Law Commons^™

Toward A Better Competition Policy For The Media, Maurice E. Stucke, Allen P. Grunes

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

It is difficult to formulate meaningful competition policy when there is a fierce debate over the current competitiveness of the media industry. After addressing the importance of the marketplace of ideas in our democracy, our article examines the current state of the media industry, including the response of traditional media to audience declines, the growth of new media, the impact of media consolidation (including its impact on minority and women ownership), and the role of the Internet. In response to recent calls for liberalizing cross-ownership rules to protect traditional media, our article outlines why conventional antitrust policy is difficult to …

One Size Does Not Fit All: A Framework For Tailoring Intellectual Property Rights, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The United States and its trading partners have adopted cultural and innovation policies under which the government grants one-size-fits-all patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. On a global basis, the reasons for doing so vary, but in the United States granting intellectual property rights has been justified as the principal means of promoting innovation and cultural progress. Until recently, however, few have questioned the wisdom of using such blunt policy instruments to promote progress in a wide range of industries in which the economics of innovation varies considerably.

Provisionally accepting the assumptions of the traditional economic case for intellectual …

Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

While there have been few decided cases under the 1995 Transfer Pricing regulations and the OECD Guidelines, it is clear by now that the transfer pricing problem is as bad as it ever was. That is why my co-authors Kimberly Clausing and Michael Durst and I have recently re-proposed adopting Formulary Apportionment (FA). However, it is clear from the reactions we received that it is unlikely we will persuade advocates of the ALS and in particular the OECD that FA is the way forward (although this may change if the Obama Administration were to press the issue, or if the …

Land Virtues, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article has two goals. First, I explore some of the descriptive and normative shortcomings of traditional law and economics discussions of the ownership and use of land. These market-centered approaches struggle in different ways with features of land that distinguish it from other "commodities." The complexity of land - its intrinsic complexity, but even more importantly the complex ways in which human beings interact with it - undermines the notion that owners will focus on a single value, such as wealth, in making decisions about their land. Adding to the equation land's "memory," by which I mean the combined …

Evolutionary Theory And The Origin Of Property Rights, James E. Krier

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Legal scholars have never settled on a satisfactory account of the evolution of property rights. The touchstone for virtually all discussion, Harold Demsetz’s Toward a Theory of Property Rights, has a number of well-known (and not so well-known) shortcomings, perhaps because it was never intended to be taken as an evolutionary explanation in the first place. There is, in principle at least, a pretty straightforward fix for the sort of evolutionary approach pursued by followers of Demsetz, but even then that approach – call it the conventional approach – fails to account for very early property rights, right at the …

Bailouts, Buy-Ins, And Ballyhoo, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

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.

Incidence And Accidents: Regulation Of Executive Compensation Through The Tax Code, Joy Mullane

Working Paper Series

Congress has enacted a number of tax provisions that aim to penalize companies and their executives when the executive is paid more than Congress thinks is desirable. Congress was motivated to enact these provisions by intense public sentiments regarding executive compensation levels during times of economic turmoil. This article demonstrates, however, that not only are these provisions ineffective at reducing executive compensation levels, but they penalize the wrong people. This article reveals that the penalties do not significantly fall on the executives that Congress was targeting with enactment of the penalties. Instead, these penalties impose costs on a variety of …

Judicial Adherence To A Minimum Core Approach To Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective, Joie Chowdhury

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication.

For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, …

The Efficiency Of Friendliness: Japanese Corporate Governance Succeeds Again Without Hostile Takeovers, Dan W. Puchniak

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It is widely assumed that hostile takeovers are a prerequisite for an efficient system of corporate governance. This assumption is false. Since the new millennium, Japan has transformed itself from being on the brink of one of the largest economic meltdowns in modern economic history to currently being in the midst of its longest period of postwar economic expansion (2002-2007). This astounding recovery was achieved without a single successful hostile takeover of a major Japanese company. True to its postwar tradition, corporate Japan has successfully restructured through government intervention, bank-driven reallocation of capital, and orchestrated and friendly mergers — the …

Child Support And (In)Ability To Pay: The Case For The Cost Shares Model, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Currently enacted child support guidelines primarily focus on maintaining children's economic well-being when a single household is split into two. This article argues that this focus discounts another consideration which, when combined with the current analysis, could further advance children's well-being: the ability of parents to pay. An analysis of payment characteristics demonstrates that lower child support obligations may increase the amount of child support paid on average. Lowering presumptive obligations will make lower-income parents better able and more likely to pay their obligations, thereby increasing the amount of child support paid to lower-income children, while at most only marginally …

Feminizing Capital: A Corporate Imperative, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that Norway’s Corporate Board Quota Law (“CBQ”) fosters a productive symbiosis between the public and private spheres. Recent studies indicate that higher numbers of women in executive positions result in stronger rates of corporate return on equity (“ROE”). Countries with higher levels of women's political representation also tend to have higher levels of economic growth. Increasing women's workforce participation outside the home can drive overall economic growth. These factors prompted the CBQ's proponents to argue for the economic imperative of women's corporate leadership. The CBQ will not only ameliorate gender inequality, but will bring new life to …

"Criminal Minded?": Mixtape Djs, The Piracy Paradox, And Lessons For The Recording Industry, Horace E. Anderson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

For at least the past three years, leading American fashion designers have lobbied for passage of copyright-like protection for the design aspects of their apparel creations. For at least as long, the recorded music industry has been engaged in an aggressive campaign to enforce its copyrights in recorded music against a number of technology-enabled and/or culturally sympathetic alleged infringers, including "twelve year-olds" and "grandmothers." Although the record labels already have protection under the copyright law while the fashion houses seek it, they have at least one thing in common: some portion of the piracy that they seek to eradicate is …

Law, Economics, And Torture, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

This paper addresses three sets of questions, among which it wishes to draw connections: (1) Why has there been so little resistance to the recent massive transfer of national wealth to the rich and super-rich? It is the majority who are injured, and they presumably hold the power in a democracy: why have they not exercised it? (2) Why are law schools so dominated by questions of policy, with rather little interest in the intellectual and linguistic activities of the practicing lawyer and judge? Why indeed do judicial opinions themselves seem so often to be written in a dead and …