Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Keyword
-
- SSRN (7)
- Law (5)
- COVID-19 (4)
- Coronavirus (4)
- Corporate governance (4)
-
- Pandemic (4)
- Bankruptcy (3)
- Private equity (3)
- CARES Act (2)
- Contracts (2)
- Corporate bonds (2)
- Fiji (2)
- Financial crisis (2)
- Financial regulation (2)
- Reorganization (2)
- Stickiness (2)
- VAT (2)
- Value Added Tax (2)
- Abolition (1)
- Activists hedge funds (1)
- Administrative law (1)
- Anarchism (1)
- Antipolitics (1)
- BPR (1)
- Bailout (1)
- Bailouts (1)
- Bank regulation (1)
- Banking (1)
- Behavioral finance (1)
- Blockchain (1)
Articles 1 - 29 of 29
Full-Text Articles in Law
Afghanistan's New Vat, Part 1: Invoice Matching Or A Unitary Digital Invoice, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Andrew Leahey, Yujin Li, Haseena Rahman
Afghanistan's New Vat, Part 1: Invoice Matching Or A Unitary Digital Invoice, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Andrew Leahey, Yujin Li, Haseena Rahman
Faculty Scholarship
In the summer of 1990 two groundbreaking articles on business process re-engineering (BPR) were published, one by Thomas H. Davenport (a professor in information technology at Babson College) in the MIT Sloan Management Review, the other by Michael Hammer (a professor of computer science at MIT) in the Harvard Business Review. BPR is a management strategy that analyzes IT-intensive workflow designs and business processes within an organization.
On December 21, 2020 (Jadi 1, 1399) Afghanistan was scheduled to implement a 10% VAT. It has been delayed one year by the pandemic. When it does implement, Afghanistan will have significant workflow …
Shareholder Value(S): Index Fund Esg Activism And The New Millennial Corporate Governance, David H. Webber, Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis
Shareholder Value(S): Index Fund Esg Activism And The New Millennial Corporate Governance, David H. Webber, Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis
Faculty Scholarship
Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds’ generally docile approach to ownership is broadly acknowledged.
However, this Article argues that the notion that index funds are passive owners overlooks an important dimension in which index funds have demonstrated outspoken, confrontational, and effective stewardship. Specifically, we document that index funds have taken a leading role in challenging management and voting
against directors in order to advance board diversity and corporate sustainability. We show that index …
Little Power Struggles Everywhere: Attacks On The Administrative State At The Securities And Exchange Commission, Roberta S. Karmel
Little Power Struggles Everywhere: Attacks On The Administrative State At The Securities And Exchange Commission, Roberta S. Karmel
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Transnational Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel
Transnational Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel
Faculty Scholarship
Fiduciary law is expanding throughout the world.1 It seems to be a new phenomenon, but in reality, it is not. Fiduciary law is ancient. It existed centuries ago in Mesopotamia, 2 Rome, 3 Egypt,4 Greece,5 as well as in Jewish 6 and Christian laws.7 Fiduciary duties arguably developed later in Great Britain when master landlords left for the holy land on religious crusades and had to rely on others to manage their estates.8 The ancient rules, such as those found in agency law in Mesopotamia, may not have been as sophisticated as the current ones-such …
Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham
Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham
Faculty Scholarship
This paper develops, extends, and clarifies themes introduced in five prior papers dealing with blockchain, and VATCoin in the context of both (a) the new VATs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and (b) the mature VATs in the EU. Five additional papers on VAT technology advances in Fiji, with blockchain and VATCoin applications to New Zealand’s approach to online sales platforms (the Netlix Tax) are similarly referenced and extended. The GCC VAT papers were exploratory. For the most part, they were composed before any GCC jurisdiction had implemented a VAT, and in three instances even before the GCC Framework …
Financing Failure: Bankruptcy Lending, Credit Market Conditions, And The Financial Crisis, Frederick Tung
Financing Failure: Bankruptcy Lending, Credit Market Conditions, And The Financial Crisis, Frederick Tung
Faculty Scholarship
When contemplating Chapter 11, firms often need to seek financing for their continuing operations in bankruptcy. Because such financing would otherwise be hard to find, the Bankruptcy Code authorizes debtors to offer sweeteners to debtor-in-possession (DIP) lenders. These inducements can be effective in attracting financing, but because they are thought to come at the expense of other stakeholders, the Code permits these inducements only if no less generous a package would have been sufficient to obtain the loan.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of certain controversial inducements — I focus on roll-ups and milestones — skyrocketed in recent years, …
The Evolution Of Offshore: From Tax Havens To Ifcs, Andrew P. Morriss, Charlotte Ku
The Evolution Of Offshore: From Tax Havens To Ifcs, Andrew P. Morriss, Charlotte Ku
Faculty Scholarship
Over the past 70 years, many smaller jurisdictions have evolved intro international financial centres (IFCs). Although different in their historic origins and in the financial products and services they offer, IFCs share a common development path. Understanding that evolution can shed light on what the next decade is likely to bring.
