Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 30 of 41
Full-Text Articles in Law
Self-Regulation For The Mortgage Industry, M. Todd Henderson
Self-Regulation For The Mortgage Industry, M. Todd Henderson
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This Article proposes an alternative to direct government regulation of mortgage brokers: self-regulation of the mortgage industry that mimics the arguably successful self-regulation of the securities industry that has occurred over the past two centuries. Although not without its problems, self-regulation of securities brokers operates more efficiently than government regulation. For example, self-regulation allows for industry expertise to be deployed at low cost and is built on trust and reciprocity, which reduce enforcement costs. In addition, self-regulation locates power at its smallest point and encourages efficient resolution of disputes by ensuring commensurable regulatory intervention. Most crucially for the mortgage industry, …
No Contract?, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
No Contract?, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
"No Contract" is on the rise in many consumer markets. Sellers are luring customers with the assurance that no commitment is required—that the consumer can terminate the service freely at any time, without paying a termination penalty. What explains the increasing prevalence of No Contract? Is it welfare enhancing? We examine the costs and benefits of No Contract, as compared to the lock-in alternative, and conclude that the rise of No Contract is generally desirable, a market response to consumers' growing awareness and understanding of the costs of lock-in. We argue, however, that lock-ins continue to prevail less conspicuously, through …
Access And The Public Domain, Randal C. Picker
Access And The Public Domain, Randal C. Picker
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Bankruptcy Step Zero, Anthony Casey, Douglas G. Baird
Bankruptcy Step Zero, Anthony Casey, Douglas G. Baird
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Policing Immigration, Thomas J. Miles, Adam B. Cox
Policing Immigration, Thomas J. Miles, Adam B. Cox
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Personalizing Default Rules And Disclosure With Big Data, Ariel Porat, Lior Strahilevitz
Personalizing Default Rules And Disclosure With Big Data, Ariel Porat, Lior Strahilevitz
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Raising The Stakes In Patent Cases, Jonathan Masur, Anup Malani
Raising The Stakes In Patent Cases, Jonathan Masur, Anup Malani
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Altruism Exchanges And The Kidney Shortage, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Altruism Exchanges And The Kidney Shortage, Eric A. Posner, Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Not enough kidneys are donated each year to satisfy the demand from patients who need them. Strong moral and legal norms interfere with market-based solutions. To improve the supply of kidneys without violating these norms, we propose legal reforms that would strengthen the incentive to donate based on altruistic motives. We propose that donors be permitted to donate kidneys in exchange for commitments by recipients or their benefactors to engage in charitable activity or to donate funds to charities chosen by donors. And we propose that charities be permitted to create Altruism Exchanges, which would permit large numbers of altruists …
Toward A Positive Theory Of Privacy Law, Lior Strahilevitz
Toward A Positive Theory Of Privacy Law, Lior Strahilevitz
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Shady Grove V. Allstate On Forum Shopping In The New York Courts, William Hubbard
An Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Shady Grove V. Allstate On Forum Shopping In The New York Courts, William Hubbard
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Given the considerable prominence of forum-shopping concerns in the jurisprudence and academic literature on the so-called Erie Doctrine, courts and commentators may benefit from data on whether, and to what extent, forum shopping in fact responds to choice-of-law decisions under the Erie Doctrine. Prior to this paper, however, no empirical study quantified the changes in forum shopping behavior caused by a court decision applying the Erie Doctrine. I study changes in filing patterns of cases likely to be affected by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Shady Grove v. Allstate and find evidence of large shifts in the patterns of …
Audits As Signals, David A. Weisbach, Maciej H. Kotowski, Richard Zeckhauser
Audits As Signals, David A. Weisbach, Maciej H. Kotowski, Richard Zeckhauser
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
A broad array of law enforcement strategies, from income tax to bank regulation, involve self-reporting by regulated agents and auditing of some fraction of the reports by the regulating bureau. Standard models of self-reporting strategies assume that although bureaus only have estimates of the of an agent's type, agents know the ability of bureaus to detect their misreports. We relax this assumption, and posit that agents only have an estimate of the auditing capabilities of bureaus. Enriching the model to allow two-sided private information changes the behavior of bureaus. A bureau that is weak at auditing, may wish to mimic …
A Solution To The Collective Action Problem In Corporate Reorganization, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
