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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Economic Theory
Team Production Revisited, William W. Bratton
Team Production Revisited, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article reconsiders Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s team production model of corporate law, offering a favorable evaluation. The model explains both the legal corporate entity and corporate governance institutions in microeconomic terms as the means to the end of encouraging investment, situating corporations within markets and subject to market constraints but simultaneously insisting that productive success requires that corporations remain independent of markets. The model also integrates the inherited framework of corporate law into an economically derived model of production, constructing a microeconomic description of large enterprises firmly rooted in corporate doctrine but neither focused on nor limited by …
Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky
Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky
All Faculty Scholarship
In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …
Competitive Harm From Vertical Mergers, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Competitive Harm From Vertical Mergers, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
The antitrust enforcement Agencies' 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines introduce a nontechnical application of bargaining theory into the assessment of competitive effects from vertical acquisitions. The economics of such bargaining is complex and can produce skepticism among judges, who might regard its mathematics as overly technical, its game theory as excessively theoretical or speculative, or its assumptions as unrealistic.
However, we have been there before. The introduction of concentration indexes, particularly the HHI, in the Merger Guidelines was initially met with skepticism but gradually they were accepted as judges became more comfortable with them. The same thing very largely happened again …
The Modigliani-Miller Theorem At 60: The Long-Overlooked Legal Applications Of Finance’S Foundational Theorem, Michael S. Knoll
The Modigliani-Miller Theorem At 60: The Long-Overlooked Legal Applications Of Finance’S Foundational Theorem, Michael S. Knoll
All Faculty Scholarship
2018 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller’s The Cost of Capital, Corporation Finance, and the Theory of Investment. Widely hailed as the foundation of modern finance, their article, which purports to demonstrate that a firm’s value is independent of its capital structure, is little known by lawyers, including legal academics. That is unfortunate because the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevancy proposition (when inverted) provides a framework that can be extremely useful to legal academics, practicing attorneys and judges.
Appraising Merger Efficiencies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Appraising Merger Efficiencies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Mergers of business firms violate the antitrust laws when they threaten to lessen competition, which generally refers to a price increase resulting from a reduction in output. However, a merger that threatens competition may also enable the post-merger firm to reduce its costs or improve its product. Attitudes toward mergers are heavily driven by assumptions about efficiency gains. If mergers of competitors never produced efficiency gains but simply reduced the number of competitors, a strong presumption against them would be warranted. We tolerate most mergers because of a background, highly generalized belief that most or at least many produce cost …
Framing A Purpose For Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Framing A Purpose For Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
This article seeks to frame a short statement of purpose for corporate law on which all reasonable observers can agree. The statement, in order to succeed at its intended purpose, must satisfy two strict conditions: first, it must have enough content to be meaningful; second, it must be completely uncontroversial, both descriptively and normatively. The exercise, thus described, involves avoiding the issues that occupy center stage in discussions about corporate law while at the same time highlighting the discussants’ generally held presuppositions. Three closely interconnected issues arise. First, whether the statement of the purpose of corporate law should speak in …
The Marginalist Revolution In Corporate Finance: 1880-1965, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Marginalist Revolution In Corporate Finance: 1880-1965, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fundamental changes in economic thought revolutionized the theory of corporate finance, leading to changes in its legal regulation. The changes were massive, and this branch of financial analysis and law became virtually unrecognizable to those who had practiced it earlier. The source of this revision was the marginalist, or neoclassical, revolution in economic thought. The classical theory had seen corporate finance as an historical, relatively self-executing inquiry based on the classical theory of value and administered by common law courts. By contrast, neoclassical value theory was forward looking and as a result …
A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Most legal historians speak of the period following classical legal thought as “progressive legal thought.” That term creates an unwarranted bias in characterization, however, creating the impression that conservatives clung to an obsolete “classical” ideology, when in fact they were in many ways just as revisionist as the progressives legal thinkers whom they critiqued. The Progressives and New Deal thinkers whom we identify with progressive legal thought were nearly all neoclassical, or marginalist, in their economics, but it is hardly true that all marginalists were progressives. For example, the lawyers and policy makers in the corporate finance battles of the …
At The Conjunction Of Love And Money: Comment On Julie A. Nelson, Does Profit-Seeking Rule Out Love? Evidence (Or Not) From Economics And Law, William W. Bratton
At The Conjunction Of Love And Money: Comment On Julie A. Nelson, Does Profit-Seeking Rule Out Love? Evidence (Or Not) From Economics And Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Law Of Vertical Integration And The Business Firm: 1880-1960, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Law Of Vertical Integration And The Business Firm: 1880-1960, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Vertical integration occurs when a firm does something for itself that it could otherwise procure on the market. For example, a manufacturer that opens its own stores is said to be vertically integrated into distribution. One irony of history is that both classical political economy and neoclassicism saw vertical integration and vertical contractual arrangements as much less threatening to competition than cartels or other horizontal arrangements. Nevertheless, vertical integration has produced by far the greater amount of legislation at both federal and state levels and has motivated many more political action groups. Two things explain this phenomenon. First, while economists …