Inclusive Economics And Home Loan Policies For Informal Workers, Kim Vu-Dinh
Inclusive Economics And Home Loan Policies For Informal Workers, Kim Vu-Dinh
Faculty Scholarship
The United States has been suffering from a housing crisis that existed long before the proliferation of sub-prime loans and the Great Recession of 2008-2009. For decades, millions of gainfully employed workers have been institutionally excluded from homeownership, simply because they work in the informal economy. Because of this, the economic growth of households in this demographic has been stymied by discriminatory banking policies that heavily prioritize short-term profit maximization over borrower reliability, or loan viability. Many of those affected are historically disenfranchised people, who systematically have been excluded from the American dream of “a chicken in every pot and …
Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls: Fiduciary Duties In Venture Capital Backed Startups, Sarath Sanga, Eric L. Talley
Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls: Fiduciary Duties In Venture Capital Backed Startups, Sarath Sanga, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
Venture-capital-backed startups are often crucibles of conflict between common and preferred shareholders, particularly around exit decisions. Such conflicts are so common, in fact, that they have catalyzed an emergent judicial precedent – the Trados doctrine – that requires boards to prioritize common shareholders' interest and to treat preferred shareholders as contractual claimants. We evaluate the Trados doctrine using a model of startup governance that interacts capital structure, corporate governance, and liability rules. The nature and degree of inter-shareholder conflict turns not only on the relative rights and options of equity participants, but also on a firm's intrinsic value as well …
A Better Financing System? The Death And Possible Rebirth Of The Presidential Nomination Public Financing Program, Richard Briffault
A Better Financing System? The Death And Possible Rebirth Of The Presidential Nomination Public Financing Program, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
In the spring of 1974, the 31-year-old junior Senator from Delaware, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., published a law review article in which he decried the traditional system of privately financed election campaigns. Private financing, Senator Biden contended, “affords certain wealthy individuals or special interest groups the potential for exerting a disproportionate influence over both the electoral mechanism and the policy-making processes of the government.” Moreover, Biden urged, private funding poses an obstacle to the candidacies of “individuals of moderate means” and so was at odds with the “concept of American democracy [that] presumes that all citizens, regardless of access to …
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The phenomenon of “sticky boilerplate” causing inefficient contract terms to persist exists across a variety of commercial contract types. One explanation for this failure to revise suboptimal terms is that the key agents on these transactions, including attorneys and investment bankers, are short sighted; their incentives are to get the deal done rather than ensure that they are using the best terms possible for their clients. Moreover, these agents face a first mover disadvantage that deters unilateral revisions to inefficient terms. If agency costs are indeed driving the stickiness phenomenon, we expect that the pace of revision will vary across …
Anticipating Venezuela’S Debt Crisis: Hidden Holdouts And The Problem Of Pricing Collective Action Clauses, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Anticipating Venezuela’S Debt Crisis: Hidden Holdouts And The Problem Of Pricing Collective Action Clauses, Robert E. Scott, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
A creditor who asks for stronger enforcement rights upon its debtor’s default will rationally accept a lower interest rate reflecting the greater expected recovery the exercise of those rights provides. Over a dozen studies, however, have failed to document this basic relationship in the context of the collective action clause, a key provision in sovereign bonds. We conjecture that this failure is because enforcing the rights in question requires collective decision-making among anonymous creditors with different interests, impeding market predictions regarding future price effects. The pricing of rights that require collective enforcement thus turns on whether the market observes an …
