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Full-Text Articles in Law
Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno
Elections And Economic Turbulence In Brazil: Candidates, Voters, And Investors, Tony Petros Spanakos, Lucio R. Renno
Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor …
Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett
Pareto Versus Welfare, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Many normatively oriented economists, legal academics and other policy analysts appear to be "welfarist" and Paretian to at least moderate degree: They deem positive responsiveness to individual preferences, and satisfaction of one or more of the familiar Pareto criteria, to be reasonably undemanding and desirable attributes of any social welfare function (SWF) employed to formulate social evaluations. Some theorists and analysts go further than moderate welfarism or Paretianism, however: They argue that "the Pareto principle" requires the SWF be responsive to individual preferences alone - a position I label "strict" welfarism - and conclude that all social evaluation should in …
Changing The Paradigm Of Stock Ownership From Concentrated Towards Dispersed Ownership? Evidence From Brazil And Consequences For Emerging Countries, Erica Gorga
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
This paper analyzes micro-level dynamics of changes in ownership structures. It investigates a unique event: changes in ownership patterns currently taking place in Brazil. It builds upon empirical evidence to advance theoretical understanding of how and why concentrated ownership structures can change towards dispersed ownership.
Commentators argue that the Brazilian capital markets are finally taking off. The number of listed companies and IPOs in the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa) has greatly increased. Firms are migrating to Bovespa’s special listing segments, which require higher standards of corporate governance. Companies have sold control in the market, and the stock market has …
Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?, Alan M. Garber, Jonathan Skinner
Is American Health Care Uniquely Inefficient?, Alan M. Garber, Jonathan Skinner
Dartmouth Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Immigration Paradox: Alien Workers And Distributive Justice, Howard F. Chang
The Immigration Paradox: Alien Workers And Distributive Justice, Howard F. Chang
All Faculty Scholarship
The immigration of relatively unskilled workers poses a fundamental problem for liberals. While from the perspective of the economic welfare of natives, the optimal policy would be to admit these aliens as guest workers, this policy would violate liberal ideals. These ideals would treat these workers as equals, entitled to access to citizenship and to the full set of public benefits provided to citizens. If the welfare of incumbent residents determines admissions policies, however, and we anticipate the fiscal burden that the immigration of the poor would impose, then our welfare criterion would preclude the admission of relatively unskilled workers …
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers
It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing.
To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …
Agency Costs, Charitable Trusts, And Corporate Control: Evidence From Hershey's Kiss-Off, Jonathan Klick, Robert H. Sitkoff
Agency Costs, Charitable Trusts, And Corporate Control: Evidence From Hershey's Kiss-Off, Jonathan Klick, Robert H. Sitkoff
All Faculty Scholarship
In July 2002 the trustees of the Milton Hershey School Trust announced a plan to diversify the Trust’s investment portfolio by selling the Trust’s controlling interest in the Hershey Company. The Company’s stock jumped from $62.50 to $78.30 on news of the proposed sale. But the Pennsylvania Attorney General, who was then running for governor, opposed the sale on the ground that it would harm the local community. Shortly after the Attorney General obtained a preliminary injunction, the trustees abandoned the sale and the Company’s stock dropped to $65.00. Using standard event study methodology, we find that the sale announcement …
Economic Sanctions Against Human Rights Violations, Buhm Suk Baek
Economic Sanctions Against Human Rights Violations, Buhm Suk Baek
Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers
The idea of human rights protection, historically, has been considered as a domestic matter, to be realized by individual states within their domestic law and national institutions. The protection and promotion of human rights, however, have become one of the most important issues for the international community as a whole. Yet, with time, it has become increasingly difficult for the international community to address human rights problems collectively. Despite a significant development in the human rights norms, effective protection of fundamental human rights and their legal enforcement has a long way to go.
