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Protecting The State From Itself? Regulatory Interventions In Corporate Governance And The Financing Of China’S 'State Capitalism', Nicholas C. Howson Oct 2014

Protecting The State From Itself? Regulatory Interventions In Corporate Governance And The Financing Of China’S 'State Capitalism', Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

From the start of China’s "corporatization without privatization" process in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime apparently shareholder-empowering and determined by enabling legal norms has been altered by mandatory governance mechanisms imposed by a state administrative agency, most often to protect minority shareholders against exploitation by the party state controlling shareholders which are the accepted powers of "state capitalism." This chapter reviews the path of that benign intervention and the structural reasons for it, and then speculates on why this novel identity of the Chinese party state’s “fragmented authoritarianism” continues to be tolerated by the same party state, …


Reverse Cross-Listings - The Coming Race To List In Emerging Markets And An Enhanced Understanding Of Classical Bonding, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya Khanna Oct 2014

Reverse Cross-Listings - The Coming Race To List In Emerging Markets And An Enhanced Understanding Of Classical Bonding, Nicholas C. Howson, Vikramaditya Khanna

Articles

Studies have found that when a U.S. issuer lists abroad on a foreign exchange, its shares exhibit negative abnormal returns. This negative movement may be because the market expects that the foreign listing will facilitate undetectable insider trading on the foreign exchange or other conduct impermissible in the United States.


Concentrated Ownership And Corporate Control: Wallenberg Sphere And Samsung Group, Hwa-Jin Kim Jul 2014

Concentrated Ownership And Corporate Control: Wallenberg Sphere And Samsung Group, Hwa-Jin Kim

Law & Economics Working Papers

Samsung Group’s success cannot be attributed to its corporate governance structure, at least thus far. The corporate governance of Samsung has been rather controversial. As the group faces the succession issue the corporate governance has become as crucial as their new products and services. Samsung has discovered a role model on the other side of the planet, Wallenberg Sphere in Sweden. Much effort has been made to learn about Wallenberg’s arrangements and key to its success. However, a fundamental difference between the institutions in Sweden and Korea has made the corporate structures of the two groups radically different. Wallenberg uses …


The Devil In The Details: Reflections On The Camp Draft, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Mar 2014

The Devil In The Details: Reflections On The Camp Draft, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The discussion draft of the Tax Reform Act of 2014 (TRA 14) released by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp, R-Mich., on February 26 represents a major effort for fundamental and far-reaching reform of U.S. tax law. Unfortunately, while many parts of the proposal seem sensible as an effort to bring back the spirit of 1986, the international tax reform proposals are deeply flawed and based on obsolete assumptions of the world that faces U.S. multinationals in 2014.


The 1 Percent Solution: Corporate Tax Returns Should Be Public (And How To Get There), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ariel Siman Feb 2014

The 1 Percent Solution: Corporate Tax Returns Should Be Public (And How To Get There), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ariel Siman

Articles

The justification for publishing corporate tax returns is that corporations are given immense benefits by the state that bestows upon them unlimited life and limited liability, and therefore they owe the public the information of how they treat the state that created them. Tax returns, like the financial disclosures that publicly traded corporations must file with the SEC, also provide useful information to shareholders, creditors, and the investing public.


Back From The Dead: Reviving Transfer Pricing Enforcement, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2014

Back From The Dead: Reviving Transfer Pricing Enforcement, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The OECD has recently come to recognize that the transfer pricing system does not work as intended. In its report on base erosion and profit shifting 2013 WTD 140-17: Other Administrative Documents, the OECD recognizes that BEPS results in revenue losses that affect all states, especially poorer ones; that systematic tax avoidance by the richest and most powerful companies in the world undermines the general legitimacy of taxation; that it gives MNEs significant competitive advantages over purely domestic firms, resulting in inefficient allocations of investment and major distortions to economic activity; and that it skews the decisions of the MNEs …


Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2014

Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This Article will address the question of whether publicly traded U.S. corporations owe a duty to their shareholders to minimize their corporate tax burden through any legal means, or if instead, strategic behaviors like aggressive tax-motivated transactions are inconsistent with corporate social responsibility (“CSR”). I believe the latter holds true, regardless of one’s view of the corporation. Under the “artificial entity” view, such behavior undermines the constitutive relationship between the corporation and the state. Under the “real view,” such behavior runs contrary to the normal obligation of citizens to comply with the law (even absent effective enforcement). And under the …


