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Full-Text Articles in Law
From Fedspeak To Forward Guidance: Regulatory Dimensions Of Central Bank Communications, Robert B. Ahdieh
From Fedspeak To Forward Guidance: Regulatory Dimensions Of Central Bank Communications, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
In the face of the financial crisis that engulfed the globe beginning in 2007, the U.S. Federal Reserve quickly found itself without the key lever of monetary policy on which it had traditionally relied: short-term interest rate adjustments designed to move long-term rates, and thereby expected levels of lending, investment, and capital retention. By late 2008, short-term rates were already close to zero, yet unemployment remained strikingly high – with no sign of any likely renewal of bank lending or commercial investment.
Famously, the Fed embraced so-called quantitative easing – the purchase of massive volumes of public and private debt …
Beyond Individualism In Law And Economics, Robert B. Ahdieh
Beyond Individualism In Law And Economics, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
The study of law and economics was built upon two pillars. The first is the familiar assumption of individual rationality. The second, less familiar, is the principle of methodological individualism. Over the last twenty years, law and economics has largely internalized behavioral critiques of the rationality assumption. By contrast, the field has failed to appreciate the implications of growing challenges to its methodological individualism. Where social norms shape individual choices, network externalities are strong, coordination is the operative goal, or information is a substantial determinant of value, a methodology strongly oriented to the analysis of individuals overlooks at least as …
The Visible Hand: Coordination Functions Of The Regulatory State, Robert B. Ahdieh
The Visible Hand: Coordination Functions Of The Regulatory State, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
We live in a coordination economy. As one surveys the myriad challenges of modern social and economic life, an ever increasing proportion is defined not by the need to reconcile competing interests, but by the challenge of getting everyone on the same page. Conflict is not absent in these settings. It is not, however, the determinative factor in shaping our behaviors and resulting interactions. That essential ingredient, instead, is coordination.
Such coordination is commonly understood as the function of the market. As it turns out, however, optimal coordination will not always emerge, as if led “by an invisible hand.” Even …
Imperfect Alternatives: Networks, Salience, And Institutional Design In Financial Crises, Robert B. Ahdieh
Imperfect Alternatives: Networks, Salience, And Institutional Design In Financial Crises, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
With the benefit of hindsight — and some aspiration to foresight — it is useful to consider the type of regulatory regime that might best address financial crises. What could policymakers have done to prevent the recent crisis? And once the crisis started, what interventions might have alleviated it? These questions have been widely debated, with an eye to both substantive policy and the design of effective regulatory institutions. This Article speaks to the latter project — one of comparative institutional analysis — though with a framework that implicates our substantive policy choices as well. It begins with an account …
The Role Of Groups In Norm Transformation: A Dramatic Sketch, In Three Parts, Robert B. Ahdieh
The Role Of Groups In Norm Transformation: A Dramatic Sketch, In Three Parts, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholars, as well as economists, have focused limited attention on the role of coordinated groups of market participants - committees, clubs, associations, and the like - in social ordering generally and in the evolution of norms particularly. One might trace this neglect to some presumptive orientation to state actors (expressive law) and autonomous individuals (norm entrepreneurs) as the sole parties of interest in social change. Yet, alternative stories of social ordering and norm change might also be told. Dramatic recent changes in the contracting practices of the sovereign debt markets offer one such story.
Using the latter by way …
Law's Signal: A Cueing Theory Of Law In Market Transition, Robert B. Ahdieh
Law's Signal: A Cueing Theory Of Law In Market Transition, Robert B. Ahdieh
Faculty Scholarship
Securities markets are commonly assumed to spring forth at the intersection of an adequate supply of, and a healthy demand for, investment capital. In recent years, however, seemingly failed market transitions - the failure of new markets to emerge and of existing markets to evolve - have called this assumption into question. From the developed economies of Germany and Japan to the developing countries of central and eastern Europe, securities markets have exhibited some inability to take root. The failure of U.S. securities markets, and particularly the New York Stock Exchange, to make greater use of computerized trading, communications, and …