Law Commons^™

"Do Lawyers Need Economists?" Review Of Economic Transplants: On Lawmaking For Corporations And Capital Markets, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Katja Langenbucher’s outstanding book seeks to address the question of why and in what ways have lawyers been importing economic theories into a legal environment, and how has this shaped scholarly research, judicial and legislative work? Since the financial crisis, corporate or capital markets law has been the focus of attention by academia and media. Formal modelling has been used to describe how capital markets work and, later, has been criticized for its abstract assumptions. Empirical legal studies and regulatory impact assessments offered different ways forward. This excellent book presents a new approach to the risks and benefits of interdisciplinary …

A Taxing Feminism, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Feminist perspectives are not new to tax law. The first academic piece bringing a feminist perspective to bear on tax law dates to the early 1970s, when Grace Blumberg published “Sexism in the Code: A Comparative Study of Income Taxation of Working Wives and Mothers.” Contemporaneously, none other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg (along with her tax lawyer husband Marty Ginsburg) brought a feminist perspective to bear on tax law when she argued Moritz v. Commissioner before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, as depicted in the movie On the Basis of Sex. Since then, numerous other contributions have been …

The Economics Of American Higher Education In The New Gilded Age, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of The Political Parties: A Comparison Of Economic Performance Under Conservatives And Liberals, Austin Fischer

Honors Program Projects

A topic that has long been a subject of debate is which party in America’s two-party political system has better economic policies. Democrats tout strong economic records, boasting of their tried and true Keynesian principles. Republicans point to the accomplishments of recent presidents in combating recessions with supply-side ideals. This project attempts to look at the actual performance of the economy under Republican and Democratic presidents since 1950, and come to an unbiased conclusion on whose policies really do work better.

This project looks at GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, disposable income, and budget deficits to determine which party’s policies help …

Review Of Current Scholarship On The Fiscal Cliff, David J. Herzig

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Solving Charity Failures, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

“Crowdfunding” is a way of using the Internet to raise money by asking the public to contribute to a project. In the past, asking a large number of people to contribute small amounts of money to a project was expensive and inefficient for most organizations and individuals. By greatly reducing transaction costs, crowdfunding enables anyone to inexpensively and efficiently seek small contributions to a project. While crowdfunding is a new model of fundraising, it has already transformed funding for the arts. For example, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter distributed more than forty million dollars to the creators of almost seventy-five hundred …

On The Future Of Tax Salience Scholarship: Operative Mechanisms And Limiting Factors, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay — written for Florida State University’s symposium on the 100th anniversary of the U.S. federal income tax — evaluates how the literature on tax salience should be advanced in order for it to better guide tax policy over the coming decades. The literature on tax salience analyzes how taxpayers account for the costs imposed by taxation when the taxpayers make decisions or judgments, both in the taxpayers’ roles as voters and as market participants. This Essay evaluates both possible operative mechanisms that might underlie observed tax salience effects and limiting factors that might prevent tax salience effects from …

A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lincoln's Populist Sovereignty: Public Finance Of, By, And For The People, Timothy A. Canova

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Immigration Restriction As Redistributive Taxation: Working Women And The Costs Of Protectionism In The Labor Market, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after-tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers from immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages female participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary to …

Tax Incentives For Economic Development: Personal (And Pessimistic) Reflections, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Taxation Of Aquaculture In Canada: A Comparison With The Taxation Of Agriculture And Its Policy Implications, Faye Woodman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Canada, at both the federal and the provincial government levels, the tax rules applicable to agricultural producers under the Income Tax Act and other taxing statutes often apply with relatively few modifications to the aquaculture sector. The agriculture rules differ in significant aspects from those applied to other taxpayers. They also tend to be more generous. Thus, the aquaculture sector operates under regimes of taxation in Canada that may be characterized as preferential, but may also have been developed with the needs and circumstances of agriculture, not aquaculture, in mind. This chapter will examine the rationales underlying the various …

Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This paper assesses current methods for evaluating the long-term viability and desirability of government activities, especially Social Security and other big-ticket budget items. I reach four conclusions: (1) There are several simple ways to improve the current debate about fiscal policy by adjusting our crude deficit measures, improvements which ought not to be controversial, (2) Separately measuring Social Security’s long-term balance is inappropriate and misleading, (3) The methods available to measure very long-term government financing (Fiscal Gaps and their cousins, Generational Accounts) are of very limited value in setting public policy today, principally because there is no reliable baseline of …

Taxing Utility, Terrence Chorvat

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In order to assess the efficiency of a tax, we should examine its effect on the behavior of individuals. In general, the less a tax affects behavior, the more efficient it is thought to be. The standard example of a non-distorting tax is a lump-sum tax, which does not change with the behavior of the taxpayer. However, this article demonstrates that behavioral distortions can and do arise from a change in even a lump-sum tax. The only truly non-distortionary tax would be one based on utility itself. Utility, which has been used as a norm for distributional analysis, is also …

