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Full-Text Articles in Law

Collaboration, Innovation, And Contract Design, Matthew C. Jennejohn Mar 2008

Collaboration, Innovation, And Contract Design, Matthew C. Jennejohn

Matthew C Jennejohn

The rise of the network as a form of economic organization renders problematic our standard understanding of how capitalism is governed. As the governance of production shifts from vertical integration to horizontal contract, a puzzle arises: how do contracts, presumed to be susceptible to hold-up problems due to incompleteness, control production arrangements that by their nature invite opportunism? Relying on publicly-available contracts taken from a number of industries, I argue that firms govern their collaborations through a number of new contract mechanisms, the summation of which is a novel governance system. Because traditional theories of contractual control struggle to fully …


Christian Anthropology And The Theory Of The Firm, Michael Lp Lower Jan 2008

Christian Anthropology And The Theory Of The Firm, Michael Lp Lower

Michael LP Lower

Catholic social thought (CST), a branch of moral theology, reflects Christian anthropology (an understanding of human nature that draws on Revelation and natural law theory). CST's understanding of what communities (such as the corporation) are for and how they can best achieve their ends are coloured by its anthropological underpinnings. The same, it is argued, is true for economic theories such as the theories of the firm based on Coase. This paper compares Christian anthropology with the implicit anthropology underpinning some of the dominant economic theories of the firm. Differences at this level go a long way to explaining mismatches …


Partnership Tax Allocations And The Internalization Of Tax-Item Transactions, Brad Borden Jan 2008

Partnership Tax Allocations And The Internalization Of Tax-Item Transactions, Brad Borden

Bradley T. Borden

Studies in the theory of the firm help explain partnership attributes and the relationships partners have with each other, which in turn inform the analysis of partnership tax allocation rules. Those studies suggest that partners apportion partnership economic items (such as income and loss) to each other to reduce partner shirking, opportunistic behavior, and agency costs. But partnerships are complex communities of interest, so partners are often unable to determine the specific source of partnership economic items (i.e., they cannot trace partnership output directly from partner input). Therefore, apportioned amounts of partnership items may contain several different and inseparable economic …


Corporate Ethics, Agency, And The Theory Of The Firm, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2008

Corporate Ethics, Agency, And The Theory Of The Firm, Robert J. Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This conference paper suggests that the problem of corporate ethics cannot be reduced to the autonomous person. Although the greatest influence on action and choice is one's moral constitution, it does not follow that the agent's behavior is the same within or without the firm. Ethics is a function of corporate form. The theory of agency cannot dismiss the firm as a fiction or metaphorical shorthand since that which does not exist should not be able to cause ethical breakdowns in corporate action. Thus, the theory of the firm, which emphasizes profit and wealth maximization, should incorporate a richer, more …


Corporate Ethics, Agency, And The Theory Of The Firm, Robert J. Rhee Jan 2008

Corporate Ethics, Agency, And The Theory Of The Firm, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

This conference paper suggests that the problem of corporate ethics cannot be reduced to the autonomous person. Although the greatest influence on action and choice is one's moral constitution, it does not follow that the agent's behavior is the same within or without the firm. Ethics is a function of corporate form. The theory of agency cannot dismiss the firm as a fiction or metaphorical shorthand since that which does not exist should not be able to cause ethical breakdowns in corporate action. Thus, the theory of the firm, which emphasizes profit and wealth maximization, should incorporate a richer, more …