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Law And Decisions In Corporations, Xinyu Hou

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studies the impact of corporate laws and bankruptcy laws on decisions in corporationsfrom a theoretical perspective. Chapter 1 studies the impact of liability rules on firms’ choices of care (affecting the frequency of tort damages) and scale (level of output) at the extensive and intensive margins. Chapter 2 focuses on gambling using derivatives, made more available by recent changes in the bankruptcy law granting repos and other derivatives “superpriority,” which is exemption from the automatic stay and clawback in bankruptcy.

Limited liability is a birth right given by law to corporations, LLCs, and to differing extents specialforms of …