Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Deregulation Deception, Cary Coglianese, Natasha Sarin, Stuart Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

President Donald Trump and members of his Administration repeatedly asserted that they had delivered substantial deregulation that fueled positive trends in the U.S. economy prior to the COVID pandemic. Drawing on an original analysis of data on federal regulation from across the Trump Administration’s four years, we show that the Trump Administration actually accomplished much less by way of deregulation than it repeatedly claimed—and much less than many commentators and scholars have believed. In addition, and also contrary to the Administration’s claims, overall economic trends in the pre-pandemic Trump years tended simply to follow economic trends that began years earlier. …

Synthetic Governance, Byung Hyun Anh, Jill E. Fisch, Panos N. Patatoukas, Steven Davidoff Solomon

All Faculty Scholarship

Although securities regulation is distinct from corporate governance, the two fields have considerable substantive overlap. By increasing the transparency and efficiency of the capital markets, securities regulation can also enhance the capacity of those markets to discipline governance decisions. The importance of market discipline is heightened by the increasingly vocal debate over what constitutes “good” corporate governance.

Securities product innovation offers new tools to address this debate. The rise of index-based investing provides a market-based mechanism for selecting among governance options and evaluating their effects. Through the creation of bespoke governance index funds, asset managers can create indexes that correspond …

Regulatory Abdication In Practice, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

“Meta-regulation” refers to deliberate efforts to induce private firms to create their own internal regulations—a regulatory strategy sometimes referred to as “management-based regulation” or even “regulation of self-regulation.” Meta-regulation is often presented as a flexible alternative to traditional “command-and-control” regulation. But does meta-regulation actually work? In her recent book, Meta-Regulation in Practice: Beyond Normative Views of Morality and Rationality, Fiona Simon purports to offer a critique of meta-regulation based on an extended case study of the often-feckless process of electricity regulatory reform undertaken in Australia in the early part of this century. Yet neither Simon’s case study nor her book …

Optimizing Regulation For An Optimizing Economy, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Much economic activity in the United States today emanates from technological advances that optimize through contextualization. Innovations as varied as Airbnb and Uber, fintech firms, and precision medicine are transforming major sectors in the economy by customizing goods and services as well as refining matches between available resources and interested buyers. The technological advances that make up the optimizing economy create new challenges for government oversight of the economy. Traditionally, government has overseen economic activity through general regulations that aim to treat all individuals equally; however, in the optimizing economy, business is moving in the direction of greater individualization, not …

On The Disparate Treatment Of Business And Personal Salt Payments, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, H.R. 1, would eliminate the federal income tax deduction for nonbusiness state and local taxes while maintaining the deduction for business state and local taxes. That disparate treatment has generated a storm of negative commentary. In this short essay, I consider whether the federal tax law should allow a deduction for business state and local taxes assuming that there is no deduction for nonbusiness state and local taxes. I argue that investors and businesses, including pass-through businesses, should be allowed to deduct state and local property and sales taxes, but not general income taxes.

Antitrust And The Design Of Production, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Both economics and antitrust policy have traditionally distinguished “production” from “distribution.” The former is concerned with how products are designed and built, the latter with how they are placed into the hands of consumers. Nothing in the language of the antitrust laws suggests much concern with production as such. Although courts do not view it that way, even per se unlawful naked price fixing among rivals is a restraint on distribution rather than production. Naked price fixing assumes a product that has already been designed and built, and the important cartel decision is what should be each firm’s output, or …

The Separation Of Corporate Law And Social Welfare, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

A half century ago, corporate legal theory pursued an institutional vision in which corporations and the law that creates them protect people from the ravages of volatile free markets. That vision was challenged on the ground during the 1980s, when corporate legal institutions and market forces came to blows over questions concerning hostile takeovers. By 1990, it seemed like the institutions had won. But a different picture has emerged as the years have gone by. It is now clear that the market side really won the battle of the 1980s, succeeding in entering a wedge between corporate law and social …

Optimizing Government For An Optimizing Economy, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Much entrepreneurial growth in the United States today emanates from technological advances that optimize through contextualization. Innovations as varied as Airbnb and Uber, fintech firms and precision medicine, are transforming major sectors in the economy by customizing goods and services as well as refining matches between available resources and interested buyers. The technological advances that make up the optimizing economy create new challenges for government oversight of the economy. Traditionally, government has overseen economic activity through general regulations that aim to treat all individuals equally; however, in the optimizing economy, business is moving in the direction of greater individualization, not …

Introduction To Institutional Investor Activism: Hedge Funds And Private Equity, Economics And Regulation, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery

All Faculty Scholarship

The increase in institutional ownership of recent decades has been accompanied by an enhanced role played by institutions in monitoring companies’ corporate governance behaviour. Activist hedge funds and private equity firms have achieved a degree of success in actively shaping the business plans of target firms. They may be characterized as pursuing a common goal – in the words used in the OECD Steering Group on Corporate Governance, both seek ‘to increase the market value of their pooled capital through active engagement with individual public companies. This engagement may include demands for changes in management, the composition of the board, …