Law Commons^™

Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

We analyze the phenomenon that low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers exhibit a “preference for over-withholding” their taxes, a measure we derive from a unique set of questions administered in a dataset of 1,003 households, which we collected through the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We argue that the relationship between their withholding preference and portfolio allocation across liquid and illiquid assets is consistent with models with present-biased preferences, and that individuals exhibit self-control problems when making their consumption and saving decisions. Our results support a model in which individuals use commitment devices to constrain their consumption. …

Immigrants And Their International Money Flows, Susan Pozo Editor

Upjohn Press

This book consists of a series of studies on the topic of international migration with an emphasis on workers' remittances. Chapters cover the impact of remittances on economic development and the interplay of immigration policies with human capital acquisition and labor markets in out-migration areas.

Using The Unidroit Principles To Fill Gaps In The Cisg, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

The United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) sets forth only a basic framework for the recovery of damages, thereby giving a court of tribunal broad authority to determine an aggrieved party’s loss based on circumstances of the particular case. Unfortunately, the lack of specificity has resulted in much litigation, and seemingly conflicting results. To remedy this problem, some have argued that the gaps in the CISG damages provisions should be filled with the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. In this paper, I argue that the gap-filling rules of CISG preclude the UNIDROIT Principles from being …

Is International Trade A Substitute For Migration?, Robert J. Carbaugh

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of Business

If a goal of immigration reform is to lessen the flow of unauthorized immigrants into the U.S., could international trade be used to deter immigration rather than adopting legal barriers? The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on this question by considering the theoretical foundations and empirical research regarding the connection between trade and migration.

Will Marriage Promotion Work?, Vivian E. Hamilton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Legal Periphery Of Dominant Firm Conduct, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores two different but related problems and how U.S. antitrust law and EU competition law approach them. The first is the offense of attempt to monopolize, which concerns the acts that a firm that is not yet dominant might undertake in order to become dominant. The second is the offense of monopoly or dominant firm leveraging, which occurs when a firm uses its dominant position in one market to cause some kind of harm in a different market where it also does business.

The language of EU and U.S. provisions concerning dominant firms provokes one to think that …

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Paolo Santella

No abstract provided.

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Carlo Drago

No abstract provided.

Distributive Injustice And Private Law, Aditi Bagchi

All Faculty Scholarship

Imperfect rights are not held against any single person, and when violated, they do not ground a claim for any particular quantum of redress. The right to an adequate income may be an imperfect right. Because imperfect rights have been asserted only as claims against the state, and because they do not lend themselves to constitutional adjudication, they have had little traction. In my paper, I will emphasize that any claim on the state is derivative from the right held as against other citizens. Even those who believe that individuals have perfect social rights against the state should concede an …

Naked Exclusion, Efficient Breach, And Downstream Competition, John Simpson, Abraham L. Wickelgren

Abraham L. Wickelgren

Previous papers by Eric B. Rasmusen et. al. (1991) and Ilya R. Segal and Michael D. Whinston (2000) argue that exclusive contracts can inefficiently deter entry in the presence of scale economies and multiple buyers. We first show that these results no longer hold when buyers are final consumers who can breach these contracts and pay expectation damages. We then show, however, that exclusive contracts can inefficiently deter entry if buyers are downstream competitors, even in the absence of scale economies and even if breach is possible.

Diabetes Treatments And Moral Hazard, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

In the face of rising rates of diabetes, many states have passed laws requiring health insurance plans to cover medical treatments for the disease. Although supporters of the mandates expect them to improve the health of diabetics, the mandates have the potential to generate a moral hazard to the extent that medical treatments might displace individual behavioral improvements. Another possibility is that the mandates do little to improve insurance coverage for most individuals, as previous research on benefit mandates has suggested that mandates often duplicate what plans already cover. To examine the effects of these mandates, we employ a triple-differences …

What Kinds Of Stock Ownership Plans Should There Be? Of Esops, Other Sops And "Ownership Societies", Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Present-day advocates of an ownership society (OS) do not seem to have noticed the means we have already employed to become an OS where homes and human capital (higher education) are concerned. Nor do they appear to have considered whether these same means - which amount to publicly enhanced private credit markets - might be employed to spread shares in business firms, with a view to completing our OS. This article, the third in a series, seeks tentatively to fill that gap. It does so first by demonstrating how the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, in effect replicates our …

Geo-Politics, The ‘War On Terror’ And The Competitiveness Of The City Of London, Richard Woodward

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Oil. The Geopolitics Of Oil And Iraq, Issam Al-Chalabi

New England Journal of Public Policy

The author deals only with the recent developments that will shape the destiny of Iraq and determine whether it will remain a unified country or disintegrate. He is not optimistic.