Tepoel Lecture: Bond Trustees And The Rising Challenge Of Activist Investors, Steven L. Schwarcz
Tepoel Lecture: Bond Trustees And The Rising Challenge Of Activist Investors, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead
Petition For Rulemaking On Short And Distort, John C. Coffee Jr., Joshua Mitts, James D. Cox, Peter Molk, Edward Greene, Randall S. Thomas, Meyer-Eisenberg, Robert B. Thompson, Colleen Honigsberg, Andrew Verstein, Donald C. Langevoort, Charles K. Whitehead
Faculty Scholarship
Today, some hedge funds attack public companies for the sole purpose of inducing a short-lived panic which they can exploit for profit. This sort of market manipulation harms average investors who entrust financial markets with their retirement savings. While short selling serves a critical function in the capital markets, some short sellers disseminate negative opinion about a company, inducing a panic and sharp decline in the stock price, and rapidly close that position for a profit prior to the price partially or fully rebounding. We urge the SEC to enact two rules which will discourage manipulative short selling. The petition …
Long-Term Bias, Eric L. Talley, Michal Barzuza
Long-Term Bias, Eric L. Talley, Michal Barzuza
Faculty Scholarship
An emerging consensus in certain legal, business, and scholarly communities maintains that corporate managers are pressured unduly into chasing short-term gains at the expense of superior long-term prospects. The forces inducing managerial myopia are easy to spot, typically embodied by activist hedge funds and Wall Street gadflies with outsized appetites for next quarter’s earnings. Warnings about the dangers of “short termism” have become so well established, in fact, that they are now driving changes to mainstream practice, as courts, regulators and practitioners fashion legal and transactional constraints designed to insulate firms and managers from the influence of investor short-termism. This …
The New Mechanisms Of Market Inefficiency, Kathryn Judge
The New Mechanisms Of Market Inefficiency, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
Mechanisms of market inefficiency are some of the most important and least understood institutions in financial markets today. A growing body of empirical work reveals a strong and persistent demand for “safe assets,” financial instruments that are sufficiently low risk and opaque that holders readily accept them at face value. The production of such assets, and the willingness of holders to treat them as information insensitive, depends on the existence of mechanisms that promote faith in the value of the underlying assets while simultaneously discouraging information production specific to the value of those assets. Such mechanisms include private arrangements, like …
Bankruptcy’S Role In The Covid-19 Crisis, Edward R. Morrison, Andrea C. Saavedra
Bankruptcy’S Role In The Covid-19 Crisis, Edward R. Morrison, Andrea C. Saavedra
Faculty Scholarship
Policymakers have minimized the role of bankruptcy law in mitigating the financial fallout from COVID-19. Scholars too are unsure about the merits of bankruptcy, especially Chapter 11, in resolving business distress. We argue that Chapter 11 complements current stimulus policies for large corporations, such as the airlines, and that Treasury should consider making it a precondition for receiving government-backed financing. Chapter 11 offers a flexible, speedy, and crisis-tested tool for preserving businesses, financing them with government funds (if necessary), and ensuring that the costs of distress are borne primarily by investors, not taxpayers. Chapter 11 saves businesses and employment, not …
Buyer Beware: Variation And Opacity In Esg And Esg Index Funds, Dana Brakman Reiser, Anne Tucker
Buyer Beware: Variation And Opacity In Esg And Esg Index Funds, Dana Brakman Reiser, Anne Tucker
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt
For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
In hindsight, the term "capitalism" was always a misnomer, coined paradoxically by its critics in the nineteenth century. The term misleadingly suggests that the existence of capital produces a unique economic system or that capital itself is governed by economic laws. But that's an illusion. In truth, we do not live today in a system in which capital dictates our economic circumstances. Instead, we live under the tyranny of what I would call "tournament dirigisme": a type of state-directed gladiator sport where our political leaders bestow spoils on the wealthy, privileged elite.