A Solution To The Collective Action Problem In Corporate Reorganization, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The voting rules in Chapter 11 are supposed to ensure that debtor firms are appropriately liquidated or reorganized. However, these convoluted and internally inconsistent rules are poorly designed to produce such outcomes, and there is no evidence that they do. However, the major proposals for reform, including auctions and options-trading, neglect the fundamentally collective nature of choices in reorganizations. We argue that a more appealing reform is the improvement of voting rules through the use of an economically efficient procedure known as quadratic voting, according to which stakeholders may cast a number of votes equal to the square root of …
'Becker And Foucault On Crime And Punishment': A Conversation With Gary Becker, François Ewald, And Bernard Harcourt: The Second Session, Gary S. Becker, François Ewald, Bernard E. Harcourt
'Becker And Foucault On Crime And Punishment': A Conversation With Gary Becker, François Ewald, And Bernard Harcourt: The Second Session, Gary S. Becker, François Ewald, Bernard E. Harcourt
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Beccaria's 'On Crimes And Punishments': A Mirror On The History Of The Foundations Of Modern Criminal Law, Bernard E. Harcourt
Beccaria's 'On Crimes And Punishments': A Mirror On The History Of The Foundations Of Modern Criminal Law, Bernard E. Harcourt
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Climate Impacts On Economic Growth As Drivers Of Uncertainty In The Social Cost Of Carbon, Elisabeth Moyer, Mark D. Woolley, Michael J. Glotter, David A. Weisbach
Climate Impacts On Economic Growth As Drivers Of Uncertainty In The Social Cost Of Carbon, Elisabeth Moyer, Mark D. Woolley, Michael J. Glotter, David A. Weisbach
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
One of the central ways that the costs of global warming are incorporated into U.S. law is in cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations. In 2010, to standardize analyses, an Interagency Working Group (IAWG) established a central estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC) of $21/tCO2 drawn from three commonly-used models of climate change and the global economy. These models produced a relatively narrow distribution of SCC values, consistent with previous studies. We use one of the IAWG models, DICE, to explore which assumptions produce this apparent robustness. SCC values are constrained by a shared feature of model behavior: though …
Is There A Lingua Franca For The American Legal Academy?, Mary Anne Case
Is There A Lingua Franca For The American Legal Academy?, Mary Anne Case
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Innovation And Incarceration: An Economic Analysis Of Criminal Intellectual Property Law, Jonathan Masur, Christopher Buccafusco
Innovation And Incarceration: An Economic Analysis Of Criminal Intellectual Property Law, Jonathan Masur, Christopher Buccafusco
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Copyright In Teams, Anthony Casey, Andres Sawicki
Copyright In Teams, Anthony Casey, Andres Sawicki
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Dozens of people worked together to produce Casablanca. But a single person working alone wrote Ulysses. While almost all films are produced by large collaborations, no great novel ever resulted from the work of a team. Why does the frequency and success of collaborative creative production vary across art forms? The answer lies at the intersection of intellectual property law and the theory of the firm. Existing analyses in this area often focus on patent law and look almost exclusively to property-rights theories of the firm. The implications of organizational theory for collaborative creativity and its intersection with copyright law …
Regulation Through Boilerplate: An Apologia, Omri Ben-Shahar
Regulation Through Boilerplate: An Apologia, Omri Ben-Shahar
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This essay reviews Margaret Jane Radin's Boilerplate: The Fine Print, Vanishing Rights, and the Rule of Law (Princeton Press, 2013). It responds to two of the book's principal complaints against boilerplate consumer contracts: that they modify people's rights without true agreement to, or even minimal knowledge of, their terms; and that the provisions they unilaterally enact are substantively intolerable. I argue, counter-intuitively, that contracts with long fine prints are no more complex and baffling to consumers than any alternative boilerplate-free templates of contracting. Therefore, there is no alternative universe in which consumers enter simpler contracts better informed of the legal …
Boards-R-Us: Reconceptualizing Corporate Boards, M. Todd Henderson, Stephen Bainbridge
Boards-R-Us: Reconceptualizing Corporate Boards, M. Todd Henderson, Stephen Bainbridge
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
State corporate law requires director services be provided by "natural persons." This Article puts this obligation to scrutiny, and concludes that there are significant gains that could be realized by permitting firms (be they partnerships, corporations, or other business entities) to provide board services. We call these firms "board service providers" (BSPs). We argue that hiring a BSP to provide board services instead of a loose group of sole proprietorships will increase board accountability, both from markets and judicial supervision. The potential economies of scale and scope in the board services industry (including vertical integration of consultants and other board …
Libertarian Paternalism, Path Dependence, And Temporary Law, Tom Ginsburg, Jonathan Masur, Richard H. Mcadams
Libertarian Paternalism, Path Dependence, And Temporary Law, Tom Ginsburg, Jonathan Masur, Richard H. Mcadams
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Quadratic Voting As Efficient Corporate Governance, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