This paper will argue that economic sanctions …
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics, Robert C. Hockett
Reflective Intensions: Two Foundational Decision-Points In Mathematics, Law, And Economics, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Article, transcribed from a symposium talk given by the author, examines two critical junctures at which foundational decisions must be made in three areas of theoretical inquiry - mathematics, law, and economics. The first such juncture is that which the Article labels the "arbitrary versus criterial choice" juncture. This is the decision point at which one must select between what is typically called an "algorithmic," "principled," "law-like," or "intensionalist" understanding of those concepts which figure foundationally in the discipline in question on the one hand, and a "randomized," "combinatorial," or "extensionalist" such understanding on the other hand.
The second …
Why Brazil Has Not Grown: A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian, Indian, And Chinese Economic Management, Fernando Ferrari, Anthony Petros Spanakos
Why Brazil Has Not Grown: A Comparative Analysis Of Brazilian, Indian, And Chinese Economic Management, Fernando Ferrari, Anthony Petros Spanakos
Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
This paper does not aim to dispute that Brazil would benefit from reforms in any or all of these areas. Rather, the paper offers a skeptical perspective on reform menus and proposes an alternative explanation for the faster growth of Brazil’s peers India and China2. The paper begins by introducing (section 1) the idea of the BRICs countries, to establish the basis for comparisons of most similar cases. It then surveys the results of a generation of Washington Consensus era growth (section 2). Although there is a considerable amount of divergence over what causes growth, it seems that something approaching …
What Explains Insider Trading Restrictions? International Evidence On The Political Economy Of Insider Trading Regulation, Laura N. Beny
What Explains Insider Trading Restrictions? International Evidence On The Political Economy Of Insider Trading Regulation, Laura N. Beny
Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009
This article investigates the determinants of insider trading regulation across countries. The article presents a political economy analysis of such regulation that takes into account both private (distributional) and public (economic efficiency) considerations. The model cannot be tested directly because the relevant private preferences and social costs are unobservable. However, existing theories of capital market development suggest that various observable social factors can explain the diversity of insider trading policies across countries. In turn, these social factors should reveal the underlying preferences and social costs motivating such regulation.
The main finding, based on data from a cross section of countries …
Legacy Of The Clinton Bubble, Timothy Canova
Legacy Of The Clinton Bubble, Timothy Canova
Law Faculty News Articles, Editorials, and Blogs
This article looks at the economy following the Clinton administration period in the White House.
Tribal Nation Economics: Rebuilding Commercial Prosperity In Spite Of U.S. Trade Restraints–Recommendations For Economic Revitalization In Indian Country, Angelique Eaglewoman
Tribal Nation Economics: Rebuilding Commercial Prosperity In Spite Of U.S. Trade Restraints–Recommendations For Economic Revitalization In Indian Country, Angelique Eaglewoman
Faculty Scholarship
Tribal commerce created the current highways that stretch from coast-to-coast in North America today. The roads that are traveled by semi-trucks full of cargo, grocery produce, and all manner of commercial goods are on top of the ancient trade routes Natives have traveled for centuries. Unfortunately, the history and sophistication of Native commercial activities have been largely suppressed and left out of the story of the North American continent as Euro-Americans rewrote the continent’s history to reflect the glorification of colonization. The truth is that there was no need for the 'rugged pioneer' to cut through tall grass to head …
Law, Biology, And Property: A New Theory Of The Endowment Effect, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan
Law, Biology, And Property: A New Theory Of The Endowment Effect, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Recent work at the intersection of law and behavioral biology has suggested numerous contexts in which legal thinking could benefit by integrating knowledge from behavioral biology. In one of those contexts, behavioral biology may help to provide theoretical foundation for, and potentially increased predictive power concerning, various psychological traits relevant to law. This Article describes an experiment that explores that context.
The paradoxical psychological bias known as the endowment effect puzzles economists, skews market behavior, impedes efficient exchange of goods and rights, and thereby poses important problems for law. Although the effect is known to vary widely, there are at …
The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang
The Disadvantages Of Immigration Restriction As A Policy To Improve Income Distribution, Howard F. Chang
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers frol1'l immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages fel1'wle participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary …
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
Private Equity's Three Lessons For Agency Theory, William W. Bratton
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.