We need to displace this tournament dirigisme with …
Why The Fed Should Issue A Policy Framework For Credit Policy, Kathryn Judge
Why The Fed Should Issue A Policy Framework For Credit Policy, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
The Federal Reserve has long used policy frameworks to both explain and inform its policymaking. These policy frameworks typically explain what the Fed is seeking to achieve in a given domain and how it plans to achieve its desired aims. Two prominent examples are the Fed’s use of Bagehot’s dictum when acting as a lender of last resort and its monetary policy framework issued in 2012 and revised in 2020. In both instances, the framework provides a foundation for informed debate among Fed policymakers, Congress, and the public, enhancing both efficacy and accountability. Since the onset of the Covid crisis, …
Restructuring Vs. Bankruptcy, Jason Roderick Donaldson, Edward R. Morrison, Giorgia Piacentino, Xiaobo Yu
Restructuring Vs. Bankruptcy, Jason Roderick Donaldson, Edward R. Morrison, Giorgia Piacentino, Xiaobo Yu
Faculty Scholarship
We develop a model of a firm in financial distress. Distress can be mitigated by filing for bankruptcy, which is costly, or preempted by restructuring, which is impeded by a collective action problem. We find that bankruptcy and restructuring are complements, not substitutes: Reducing bankruptcy costs facilitates restructuring, rather than crowding it out. And so does making bankruptcy more debtor-friendly, under a condition that seems likely to hold now in the United States. The model gives new perspectives on current relief policies (e.g., subsidized loans to firms in bankruptcy) and on long-standing legal debates (e.g., the efficiency of the absolute …
How To Help Small Businesses Survive Covid-19, Todd Baker, Kathryn Judge
How To Help Small Businesses Survive Covid-19, Todd Baker, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
Small businesses are among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis. Many are shuttered, and far more face cash flow constraints, raising questions about just how many will survive this recession. The government has responded with a critical forgivable loan program, but for many of these businesses, this program alone will not provide the cash they need to retain workers, pay rent, and help their business come back to life when Americans are no longer sheltering in place. This essay calls on regulators to find new and creative ways to work with existing intermediaries, including banks and online lenders, who …
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Stephen J. Choi, Robert E. Scott, G. Mitu Gulati
Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Stephen J. Choi, Robert E. Scott, G. Mitu Gulati
Faculty Scholarship
The textbook model of commercial contracts between sophisticated parties holds that terms are proposed, negotiated and ultimately priced by the parties. Parties reach agreement on contract provisions that best suit their transaction with the goal of maximizing the joint surplus from the contract. The reality, of course, is that the majority of the provisions in contemporary commercial contracts are boilerplate terms derived from prior transactions and even the most sophisticated contracting parties pay little attention to these standard terms, focusing instead on the price of the transaction. With standard-form or boilerplate contracts, this dynamic of replicating by rote the terms …
Why Financial Regulation Keeps Falling Short, Dan Awrey, Kathryn Judge
Why Financial Regulation Keeps Falling Short, Dan Awrey, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
This article argues that there is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of finance and current approaches to financial regulation. Today’s financial system is a dynamic and complex ecosystem. For these and other reasons, policy makers and market actors regularly have only a fraction of the information that may be pertinent to decisions they are making. The processes governing financial regulation, however, implicitly assume a high degree of knowability, stability, and predictability. Through two case studies and other examples, this article examines how this mismatch undermines financial stability and other policy aims. This examination further reveals that the procedural rules …
The Covid-19 Pandemic And Business Law: A Series Of Posts From The Oxford Business Law Blog, Gert-Jan Boon, Markus K. Brunnermeier, Horst Eidenmueller, Luca Enriques, Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez, Kathryn Judge, Jean-Pierre Landau, Marco Pagano, Ricardo Reis, Kristin Van Zwieten
The Covid-19 Pandemic And Business Law: A Series Of Posts From The Oxford Business Law Blog, Gert-Jan Boon, Markus K. Brunnermeier, Horst Eidenmueller, Luca Enriques, Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez, Kathryn Judge, Jean-Pierre Landau, Marco Pagano, Ricardo Reis, Kristin Van Zwieten
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 Pandemic is the biggest challenge for the world since World War Two, warned UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on 1 April 2020. Millions of lives may be lost. The threat to our livelihoods is extreme as well. Job losses worldwide may exceed 25 million.
