Law Commons^™

Mapping The Future Of Insider Trading Law: Of Boundaries, Gaps, And Strategies, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The current law on insider trading is remarkably unrationalized because it contains gaps and loopholes the size of the Washington Square Arch. For example, if a thief breaks into your office, opens your files, learns material nonpublic information, and trades on that information, he has not breached a fiduciary duty and is presumably exempt from insider trading liability. But drawing a line that can convict only the fiduciary and not the thief seems morally incoherent. Nor is it doctrinally necessary.

The basic methodology handed down by the Supreme Court in SEC v. Dirks and United States v. O'Hagan dictates (i) …

Economics Of Bankruptcy – Introduction, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

This essay surveys important contributions to the economics of bankruptcy. It is an introductory chapter for a forthcoming volume (from Edward Elgar Press) that compiles the work of legal scholars as well as economists working in the field of corporate finance. The essay begins with the foundational theories of Baird, Jackson, and Rea and then collects scholarly work extending, testing, or revising those theories. At various points I identify questions that merit further study, particularly empirical testing.

Agency Capitalism: Further Implications Of Equity Intermediation, Ronald J. Gilson, Jeffrey N. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter continues our examination of the corporate law and governance implications of the fundamental shift in ownership structure of U.S. public corporations from the Berle-Means pattern of widely distributed shareholders to one of Agency Capitalism – the reconcentration of ownership in intermediary institutional investors as record holders for their beneficial owners. A Berle-Means ownership distribution provided the foundation for the agency cost orientation of modern corporate law and governance – the goal was to bridge the gap between the interests of managers and shareholders that dispersed shareholders could not do for themselves. The equity intermediation of the last 30 …

A Legal Theory Of Finance, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance. LTF holds that financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private. At the same time, financial markets exhibit dynamics that frequently put them in direct tension with commitments enshrined in law or contracts. This is the case especially in times of financial crisis when the full enforcement of legal commitments would result in the self-destruction of the financial system. This law-finance paradox tends to be resolved by suspending the full force of law where the survival …

Fee Effects, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

Intermediaries are a pervasive feature of modern economies. This article draws attention to an under-theorized cost arising from the use of specialized intermediaries – a systematic shift in the mix of transactions consummated. The interests of intermediaries are imperfectly aligned with the parties to a transaction. Intermediaries seek to maximize their fees, a transaction cost from the perspective of the parties. Numerous factors, including the requirement that a transaction create value in excess of the associated fees to proceed and an intermediary’s interest in maintaining a good reputation, constrain an intermediary’s tendency to use its influence in a self-serving manner. …

Interbank Discipline, Kathryn Judge

Faculty Scholarship

As banking has evolved over the last three decades, banks have become increasingly interconnected. This Article draws attention to an effect of this development that has important policy ramifications yet remains largely unexamined – a dramatic rise in interbank discipline. The Article demonstrates that today's large, complex banks have financial incentives to monitor risk taking at other banks, They also have the infrastructure, competence, and information required to be fairly effective monitors and mechanisms through which they can respond when a bank changes its risk profile. Interbank discipline thus affects bank risk taking, discouraging banks from taking some types of …

Law In Finance, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

Law’s relevance to finance is by now well recognized, in no small part due to the literature on "law and finance" (La Porta et al. 1998; La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer 2008) celebrated in this journal ten years ago under the heading "the new comparative economics" (Djankov et al. 2003). There will always be some debate as to whether a specific law or regulation distorts or supports markets, but few would argue today that law is irrelevant to financial markets or that they could operate entirely outside it.

This special issue takes the debate about the relation between law and …

Idiosyncratic Risk During Economic Downturns: Implications For The Use Of Event Studies In Securities Litigation, Edward G. Fox, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

We reported in a recent paper that during the 2008-09 financial crisis, for the average firm, idiosyncratic risk, as measured by variance, increased by five-fold. This finding is important for securities litigation because idiosyncratic risk plays a central role in event study methodology. Event studies are commonly used in securities litigation to determine materiality and loss causation. Many bits of news affect an issuer’s share price at the time of a corporate disclosure that is the subject of litigation. Because of this, even if an issuer’s market–adjusted price changes at the time of the disclosure, one cannot determine with certainty …

Towards A Legal Theory Of Finance, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance. LTF holds that financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private. At the same time, financial markets exhibit dynamics that frequently put them in direct tension with commitments enshrined in law or contracts. This is the case especially in times of financial crises when the full enforcement of legal commitments would result in the self-destruction of the financial system. This law-finance paradox tends to be resolved by suspending the full force of law where the survival …