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Columbia Law School

Faculty Scholarship

2015

Corporate governance

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Tax And Corporate Governance: The Influence Of Tax On Managerial Agency Costs, David M. Schizer Jan 2015

Tax And Corporate Governance: The Influence Of Tax On Managerial Agency Costs, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the influence of tax on managerial agency costs, with particular emphasis on public companies in the United States. Focusing on “C-corporations,” this chapter first considers why tax is an imperfect vehicle for mitigating managerial agency costs. It then discusses how tax influences the compensation of managers, both in ways policy makers intended, and in ways they did not. The chapter also considers how tax affects management decisions about capital structure, hedging, and acquisitions. In addition, this chapter explores the tax system’s influence on the ability and incentives of shareholders to monitor management. This chapter then concludes with …


Majority Control And Minority Protection, Zohar Goshen, Assaf Hamdani Jan 2015

Majority Control And Minority Protection, Zohar Goshen, Assaf Hamdani

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines legal issues concerning majority control and minority protection in firms with concentrated ownership governance structures, with particular emphasis on the tradeoff between the goals of protecting minority shareholders and allowing controllers to pursue their vision and how corporate law should balance these conflicting goals. Focusing primarily on Delaware corporate law, it suggests that holding a control block allows majority shareholders to pursue their idiosyncratic vision in the manner they see fit, even against minority investors’ objections. Idiosyncratic vision refers to the subjective value that entrepreneurs attach to their business idea or vision, and this chapter considers its …


Convergence And Persistence In Corporate Law And Governance, Jeffrey N. Gordon Jan 2015

Convergence And Persistence In Corporate Law And Governance, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter discusses the question of “convergence or persistence” in corporate law and governance. It first considers efforts to measure convergence directly by focusing on the evolution of law-on-the-books governance provisions before analyzing capital market evidence on convergence, with particular emphasis on capital market indicators such as the decline in “cross-listings” onto US stock exchanges by firms from jurisdictions with weaker investor protection and the increase in initial public offerings (IPOs) on emerging market stock markets. The chapter proceeds by reviewing evidence of divergence, especially “divergence within convergence,” and the failure of the European Union to produce more convergent corporate …


Taking Care Of Business: The Legal Affairs Division From The Gatt To The Wto, Petros C. Mavroidis Jan 2015

Taking Care Of Business: The Legal Affairs Division From The Gatt To The Wto, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

The WTO is usually referred to as a ‘member-driven organisation’. This term aims to capture the idea that it is states and customs territories, the members of the WTO, that have the initiative to decide on the direction of the institution. The WTO Secretariat is more or less what the term denotes: staff hired in order to help the members realise their aspirations. This is as true today as it was yesterday. Actually, over the years the Secretariat has for various reasons accumulated extra responsibilities, always with the tacit acquiescence or explicit acknowledgement of the members. In short, the members …