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A Letter To The United States Government On Wealth And Income Inequality, Matthieu Maier
A Letter To The United States Government On Wealth And Income Inequality, Matthieu Maier
English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World
The United States of America is the world’s hotspot when it comes to income and wealth inequality. The wealthiest Americans are accumulating more and more wealth everyday while most Americans, who fall somewhere around middle-class, remain struggling and stagnant. The United States’ unchecked and deregulated system of capitalism is the root cause of our country’s inequities along with our government’s refusal to set aside self-interests and biases in order to combat these issues. From the inequality caused by rouged American systems larger issues are created that lead to complications in health, wages, standard of living, and race relations within our …
Appraising Merger Efficiencies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Appraising Merger Efficiencies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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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 …
The Marginalist Revolution In Corporate Finance: 1880-1965, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The Marginalist Revolution In Corporate Finance: 1880-1965, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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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
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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 …
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
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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
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"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
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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
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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
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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
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No abstract provided.
Dividends, Noncontractibility, And Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
Dividends, Noncontractibility, And Corporate Law, William W. Bratton
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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
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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
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No abstract provided.
The First Great Law & Economics Movement, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
The First Great Law & Economics Movement, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
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Beginning in the 1880s American economists turned their attention to the law in a way unprecedented in American thought. Some legal academics in turn incorporated economics into their thinking about the law. Whether their output or its impact were great enough to warrant calling their efforts a law and economics "movement" is worth debating. This essay argues that there was such a movement.
Four things account for the increasing interest in law and economics at the turn of the century: (1) the widespread application of evolutionary models to the development of both law and economic theory; (2) the influence of …
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
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No abstract provided.