Legal systems are under extreme stress too. Contracts are disrupted, judicial services suspended, and insolvency procedures tested. Quarantine regulations threaten constitutional liberties. However, laws can also be a powerful tool to contain the effects of the pandemic on our lives and reduce its economic fallout. To achieve this goal, rules designed for normal times …
Innovation Versus Encrustation: Agency Costs In Contract Reproduction, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott
Innovation Versus Encrustation: Agency Costs In Contract Reproduction, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, Robert E. Scott
Faculty Scholarship
This article studies the impact of exogenous legal change on whether and how lawyers across four different deal types revise their contracts’ governing law clauses in order to solve the problem that the legal change created. The governing law clause is present in practically every contract across a wide range of industries and, in particular, it appears in deals as disparate as private equity M&A transactions and sovereign bond issuances. Properly drafted, the clause increases the ex ante economic value of the contract to both parties by reducing uncertainty and litigation risk. We posit that different levels of agency costs …
Driver For Contactless Payments, Ronald J. Mann
Driver For Contactless Payments, Ronald J. Mann
Faculty Scholarship
As a consumer, my primary experience with cash before the virus was standing in checkout lines observing the sluggish pace of cash transactions in front of me. Like so many things in our lives, the advent of the virus has changed the situation markedly. From the earliest days of infection, it has been far more unsettling to observe cash transactions knowing that the virus persists on paper and metal surfaces for days.
The dynamic that has driven the choices merchants offer in face-to-face retail transactions will change as well. Driven by the private exigencies of the retail environment, the last …
Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele
Executive Underreach, In Pandemics And Otherwise, David E. Pozen, Kim Lane Scheppele
Faculty Scholarship
Legal scholars are familiar with the problem of executive overreach, especially in emergencies. But sometimes, instead of being too audacious or extreme, a national executive's attempts to address a true threat prove far too limited and insubstantial. In this Essay, we seek to define and clarify the phenomenon of executive underreach, with special reference to the COVID-19 crisis; to outline ways in which such underreach may compromise constitutional governance and the international legal order; and to suggest a partial remedy.
Building A Law-And-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond The Twentieth-Century Synthesis, Jedediah S. Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski, K. Sabeel Rahman
Building A Law-And-Political-Economy Framework: Beyond The Twentieth-Century Synthesis, Jedediah S. Purdy, David Singh Grewal, Amy Kapczynski, K. Sabeel Rahman
Faculty Scholarship
We live in a time of interrelated crises. Economic inequality and precarity, and crises of democracy, climate change, and more raise significant challenges for legal scholarship and thought. “Neoliberal” premises undergird many fields of law and have helped authorize policies and practices that reaffirm the inequities of the current era. In particular, market efficiency, neutrality, and formal equality have rendered key kinds of power invisible, and generated a skepticism of democratic politics. The result of these presumptions is what we call the “Twentieth-Century Synthesis”: a pervasive view of law that encases “the market” from claims of justice and conceals it …