Economics Commons^™

How Do Corporations Play Politics? The Fedex Story, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporate political activity has been the subject of federal regulation since 1907, and the restrictions on corporate campaign contributions and other political expenditures continue to increase. Most recently, Congress banned soft money donations in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA"), a ban upheld by the Supreme Court in McConnell v. FEC. Significantly, although the omnibus BCRA clearly was not directed exclusively at corporations, the Supreme Court began its lengthy opinion in McConnell by referencing and endorsing the efforts of Elihu Root, more than a century ago, to prohibit corporate political contributions. Repeatedly, within the broad context of campaign …

Do Institutions Matter? The Impact Of The Lead Plaintiff Provision Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Jill E. Fisch, A. C. Pritchard

All Faculty Scholarship

When Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act in 1995 (“PSLRA”), the Act’s “lead plaintiff” provision was the centerpiece of its efforts to increase investor control over securities fraud class actions. The lead plaintiff provision alters the balance of power between investors and class counsel by creating a presumption that the investor with the largest financial stake in the case will serve as lead plaintiff. The lead plaintiff then chooses class counsel and, at least in theory, negotiates the terms of counsel’s compensation.

Congress’s stated purpose in enacting the lead plaintiff provision was to encourage institutional investors—pension funds, mutual …

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Environmental Trade Measures, The Shrimp-Turtle Rulings, And The Ordinary Meaning Of The Text Of The Gatt, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Institutional Competition To Regulate Corporations: A Comment On Macey, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Wealth, Utility, And The Human Dimension, Jonathan Klick, Francesco Parisi

All Faculty Scholarship

Functional law and economics, which draws its influence from the public choice school of economic thought, stands in stark contrast to both the Chicago and Yale schools of law and economics. While the Chicago school emphasizes the inherent efficiency of legal rules, and the Yale school views law as a solution to market failure and distributional inequality, functional law and economics recognizes the possibility for both market and legal failure. That is, while there are economic forces that lead to failures in the market, there are also structural forces that limit the law’s ability to remedy those failures on an …