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does The Tax Law Discriminate Against The Majority Of American Children: The Downside Of Our Progressive Rate Structure And Unbalanced Incentives For Higher Education?, Lester B. Snyder

University of San Diego Law and Economics Research Paper Series

Our graduate income tax structure provides an incentive to shift income to lower-bracket family members. However, some parents have much more latitude to shift income to their children than do others. Income derived from services and private business-by far the majority of American income-is less favored than income derived from publicly traded securities. The rationale given for this discrimination is that parents in services or private business, as opposed to those in securities, do not actually part with control of their property. This article explores these tax broader (yet subtle) tax benefits and their impact on the majority of children …

What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …

The Economic Ambiguity (And Possible Irrelevance) Of Tax Transition Rules, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Taxing Sunny Days: Adjusting Taxes For Regional Living Costs And Amenities, Michael S. Knoll, Thomas D. Griffith

All Faculty Scholarship

Taxpayers pay tax on their nominal income without regard to their regional cost of living or the value of their regional amenities. Although commentators have argued that the income tax's failure to account for such differences is unfair - because residents of high-cost and low-amenity regions pay higher taxes than residents of low-cost and high-amenity regions - that argument is unpersuasive because migration tends to eliminate regional differences in living standards. The tax system's failure to adjust for regional differences is, however, likely to misallocate resources across regions in two ways. First, it is likely to discourage taxpayers from settling …

Simplifying The Transition To A (Progressive) Consumption Tax, Mitchell L. Engler, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Put-Call Parity And The Law, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

A common literary theme is the conflict between appearance and reality. That conflict also frequently arises in the law, where it is usually cast as one between substance and form. Another discipline in which the conflict arises is finance, where it appears in the put-call parity theorem. That theorem states that given any three of the four following financial instruments--a riskless zero-coupon bond, a share of stock, a call option on the stock, and a put option on the stock--the fourth instrument can be replicated. Thus, the theorem implies that any financial position containing these assets can be constructed in …

The Conundrum Of Executive Compensation, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

Much of the scholarship on executive compensation that appears in law reviews assumes that large U.S. corporations overpay their chief executive officers ("CEOs"). This assumption is understandable, as many of these compensation packages are indeed stunning. The question of whether CEOs are overpaid, however, is complicated. Some scholars in other disciplines, principally in economics and management science, have studied the issue but, as this Article demonstrates, this literature does not confirm the assumption. Indeed, some studies suggest that CEO pay is competitive. Moreover, efforts to reduce the level of executive compensation may have the unintended consequence of achieving the opposite …

Windfalls, Eric Kades

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Women And Children In The Economy: Reflections From The Income Tax System, Faye Woodman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

I have been asked to speak on “women and economics” with specific reference to the Canadian tax system. It is my thesis that the economic vulnerabilities of women and children in this nation are reflected and reinforced in the tax system. Further, it is my view that societal attitudes about who should support, and how we should support, children contribute to a complex synergy within the economic/tax system. This has the potential to produce a new underclass of government dependents who are dependent because, paradoxically, they receive so little support. Finally, I end with a plea for a broader commitment …

Restating Capitalization Standards And Rules: The Case For "Rough Justice" Regulations (Part Two), John W. Lee, Eldridge Blanton, Veena Luthra, Glenn Walberg, Darryl Whitesell

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Restating Capitalization Standards And Rules: The Case For "Rough Justice" Regulations (Part One), John W. Lee, Eldridge Blanton, Veena Luthra, Glenn Walberg, Darryl Whitesell

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Perchance To Dream: The Global Economy And The American Dream, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Taxing Prometheus: How The Corporate Interest Deduction Discourages Innovation And Risk-Taking, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper uses recent developments in the theory of optimal capital structure to demonstrate how the federal corporate income tax with an interest deduction, but without a corresponding dividend deduction, misallocates capital within the corporate sector by encouraging investment in low-risk, low-growth projects employing tangible assets over high-risk, high-growth projects employing intangible assets.

Contingent Income Items And Cost Basis Corporate Acquisitions: Correlative Adjustments And Clearer Reflection Of Income, John W. Lee, Mark S. Bader

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Are We A Nation Of Tax Cheaters? New Econometric Evidence On Tax Compliance, Jeffrey A. Dubin, Michael J. Graetz, Louis L. Wilde

Faculty Scholarship

In 1982, then Commissioner of Internal Revenue Roscoe Egger reported to Congress that legal sector noncompliance with the Federal Income Tax statutes generated an "income tax gap" of $81 billion in 1981, up from $29 billion in 1973. He further projected a gap of $120 billion for 1985 (U.S. Congress, 1982). Perceptions of accelerating noncompliance inspired a crisis mentality within the Internal Revenue Service, Congress, and the tax bar.

The IRS responded in part by funding a major independent study of tax noncompliance via the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Bar Foundation initiated an investigation of its own …