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Full-Text Articles in Law
Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley
Cleaning Corporate Governance, Jens Frankenreiter, Cathy Hwang, Yaron Nili, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
Although empirical scholarship dominates the field of law and finance, much of it shares a common vulnerability: an abiding faith in the accuracy and integrity of a small, specialized collection of corporate governance data. In this paper, we unveil a novel collection of three decades’ worth of corporate charters for thousands of public companies, which shows that this faith is misplaced.
We make three principal contributions to the literature. First, we label our corpus for a variety of firm- and state-level governance features. Doing so reveals significant infirmities within the most well-known corporate governance datasets, including an error rate exceeding …
Preparing Legal Frameworks For Environmental Disasters: Practical Considerations For Host States, Brooke Guven, Perrine Toledano, Lise Johnson
Preparing Legal Frameworks For Environmental Disasters: Practical Considerations For Host States, Brooke Guven, Perrine Toledano, Lise Johnson
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications
Projects in the extractives sector carry risks of lasting, and sometimes irreversible, damage to the environment. Nonetheless, these projects are important for accelerating the economic development of host countries. Governments seeking to mitigate the adverse effects of foreign investment often face pushback from investors that are unwilling to change their practices in order to avert environmental disaster. This report sets forth certain steps that host-governments can take during the pre-investment, operation, and enforcement phases of extractives projects to provide financial and other protection in the context of environmental disasters associated with private sector investments.
Upon comparative review of five Case …
Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead
Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead
Faculty Scholarship
Today, some hedge funds attack public companies for the sole purpose of inducing a short-lived panic which they can exploit for profit. This sort of market manipulation harms average investors who entrust financial markets with their retirement savings. While short selling serves a critical function in the capital markets, some short sellers disseminate negative opinion about a company, inducing a panic and sharp decline in the stock price, and rapidly close that position for a profit prior to the price partially or fully rebounding. We urge the SEC to enact two rules which will discourage manipulative short selling. The petition …
Driver For Contactless Payments, Ronald J. Mann
Driver For Contactless Payments, Ronald J. Mann
Faculty Scholarship
As a consumer, my primary experience with cash before the virus was standing in checkout lines observing the sluggish pace of cash transactions in front of me. Like so many things in our lives, the advent of the virus has changed the situation markedly. From the earliest days of infection, it has been far more unsettling to observe cash transactions knowing that the virus persists on paper and metal surfaces for days.
The dynamic that has driven the choices merchants offer in face-to-face retail transactions will change as well. Driven by the private exigencies of the retail environment, the last …
Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele
Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele
Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constitutional governance and the international legal order; and to suggest a partial remedy.
For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt
For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
In hindsight, the term "capitalism" was always a misnomer, coined paradoxically by its critics in the nineteenth century. The term misleadingly suggests that the existence of capital produces a unique economic system or that capital itself is governed by economic laws. But that's an illusion. In truth, we do not live today in a system in which capital dictates our economic circumstances. Instead, we live under the tyranny of what I would call "tournament dirigisme": a type of state-directed gladiator sport where our political leaders bestow spoils on the wealthy, privileged elite.
We need to displace this tournament dirigisme with …
Why The Fed Should Issue A Policy Framework For Credit Policy, Kathryn Judge
Why The Fed Should Issue A Policy Framework For Credit Policy, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
The Federal Reserve has long used policy frameworks to both explain and inform its policymaking. These policy frameworks typically explain what the Fed is seeking to achieve in a given domain and how it plans to achieve its desired aims. Two prominent examples are the Fed’s use of Bagehot’s dictum when acting as a lender of last resort and its monetary policy framework issued in 2012 and revised in 2020. In both instances, the framework provides a foundation for informed debate among Fed policymakers, Congress, and the public, enhancing both efficacy and accountability. Since the onset of the Covid crisis, …
Aligning Investment Treaties With Sustainable Development Goals, Lise Johnson, Lisa E. Sachs, Nathan Lobel
Aligning Investment Treaties With Sustainable Development Goals, Lise Johnson, Lisa E. Sachs, Nathan Lobel
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications
Policy makers and other stakeholders are currently asking fundamental questions about whether and to what extent international investment agreements (IIAs) are consistent with and are helping to advance sustainable development objectives at home and abroad.
A 2019 paper from CCSI examines the alignment of IIAs with the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, arguing that while FDI will play an important role in advancing development outcomes, existing treaties must be reformed and future IIAs reimagined in order to achieve deep alignment with the sustainable development goals.
The paper proposes that IIAs should be designed and evaluated with respect to their ability to …
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
Faculty Scholarship
A handful of digital platforms mediate a growing share of online commerce and communications. By structuring access to markets, these firms function as gatekeepers for billions of dollars in economic activity. One feature dominant digital platforms share is that they have integrated across business lines such that they both operate a platform and market their own goods and services on it. This structure places dominant platforms in direct competition with some of the businesses that depend on them, creating a conflict of interest that platforms can exploit to further entrench their dominance, thwart competition, and stifle innovation.
This Article argues …
Price And Prejudice: An Empirical Test Of Financial Incentives, Altruism, And Racial Bias, Kristen Underhill
Price And Prejudice: An Empirical Test Of Financial Incentives, Altruism, And Racial Bias, Kristen Underhill
Faculty Scholarship
Many argue that paying people for good behavior can crowd out beneficial motivations like altruism. But little is known about how financial incentives interact with harmful motivations like racial bias. Two randomized vignette studies test how financial incentives affect bias. The first experiment varies the race of a hypothetical patient in need of a kidney transplant (black or white), an incentive ($18,500 or none), and addition of a message appealing to altruism. Incentives encouraged donation but introduced a significant bias favoring white patients. The second experiment assesses willingness to donate to a patient (black or white) without an incentive and …
Finance In The Courtroom: Appraising Its Growing Pains, Eric L. Talley
Finance In The Courtroom: Appraising Its Growing Pains, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
This short essay provides an overview of the current state of finance in corporate law, emphasizing its role in a series of pending appraisal cases at the Delaware Supreme Court.