Quadratic Voting As Efficient Corporate Governance, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Shareholder voting is a weak and much-criticized mechanism for controlling managerial opportunism. Among other problems, shareholders are often too uninformed to vote wisely, and majority and supermajority rule permits large shareholders to exploit small shareholders. We propose a new voting system called Quadratic Voting(QV), according to which shareholders are not given voting rights but may purchase votes, with the price of votes being a quadratic function of the number of votes purchased. QV ensures that voting outcomes are efficient under reasonable conditions. We argue that corporations should implement QV, or a simple approximation called square-root voting, and that the law …
The South African Constitutional Court And Socio-Economic Rights As 'Insurance Swaps', Tom Ginsburg, Rosalind Dixon
The South African Constitutional Court And Socio-Economic Rights As 'Insurance Swaps', Tom Ginsburg, Rosalind Dixon
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
Benefit-Cost Paradigms In Financial Regulation, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
Benefit-Cost Paradigms In Financial Regulation, Eric A. Posner, E. Glen Weyl
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper builds on contributions to a Conference on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Financial Regulation, held at the University of Chicago, to show how benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of financial regulations should be conducted. Our major themes are that (1) on theoretical grounds, BCA should be easier for financial regulation than for other areas of regulation where it is already used, such as health and safety regulation; (2) while many needed valuations for BCA of financial regulation do not yet exist, those valuations are theoretically measurable; (3) once regulators commit to using BCA, economists will have incentives to work on supplying those …
Evidentiary Privileges In International Arbitration, Tom Ginsburg, Richard M. Mosk
Evidentiary Privileges In International Arbitration, Tom Ginsburg, Richard M. Mosk
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
The Impact Of The U.S. Debit Card Interchange Fee Caps On Consumer Welfare: An Event Study Analysis, David S. Evans, Howard H. Chang, Steven Joyce
The Impact Of The U.S. Debit Card Interchange Fee Caps On Consumer Welfare: An Event Study Analysis, David S. Evans, Howard H. Chang, Steven Joyce
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The cost to merchants of taking payment on debit cards declined by more than $7 billion annually as a result of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, while the effective cost to issuers of providing debit card services to consumers increased by a corresponding amount. This paper reports an event-study analysis of stock prices to determine the impact on consumers of the Durbin Amendment. Did consumers gain more from cost savings passed on by merchants, in the form of lower prices and better services, than they lost from cost increases passed …
A Winner's Curse?: Promotions From The Lower Federal Courts, Eric A. Posner, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
A Winner's Curse?: Promotions From The Lower Federal Courts, Eric A. Posner, Mitu Gulati, Stephen J. Choi
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
The standard model of judicial behavior suggests that judges primarily care about deciding cases in ways that further their political ideologies. But judicial behavior seems much more complex. Politicians who nominate people for judgeships do not typically tout their ideology (except sometimes using vague code words), but they always claim that the nominees will be competent judges. Moreover, it stands to reason that voters would support politicians who appoint competent as well as ideologically compatible judges. We test this hypothesis using a dataset consisting of promotions to the federal circuit courts. We find, using a set of objective measures of …
Health And Financial Fragility: Evidence From Car Crashes And Consumer Bankruptcy, Edward Morrison, Arpit Gupta, Lenora Olson, Lawrence Cook
Health And Financial Fragility: Evidence From Car Crashes And Consumer Bankruptcy, Edward Morrison, Arpit Gupta, Lenora Olson, Lawrence Cook
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
This paper assesses the importance of adverse health shocks as triggers of bankruptcy filings. We view car crashes as a proxy for health shocks and draw on a large sample of police crash reports linked to hospital admission records and bankruptcy case files. We report two findings: (i) there is a strong positive correlation between an individual's pre-shock financial condition and his or her likelihood of suffering a health shock, an example of behavioral consistency; and (ii) after accounting for this simultaneity, we are unable to identify a causal effect of health shocks on bankruptcy filing rates. These findings emphasize …
Exactions Creep, Lee Anne Fennell, Eduardo Peñalver
Exactions Creep, Lee Anne Fennell, Eduardo Peñalver
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
No abstract provided.
A Theory Of Pleading, William Hubbard
A Theory Of Pleading, William Hubbard
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal are the most important cases on pleading in fifty years. A large literature argues that these cases have raised pleading standards, empowered federal judges as the gatekeepers to federal court, and undermined the "liberal ethos" of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This understanding of pleading doctrine has in turn led to predictions of dramatic effects on dismissal rates, particularly for claims, such as employment discrimination claims, where plaintiffs often lack knowledge of the defendant's intent at the outset of the case. The accumulating empirical evidence, however, confounds these predictions. Why …