment Company Act imposing a fiduciary duty on advisers …