Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Covid-19 Risk Factors And Boilerplate Disclosure, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Xuan Liu, Adam C. Pritchard
Covid-19 Risk Factors And Boilerplate Disclosure, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Xuan Liu, Adam C. Pritchard
Law & Economics Working Papers
The SEC mandates that public companies assess new information that changes the risks that they face and disclose these if there has been a “material” change. Does that theory work in practice? Or are companies copying and repeating the same generic disclosures? Using the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore these questions. Overall, we find considerable rote copying of boilerplate disclosures. Further, the factors that correlate with deviations from the boilerplate seem related more to the resources that companies have (large companies change updated disclosures more) and litigation risks (companies vulnerable to shareholder litigation update more) rather than general …
Retail Investors And Corporate Governance: Evidence From Zero-Commission Trading, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee
Retail Investors And Corporate Governance: Evidence From Zero-Commission Trading, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee
Law & Economics Working Papers
We examine the effects of the sudden abolition of trading commissions by major online brokerages in 2019, which lowered stock market entry costs for retail investors, on corporate governance. Firms already popular with retail investors experienced positive abnormal returns around the abolition of commissions. Firms with positive abnormal returns in response to commission-free trading subsequently saw a decrease in institutional ownership, a decrease in shareholder voting, and a deterioration in environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) metrics. Finally, these firms were more likely to adopt bylaw amendments to reduce the percentage of shares needed for a quorum at shareholder meetings. …
Consent Searches And Underestimation Of Compliance: Robustness To Type Of Search, Consequences Of Search, And Demographic Sample, Roseanna Sommers, Vanessa K. Bohns
Consent Searches And Underestimation Of Compliance: Robustness To Type Of Search, Consequences Of Search, And Demographic Sample, Roseanna Sommers, Vanessa K. Bohns
Law & Economics Working Papers
Most police searches today are authorized by citizens’ consent, rather than probable cause or reasonable suspicion. The main constitutional limitation on so-called “consent searches” is the voluntariness test: whether a reasonable person would have felt free to refuse the officer’s request to conduct the search. We investigate whether this legal inquiry is subject to a systematic bias whereby uninvolved decision-makers overstate the voluntariness of consent and underestimate the psychological pressure individuals feel to comply. We find evidence for a robust bias extending to requests, tasks, and populations that have not been examined previously. Across three pre-registered experiments, we approached participants …
Creditors, Shareholders, And Losers In Between: A Failed Regulatory Experiment, Albert H. Choi, Jeffery Zhang
Creditors, Shareholders, And Losers In Between: A Failed Regulatory Experiment, Albert H. Choi, Jeffery Zhang
Law & Economics Working Papers
In the aftermath of the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis, regulators encouraged many of the world’s largest banks to hold a new type of regulatory instrument with the goal of improving their safety and soundness. The regulatory instrument was known as a “CoCo,” short for contingent convertible bond. CoCos are neither debt nor equity. They are something in between, designed to give the bank a shot in the arm during times of stress. Many of the largest international banks have issued CoCos worth hundreds of billions of dollars. After more than ten years—a decade that includes the collapse of Credit Suisse …