'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson Jan 2014

'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against Party State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

From the start of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “corporatization ” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by all - encompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This Article traces the path of that sustained intervention and makes a case — wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the United States …


Just Say No: Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2014

Just Say No: Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

This article will address the question whether publicly traded US corporations owe a duty to their shareholders to minimize their corporate tax burden in any way that they may be able to get away with from a purely legal perspective. First, however, to render the subsequent discussion a bit more concrete, I will describe a recently unveiled case study of corporate tax aggressiveness.


Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2014

Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Four years ago, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that for-profit corporations possess a First Amendment right to make independent campaign expenditures. In so doing, the United States Supreme Court invited speculation that such corporations might possess other First Amendment rights as well. The petitioners in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius are now arguing that for-profit corporations are among the intended beneficiaries of the Free Exercise Clause and, along with the respondents in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, that they also qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Neither suggestion follows inexorably from Citizens United, …


How Serious Is The Problem Of Base Erosion And Profit Shifting?, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2014

How Serious Is The Problem Of Base Erosion And Profit Shifting?, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

In recent years, the problem of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by multinational corporations has entered the public consciousness as a potentially important impediment to tax collections. The purpose of this article is to identify the nature of BEPS, consider empirical evidence of its magnitude, and evaluate proposed policy responses. There is considerable evidence that multinational firms arrange their affairs in a tax-sensitive manner, from which it is easy—indeed, perhaps a little too easy—to infer that beps is a serious problem. There are journalistic accounts of apparently spectacular international tax-avoidance schemes used by multinational corporations, though these stories commonly …


Concentrated Ownership And Corporate Control: Wallenberg Sphere And Samsung Group, Hwa-Jin Kim Jan 2014

Concentrated Ownership And Corporate Control: Wallenberg Sphere And Samsung Group, Hwa-Jin Kim

Articles

Samsung Group’s success cannot be attributed to its corporate governance structure, at least thus far. The corporate governance of Samsung has been rather controversial. As the group faces the succession issue the corporate governance has become as crucial as their new products and services. Samsung has discovered a role model on the other side of the planet, Wallenberg Sphere in Sweden. Much effort has been made to learn about Wallenberg’s arrangements and key to its success. However, a fundamental difference between the institutions in Sweden and Korea has made the corporate structures of the two groups radically different. Wallenberg uses …


Arguments For And Against Territoriality, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2013

Arguments For And Against Territoriality, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The tax on dividends from the active income of controlled foreign corporations meets the criteria for a bad tax: It raises little revenue but significantly affects taxpayer behavior in undesirable ways.


Territoriality: For And Against, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2013

Territoriality: For And Against, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The tax on dividends from the active income of controlled foreign corporations meets the criteria for a bad tax: It raises little revenue but significantly affects taxpayer behavior in undesirable ways.


Methods For Multicountry Studies Of Corporate Governance (And Evidence From The Brikt Countries), Bernard S. Black, Antonio Gledson De Carvalho, Vikramaditya Khanna, Woochan Kim, B. Burcin Yurtoglu Mar 2013

Methods For Multicountry Studies Of Corporate Governance (And Evidence From The Brikt Countries), Bernard S. Black, Antonio Gledson De Carvalho, Vikramaditya Khanna, Woochan Kim, B. Burcin Yurtoglu

Law & Economics Working Papers

We discuss the perils in multicountry studies of corporate governance (CG), focusing on emerging markets. The existing studies are massively multicountry studies, which cover many firms across many countries, but rely on the same limited governance elements in each countries, have few firm-level control variables, and use pure-cross-sectional data. This paper discusses the severe data and construct validity issues in these studies, proposes methods to respond to those issues, and applies those methods through a study of five major emerging markets (Brazil, India, Korea, Russia, and Turkey). We develop unique time-series datasets on governance in each country. We address construct …


Should The Us Dictate World Tax Policy? Reflections On Ppl, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Feb 2013