Stochastic Modeling Of Retail Mortgage Loans Based On Past Due, Prepaid, And Default States, Chang Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

Stochastic models were developed that provide important measures related to retail mortgages and credit cards for the management of a bank. Based on Markov theory, two models were developed that predict mortgage portfolio size and expected duration of stay in each of the states, which are defined according to the criteria of Basel Accord II and the Federal Reserve Bank. Also, to facilitate comparisons among different types of credit products and different time periods, a model was developed to generate a health index for a retail mortgage. This model could be easily extended, using multivariate regression or multivariate time series …

Naked And Covered In Monte Carlo: A Reappraisal Of Option Taxation, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

The market for equity options and related derivatives is staggering, covering trillions of dollars worth of assets. As a result, the taxation of these instruments is inherently important. Moreover, the importance is made even more acute by the use of options in creating more complex transactions and in avoiding taxes. Consider an equity call option, which entitles, but does not obligate, its holder to buy stock at a set price at a set time in the future. Option theory gives us a way to break the option down into more fundamental units. For example, an equity call option over 10,000 …

The Evolution And Utilization Of The Gatt/Wto Dispute Settlement Mechanism, Pao-Li Chang

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper provides a theoretical framework of dispute settlement to explain the surge in blocking incidence of GATT panel reports during the 1980s and the variations in withdrawn incidence versus total disputes across different decades of the GATT regime. The study first suggests the role of the degree of legal controversy over a panel ruling in determining countries' incentives to block (appeal) a panel report under the GATT (WTO) regime. The study then analyzes the effects of political power on countries' incentives to use, and their interactions in using, the dispute settlement mechanism, when two-sided asymmetric information exists regarding panel …

Patent Continuations, Product Lifecycle Contraction And The Patent Scope Erosion. – A New Insight Into Patenting Trends., Ron D. Katznelson

Ron D. Katznelson

This study was initiated in order to provide more factual insight into the recent debates on patent reforms in general and more particularly, the practice of patent continuations in the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”). Several important trends that have not been previously quantified are brought to light. A quantitative analysis of various components of the flow of patent applications to the USPTO was carried out and insight into the ever-increasing propensity of patentees to file patent applications is presented. It is shown that with the exception of isolated transients due to patent law changes, the growth trend …

Medical Malpractice Reform And Physicians In High-Risk Specialties, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

If medical malpractice reform affects the supply of physicians, the effects will be concentrated in specialties facing high liability exposure. Many doctors are likely to be indifferent regarding reform, because their likelihood of being sued is low. This difference can be exploited to isolate the causal effect of medical malpractice reform on the supply of doctors in high-risk specialties, by using doctors in low-risk specialties as a contemporaneous within-state control group. Using this triple-differences design to control for unobserved effects that correlate with the passage of medical malpractice reform, we show that only caps on noneconomic damages have a statistically …

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Paolo Santella

No abstract provided.

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Carlo Drago

No abstract provided.

A Control Theory Model Of Pricing For A Firm Facing A Stochastic Environment – A Firm’S Dynamic Pricing Strategy When Faced With The Threat Of Antitrust Action, Manak Gupta, Atin Basu Choudhary

Atin Basu Choudhary

No abstract provided.

Silence Is Golden: Communication, Silence, And Cartel Stability, Atin Basu Choudhary, John Conlon

Atin Basu Choudhary

This paper studies how cartel stability is influenced by asymmetric information and communication about demand. Firms in a cartel face fluctuating demand in a repeated game framework. In each period, one randomly chosen firm knows current demand. In this context we consider two different equilibria -- one where the informed firm communicates its information to its partners and another where it does not. We show that cartels are extremely unstable when the informed firm communicates with the uninformed firms. However, when the informed firm does not communicate with the uninformed firms cartels can be as stable as when there are …

Debra L. Delaet On Health And Human Rights: Basic International Documents, 2d Edition, Edited By Stephen P. Marks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published By Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center For Health And Human Rights; Distributed By Harvard University Press, 2006. 392pp., Debra L. Delaet

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Health and Human Rights: Basic International Documents, 2d Edition, edited by Stephen P. Marks. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published by Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2006. 392pp.

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Paolo Santella

No abstract provided.

Who Cares About Director Independence? Presentation (Pdf Format), Paolo Santella, Carlo Drago, Giulia Paone

Carlo Drago

No abstract provided.

Understanding Buffalo's Economic Development (Review Essay), Thomas E. Headrick, John Henry Schlegel

Book Reviews

Reviewing Diana Dillaway, Power Failure: Politics, Patronage, and the Economic Future of Buffalo, New York (2006).

The Economic Impact Of International Labor Migration: Recent Estimates And Policy Implications, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this essay, I survey the economic theory and the most recent empirical evidence of the economic impact of international labor migration. Estimates of the magnitude of the gains that the world could enjoy by liberalizing international migration indicate that even partial liberalization would not only produce substantial increases in the world’s real income but also improve its distribution. The gains from liberalization would be distributed such that if we examine the effects on natives in the countries of immigration, on the migrants, and on those left behind in the countries of emigration, we find that each group would enjoy …

The Impact Of Privatization On Economic Growth And Income Inequality In Developing Countries, Samuel Adams

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

In the 1960s and 1970s academicians, economists and politicians favored state ownership over private ownership in the production and provision of goods and services. By the end of the 1980s, however, there was a reversal of public policy from state domination of the production and provision of goods and services to private ownership and operation. This was due in part to what the World Bank referred to as "state failure”, which was characterized by inefficient service delivery, unprofitable SOEs, high government debt, and stagnant economic growth rates. Accordingly, privatization caught on in many countries as a policy tool to foster …

Cost Growth In Weapons Systems: Re-Examining Rubber Baselines And Ecomonic Factors, Philip E. Ruter Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This paper will evaluate cost overruns from a microeconomic perspective to determine their root causes. The specific variables that will be evaluated are: contract budget fluctuations, contract length, inflation, procurement budget fluctuation, research and development budget fluctuation, the technology readiness of the commodity, and industry concentration. These variables will be evaluated twice. The first evaluation will consist of a binary choice model to determine whether or not the dependent variables influence the likelihood of a cost overrun. The specific form of the evaluation will take the form of a probit regression in which an independent variable value of zero indicates …