Unentrapped, William W. Bratton
Neoclassicism And The Separation Of Ownership And Control, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Neoclassicism And The Separation Of Ownership And Control, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
"Separation of ownership and control" is a phrase whose history will forever be associated with Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means' The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), as well as with Institutionalist economics, Legal Realism, and the New Deal. Within that milieu the large publicly held business corporation became identified with excessive managerial power at the expense of stockholders, social irresponsibility, and internal inefficiency. Neoclassical economists both then and ever since have generally been critical, both of the historical facts that Berle and Means purported to describe and of the conclusions that they drew. In fact, however, within …
Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Supersize Pay, Incentive Compatibility, And The Volatile Shareholder Interest, William W. Bratton
Supersize Pay, Incentive Compatibility, And The Volatile Shareholder Interest, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
The Equilibrium Content Of Corporate Federalism, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton
Rules, Principles, And The Accounting Crisis In The United States, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Securities Exchange Commission move too quickly ·when they prod the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the standard setter for US GAAP, to move immediately to a principles-based system. Priorities respecting reform of corporate reporting in the US need to be ordered more carefully. Incentive problems impairing audit performance should be solved first through institutional reform insulating the audit from the negative impact of rent-seeking and solving adverse selection problems otherwise affecting audit practice. So long as auditor independence and management incentives respecting accounting treatments remain suspect. the US reporting system holds out no actor plausibly positioned …
Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton
Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley And Accounting: Rules Versus Principles Versus Rents, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Corporate Law As A Facilitator Of Self Governance, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter
Corporate Law As A Facilitator Of Self Governance, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Peculiar Role Of The Delaware Courts In The Competition For Corporate Charters, Jill E. Fisch
The Peculiar Role Of The Delaware Courts In The Competition For Corporate Charters, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
From the classic Cary-Winter debate to current legal scholarship, commentators have struggled to explain Delaware's dominance in the market for corporate charters. Although scholars have offered nonsubstantive explanations such as network externalities, interest group dynamics, and Delaware's expert and specialized judiciary, much of the debate focuses on substantive law. This article takes another view. Arguing that a regulator can offer benefits through its lawmaking process, as well as its legal rules, the article suggests a process-oriented analysis of regulatory competition. The article focuses on the unique role of the Delaware judiciary in corporate lawmaking, a role that has received little …
Teaching Corporate Governance Through Shareholder Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
Teaching Corporate Governance Through Shareholder Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
An Inquiry Into The Efficiency Of The Limited Liability Company: Of Theory Of The Firm And Regulatory Competition, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
An Inquiry Into The Efficiency Of The Limited Liability Company: Of Theory Of The Firm And Regulatory Competition, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Dividends, Noncontractibility, And Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Dividends, Noncontractibility, And Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
A Reliance Damages Approach To Corporate Lockups, David A. Skeel Jr.
A Reliance Damages Approach To Corporate Lockups, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Regulatory Competition, Regulatory Capture, And Corporate Self-Regulation, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery Prof
Regulatory Competition, Regulatory Capture, And Corporate Self-Regulation, William W. Bratton, Joseph A. Mccahery Prof
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton
Self-Regulation, Normative Choice, And The Structure Of Corporate Fiduciary Law, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Economic Structure Of The Post-Contractual Corporation, William W. Bratton
The Economic Structure Of The Post-Contractual Corporation, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The New Economic Theory Of The Firm: Critical Perspectives From History, William W. Bratton
The New Economic Theory Of The Firm: Critical Perspectives From History, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Classical Corporation In American Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Classical Corporation In American Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
Classical political economy was dedicated to the principle that the state could best encourage economic development by leaving entrepreneurs alone, free of regulation and subsidy. The development of classical economic policy in the United States dramatically changed the concept of the business corporation. Within the preclassical, mercantilist model, the corporation was a unique entity created by the state for a special purpose and enjoyed a privileged relationship with the sovereign. The very act of incorporation presumed state involvement. State subsidy and the incorporators' public obligation were natural corollaries. Business firms that relied on the market alone to determine their prospects …
The Economics And Jurisprudence Of Convertible Bonds, William W. Bratton
The Economics And Jurisprudence Of Convertible Bonds, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
Professor Bratton examines judicial regulation of issuer-bondholder conflicts of interest within three different, but closely related doctrinal frameworks: neoclassical contract interpretation; contract avoidance; and corporate law fiduciary restraint. After discussing the elements of convertible bond valuation and their interaction with issuer actions giving rise to conflicts of interest, he evaluates the case for judicial intervention to protect bondholder interests. He concludes that ·bondholder protective intervention is fair and tolerably efficient, provided it is kept within the bounds of contract interpretation. But he finds that more aggressive judicial intervention under the frameworks of contract avoidance and fiduciary restraint carries an unnecessary …