When Extrinsic Incentives Displace Intrinsic Motivation: Designing Legal Carrots And Sticks To Confront The Challenge Of Motivational Crowding-Out, Kristen Underhill
When Extrinsic Incentives Displace Intrinsic Motivation: Designing Legal Carrots And Sticks To Confront The Challenge Of Motivational Crowding-Out, Kristen Underhill
Faculty Scholarship
The rise of “nudges” has inspired countless efforts to encourage individual choices that maximize personal and collective welfare, with a preference for less restrictive tools such as setting default options or reordering choice sets. As part of this trend, there has been renewed interest in the behavioral impacts of incentives – namely, rewards or penalties for shaping individual choices, including but not limited to financial incentives. Explicit incentives are pervasive in the law, including carrots offered by governments (for example, tax deductions for charitable contributions, rebates for recycling, sentence reductions for prisoners who complete drug rehabilitation programs, and incentives for …
Managing The Public Trust: How To Make Natural Resource Funds Work For Citizens, Andrew Bauer, Perrine Toledano, Malan Rietveld
Managing The Public Trust: How To Make Natural Resource Funds Work For Citizens, Andrew Bauer, Perrine Toledano, Malan Rietveld
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications
Given their collective size – approximately $3.5 trillion in assets as of end-2013 and growing – and concerns about the motivations of their government owners, much has been written on natural resource funds (NRFs), their investments and global influence. However their impacts on governance and public financial accountability at home have received far less attention.
On the one hand, these funds can be used to serve the public interest, for example by covering budget deficits when resource revenues decline, saving for future generations, or helping to mitigate Dutch Disease through fiscal sterilization. On the other hand, they can undermine public …
Three Proposals For Regulating The Distribution Of Home Equity, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts
Three Proposals For Regulating The Distribution Of Home Equity, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts
Faculty Scholarship
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently-released “qualified mortgage” rules effectively discourage predatory lending but miss an equally important source of systemic risk: low-equity clustering. Specific “volatility-inducing” mortgage terms, when present in a substantial cluster of mortgage contracts, exacerbate macroeconomic risk by increasing the chance that the housing and lending markets will have to absorb a wave of simultaneous defaults after a downturn in housing prices. This Article shows that these terms became prevalent in a substantial proportion of residential mortgages in the years leading up to the home mortgage crisis. In contrast, during the earlier “amortization era” (when mortgagors were …
Towards A Legal Theory Of Finance, Katharina Pistor
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 …
Recoupment Under Dodd-Frank: Punishing Financial Executives And Perpetuating "Too Big To Fail", Joshua Mitts
Recoupment Under Dodd-Frank: Punishing Financial Executives And Perpetuating "Too Big To Fail", Joshua Mitts
Faculty Scholarship
In July 2011, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) promulgated new rules implementing Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. These rules define a cause of action to recoup compensation paid to senior executives and directors of failed nonbank financial institutions placed into the FDIC's "orderly liquidation authority" receivership. An action for recoupment is based on a negligence theory of liability, but it does not require establishing that an executive's conduct caused the financial institution any harm. The rules presume liability merely for having held executive responsibility prior to the firm entering receivership. The executive …
Memo To The Sec On The Proposed Rule On Disclosure Of Payments By Resource Extraction Issuers, Perrine Toledano
Memo To The Sec On The Proposed Rule On Disclosure Of Payments By Resource Extraction Issuers, Perrine Toledano
Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications
CCSI strongly supports the transparency of contracts and tax flows. CCSI shares the belief of many stakeholders that transparency is essential to leverage extractive industries for sustainable development and is in the mutual interest of all stakeholders. However, some industry players continue to voice the concern that increased transparency would be harmful for their business. Therefore, CCSI is working to also establish the business case for transparency.
In one such case, some industry players have been lobbying against the regulations developed by the Security and Exchange Commission to implement the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform …
Economic Crisis And Share Price Unpredictability: Reasons And Implications, Edward G. Fox, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson
Economic Crisis And Share Price Unpredictability: Reasons And Implications, Edward G. Fox, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson
Faculty Scholarship
The volatility of share returns for individual companies increased sharply during the recent financial crisis. The larger part of this increase was due to a dramatic rise – five fold as measured by variance – in idiosyncratic risk. We find that this pattern repeats itself during each major economic reversal going back 85 years. Because idiosyncratic risk is what is involved, this increase cannot be explained by changes in predictions concerning the future course of the economy as a whole.
Our first goal is to explain why difficult economic times, which are defined in terms of market wide phenomena, make …
How Law Affects Lending, Rainer F.H. Haselmann, Katharina Pistor, Vikrant Vig
How Law Affects Lending, Rainer F.H. Haselmann, Katharina Pistor, Vikrant Vig
Faculty Scholarship
The paper explores how legal change affects lending behavior of banks in twelve transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to previous studies, we use bank level rather than aggregate data, which allows us to control for country level heterogeneity and analyze the effect of legal change on different types of lenders. Using a differences-in-differences methodology to analyze the within country variation of changes in creditor rights protection, we find that the credit supplied by banks increases subsequent to legal change. Further, we show that collateral law matters more for credit market development than bankruptcy law. We also …