Should The Us Dictate World Tax Policy? Reflections On Ppl, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari in PPL offers it a unique opportunity to change the law regarding foreign tax credits that has significantly impeded the ability of other countries to engage in meaningful tax reform. In 1938 the Court said in dicta that to qualify for the FTC a tax had to be an income or excess profits tax (or a tax imposed in lieu thereof) under U.S. tax principles. This statement has led to an elaborate set of regulations defining what is an income tax, which has significantly hampered the ability of foreign countries to adopt …


'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson Jan 2013

'Quack Corporate Governance' As Traditional Chinese Medicine – The Securities Regulation Cannibalization Of China's Corporate Law And A State Regulator's Battle Against State Political Economic Power, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

From the start of the PRC’s “corporatization” project in the late 1980s, a Chinese corporate governance regime subject to increasingly enabling legal norms has been determined by mandatory regulations imposed by the PRC securities regulator, the CSRC. Indeed, the Chinese corporate law system has been cannibalized by allencompassing securities regulation directed at corporate governance, at least for companies with listed stock. This article traces the path of that sustained intervention, and makes a case – wholly contrary to the “quack corporate governance” critique much aired in the U.S. – that for the PRC this phenomenon is necessary and appropriate, and …


Accelerating The Growth Of The Next Generation Of Innovators, Dana Thompson Jan 2013

Accelerating The Growth Of The Next Generation Of Innovators, Dana Thompson

Articles

In a recent study on the best practices of business incubators that contribute to the success of startups, one of the best practices asserted is to include a business lawyer on the advisory board of business incubators, who may suggest necessary legal issues for startups to address and connect the incubator startups with legal assistance. Although many college and university incubators may have access to experienced attorneys who are able to provide advice, and who are able to represent student-led ventures, most do not have access to a university law clinic established to provide pro bono, direct legal representation and …


Revisiting 'Truth In Securities Revisited': Abolishing Ipos And Harnessing Private Markets In The Public Good, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2013

Revisiting 'Truth In Securities Revisited': Abolishing Ipos And Harnessing Private Markets In The Public Good, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

My thesis is that the transition between private- and public-company status could be less bumpy if we unify the public-private dividing line under the Securities Act and Exchange Act. The insight builds on Cohen's thought experiment where Congress first enacted the Exchange Act. My proposed public-private standard would take the company-registration model to its logical conclusion. The customary path to public-company status is through an IPO, typically with simultaneous listing of the shares on an exchange. There is nothing about public offerings, however, that makes them inherently antecedent to public-company status. What if companies became public, with required periodic disclosures …


Corporate And International Tax Reform: Proposals For The Second Obama Administration (And Beyond), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2013

Corporate And International Tax Reform: Proposals For The Second Obama Administration (And Beyond), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The passage of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) offers an opportune moment to consider proposals for corporate and international tax reform. With the debate over individual tax rates for the income and estate tax settled for the present, the President and Congress are free to consider broader reforms. Few observers doubt that such reforms are sorely needed, for several reasons. First, the long-term budgetary outlook is unsustainable. Second, the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). Third, the current system raises relatively little revenue and large amounts of …


Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand Jan 2013

Private Regulation Of Insider Trading In The Shadow Of Lax Public Enforcement: Evidence From Canadian Firms, Laura Nyantung Beny, Anita Anand

Articles

Like firms in the United States, many Canadian firms voluntarily restrict trading by corporate insiders beyond the requirements of insider trading laws (i.e., super-compliance). Thus, we aim to understand the determinants of firms’ private insider trading policies (ITPs), which are quasi-contractual devices. Based on the assumption that firms that face greater costs from insider trading (or greater benefits from restricting insider trading) ought to be more inclined than other firms to adopt more stringent ITPs, we develop several testable hypotheses. We test our hypotheses using data from a sample of firms included in the Toronto Stock Exchange/Standard and Poor’s (TSX/S&P) …


Deferred Prosecution And Non-Prosecution Agreements And The Erosion Of Corporate Criminal Liability, David M. Uhlmann Jan 2013

Deferred Prosecution And Non-Prosecution Agreements And The Erosion Of Corporate Criminal Liability, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

