Law Commons^™

Afghanistan's New Vat, Part 1: Invoice Matching Or A Unitary Digital Invoice, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Andrew Leahey, Yujin Li, Haseena Rahman

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 1990 two groundbreaking articles on business process re-engineering (BPR) were published, one by Thomas H. Davenport (a professor in information technology at Babson College) in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the other by Michael Hammer (a professor of computer science at MIT) in the Harvard Business Review. BPR is a management strategy that analyzes IT-intensive workflow designs and business processes within an organization.

On December 21, 2020 (Jadi 1, 1399) Afghanistan was scheduled to implement a 10% VAT. It has been delayed one year by the pandemic. When it does implement, Afghanistan will have significant workflow …

In Defense Of Breakups: Administering A “Radical” Remedy, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Calls for breaking up monopolies—especially Amazon, Facebook, and Google—have largely focused on proving that past acquisitions of companies like Whole Foods, Instagram, and YouTube were anticompetitive. But scholars have paid insufficient attention to another major obstacle that also explains why the government in recent decades has not broken up a single large company. After establishing that an anticompetitive merger or other act has occurred, there is great skepticism of breakups as a remedy. Judges, scholars, and regulators see a breakup as extreme, frequently comparing the remedy to trying to “unscramble eggs.” They doubt the government’s competence in executing such a …

The Revival Of Respondeat Superior And Evolution Of Gatekeeper Liability, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

In an era of servants and masters, respondeat superior emerged to hold the powerful accountable for the acts of those they control. That doctrine’s significance has only grown in an economy driven by large corporations that rely heavily on legions of subsidiaries and independent contractors, such as banks deploying independent call centers, oil companies using drilling contractors, and tech platforms connecting consumers to app developers. It is widely believed that firms can avoid third- party liability for many laws by outsourcing or creating subsidiaries.

This Article shows that common narratives of the demise of third-party liability are incomplete. Respondeat superior …

Shareholder Value(S): Index Fund Esg Activism And The New Millennial Corporate Governance, David H. Webber, Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds’ generally docile approach to ownership is broadly acknowledged.

However, this Article argues that the notion that index funds are passive owners overlooks an important dimension in which index funds have demonstrated outspoken, confrontational, and effective stewardship. Specifically, we document that index funds have taken a leading role in challenging management and voting
against directors in order to advance board diversity and corporate sustainability. We show that index …

The New Gatekeepers: Private Firms As Public Enforcers, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

The world’s largest businesses must routinely police other businesses. By public mandate, Facebook monitors app developers’ privacy safeguards, Citibank audits call centers for deceptive sales practices, and Exxon reviews offshore oil platforms’ environmental standards. Scholars have devoted significant attention to how policy makers deploy other private sector enforcers, such as certification bodies, accountants, lawyers, and other periphery “gatekeepers.” However, the literature has yet to explore the emerging regulatory conscription of large firms at the center of the economy. This Article examines the rise of the enforcer-firm through case studies of the industries that are home to the most valuable companies, …

Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops, extends, and clarifies themes introduced in five prior papers dealing with blockchain, and VATCoin in the context of both (a) the new VATs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and (b) the mature VATs in the EU. Five additional papers on VAT technology advances in Fiji, with blockchain and VATCoin applications to New Zealand’s approach to online sales platforms (the Netlix Tax) are similarly referenced and extended. The GCC VAT papers were exploratory. For the most part, they were composed before any GCC jurisdiction had implemented a VAT, and in three instances even before the GCC Framework …