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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Evolution Of Corporate Law: A Cross- Country Comparison, Katharina Pistor, Yoram Keinan, Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Mark D. West
The Evolution Of Corporate Law: A Cross- Country Comparison, Katharina Pistor, Yoram Keinan, Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Mark D. West
Faculty Scholarship
The importance of law and legal institutions for economic development is widely acknowledged today. The invention of credit mechanisms to support long-distance trade has been hailed as one of the preconditions for the development of capitalism in Europe. The corporate form is regarded as another milestone for industrialization, the creation of viable market economies, and ultimately economic prosperity. Many former socialist countries quickly enacted new corporate codes or revived their pre-World War Two ("WWII") legislation. The failure of major privatization efforts to enhance enterprise efficiency is attributed to weaknesses in corporate governance, of which the corporate law is a crucial …
Lipton And Rowe's Apologia For Delaware: A Short Reply, Ronald J. Gilson
Lipton And Rowe's Apologia For Delaware: A Short Reply, Ronald J. Gilson
Faculty Scholarship
Three themes animate Martin Lipton and Paul Rowe's thoughtful response to my critical evaluation of Unocal's fifteen-year history. First, they maintain that affording shareholders a primary role in the governance of takeovers depends on a commitment to the stock market's informational efficiency. Second, they claim that allowing shareholders to amend or repeal a poison pill ignores empirical evidence that the existence of a poison pill is associated with higher takeover premiums. Third, they assert that the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL) reflects an implicit mega-principle that assigns control over takeovers to managers. This short reply corrects Lipton and Rowe's …
What Enron Means For The Management And Control Of The Modern Business Corporation: Some Initial Reflections, Jeffrey N. Gordon
What Enron Means For The Management And Control Of The Modern Business Corporation: Some Initial Reflections, Jeffrey N. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
The Enron case plays on many different dimensions, but its prominence is not merely part of popular culture's obsession with scandal du jour. Rather, the Enron situation challenges some of the core beliefs and practices that have underpinned the academic analysis of corporate law and governance, including mergers and acquisitions, since the 1980s. These amount to an interlocking set of institutions that constitute "shareholder capitalism," American-style, 2001, that we have been aggressively promoting throughout the world. We have come to rely on a particular set of assumptions about the connection between stock market prices and underlying economic realities; the reliability …
Understanding Enron: "It's About Gatekeepers, Stupid", John C. Coffee Jr.
Understanding Enron: "It's About Gatekeepers, Stupid", John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
What do we know after Enron's implosion that we did not know before it? The conventional wisdom is that the Enron debacle reveals basic weaknesses in our contemporary system of corporate governance. Perhaps, this is so, but where is the weakness located? Under what circumstances will critical systems fail? Major debacles of historical dimensions – and Enron is surely that – tend to produce an excess of explanations. In Enron's case, the firm's strange failure is becoming a virtual Rorschach test in which each commentator can see evidence confirming what he or she already believed.
Racing Towards The Top?: The Impact Of Cross-Listing And Stock Market Competition On International Corporate Governance, John C. Coffee Jr.
Racing Towards The Top?: The Impact Of Cross-Listing And Stock Market Competition On International Corporate Governance, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Cross-listing by foreign issuers onto U.S. exchanges accelerated during the 1990s, bringing international market centers into competition for listings and draining liquidity from some regional markets. Although cross-listing has traditionally been explained as an attempt to break down market segmentation and to increase investor recognition of the cross-listing firm, the globalization of financial markets and instantaneous electronic communications render these explanations increasingly dated. A superior explanation is "bonding": Issuers migrate to U.S. exchanges because by voluntarily subjecting themselves to the United States's higher disclosure standards and greater threat of enforcement (both by public and private enforcers), they partially compensate for …