On April 5, 2010, a massive explosion killed twenty-nine miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, West Virginia. Following the explosion, President Barack Obama vowed that the U.S. Department of Labor would conduct "the most thorough and comprehensive investigation possible" and work with the U.S. Department of Justice ("Justice Department" or the "Department") to address any criminal violations. Later in the month, the President and Vice President flew to West Virginia to eulogize the victims and comfort their families. It was the nation's worst coal mining disaster in forty years. The tragic loss of life at the …


Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn Aug 2012

Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The code denies a deduction for a loss recognized on a sale or exchange between certain related parties. Two of the principal code sections that deny a deduction in that circumstance are sections 267(a)(1) and 707(b)(1)(A). Two regulatory provisions promulgated under section 267 apply the denial of a loss deduction rule to partnerships — reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) and temp. reg. section 1.267(a)-2T(c), Question 2. I conclude that to the extent reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) applies to section 267(a)(1), it is invalid and has been invalid since 1986. Also, two of the questions and answers in the temporary regulation are invalid.


Contribution Of A Built-In Loss To A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn Jul 2012

Contribution Of A Built-In Loss To A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Before 2004, it was possible to use the partnership tax provisions of the code to shift the benefit ofa loss deduction for a decline in property valuefrom the person who incurred it to another person.One method of accomplishing that goal involvedthe contribution of depreciated property to a partnership.


Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2012

Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The recent tax reform proposals by House Ways and Means Committee Chair David Camp, R-Mich., and by President Obama seem to offer starkly contrasting visions of how to reform the taxation of foreign-source income earned by U.S.-based multinational enterprises.1 Both acknowledge the problem, which is that U.S.-based MNEs currently have more than $1 trillion of ‘‘permanently reinvested’’ income offshore, which they cannot bring back to the U.S. without incurring a 35 percent tax penalty. However, they seem to offer radically different solutions: Under the Camp proposal, a participation exemption will enable U.S.-based MNEs to bring back the income without paying …


The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav Jan 2012

The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav

Articles

The United States has the second highest statutory corporate tax rate in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (after Japan).1 This has not always been the case. After the Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the U.S. rate from 46% to 34%,2 the United States had one of the lowest statutory corporate tax rates in the OECD.3 In the past twenty-five years, however, the U.S. rate has remained essentially unchanged (it was raised to 35% in 1993),4 while most other OECD countries reduced their statutory rate so that the OECD average statutory corporate tax rate is 25.1%.


Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2012

Facebook, The Jobs Act, And Abolishing Ipos, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Initial public offerings (IPOs)-the first sale of private firms' stock to the public-are a bellwether of investor sentiment. Investors must be bullish if they are putting their money into untested start-ups. IPOs are frequently cited in the business press as a key barometer of the health of financial markets. Politicians, too, see a steady flow of IPOs as an indicator that capital is fueling the entrepreneurial initiative that sustains the growth of new businesses. Growing businesses create jobs, so Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on the importance of promoting IPOs. That bipartisan consensus was on display this spring …


Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2012

Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Book Chapters

In 1988, the US Treasury Department published a study of inter-company pricing (the 'White Paper') that included the following endorsement of the so-called arm's length standard (ALS) for examining the reasonableness of transactions between related parties for tax purposes: The arm's length standard is embodied in all U.S. tax treaties; it is in each major model treaty, including the U.S. Model Convention; it is incorporated into most tax treaties to which the United States is not a party; it has been explicitly adopted by international organizations that have addressed themselves to transfer pricing issues; and virtually every major industrial nation …


Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson Jan 2012

Pathway To Minority Shareholder Protection: Derivative Actions In The People's Republic Of China, Donald C. Clarke, Nicholas C. Howson

Book Chapters

Using a dataset of Chinese judicial opinions arising in over fifty cases, this paper analyses the development and current implementation of shareholder derivative actions in the courts of the People’s Republic of China (“PRC”), both before and after the derivative lawsuit was explicitly authorized in the PRC’s 2006 Company Law effective January 1, 2006. In addition, we describe the very unique ecology of enterprise organization and corporate governance in modern China, and critique the formal design of the derivative action and offer reform suggestions. We find the design of the Chinese derivative lawsuit to be, in some respects, innovative and …


Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori Jan 2012

Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori

Articles

In February, 2012, the Treasury and White House unveiled President Obama's Framework for Business Tax Reform. A major proposal was to abolish the deferral on income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations ("CFCs").