Law and Economics Commons^™

Public Policy Origins Of U.S. Data, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed introduction and overview of public policy origins of U.S. data. Shows how congressional legislation and Office of Management and Budget documents influence compilation and dissemination of U.S. Government data. Stresses how Indiana General Assembly requirements influence compilation of Indiana state agency data and Indiana local government agency data. Places emphasis on roles played in data compilation and dissemination by public policy research institutions/think tanks. Concludes by stressing limitations of data collection by governmental and non-governmental entities.

Expansion Of New Law In Southeast May Stave Off Black Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell, Sarah Stein, Ann Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

Landownership and homeownership are significant contributors to the creation of wealth and thus, drivers of intergenerational economic mobility. However, many people who have inherited family land are unable to realize these opportunities because of the legal effect of their particular form of landownership, often called heirs' property. These landowners are more likely to lose their land through what is known as a partition sale—a property sale resulting from a dispute between co-owners, often ignited by an outside party with an investment interest in the land. This Partners Update article explores the repercussions of heirs' property ownership and examines legislative solutions …

Do Lawyers Need Economists? Review Of Katja Langenbucher, Economic Transplants: On Lawmaking For Corporations And Capital Markets (Cambridge U. Press, 2017), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Katja Langenbucher’s outstanding book seeks to address the question of why and in what ways have lawyers been importing economic theories into a legal environment, and how has this shaped scholarly research, judicial and legislative work? Since the financial crisis, corporate or capital markets law has been the focus of attention by academia and media. Formal modelling has been used to describe how capital markets work and, later, has been criticized for its abstract assumptions. Empirical legal studies and regulatory impact assessments offered different ways forward. This excellent book presents a new approach to the risks and benefits of interdisciplinary …

Proposing A Constructivist Approach To Resolving Trade Conflicts Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (Afcfta): A Cross-Jurisdictional Analysis, Oluwayesi Sanni

LLM Theses

Essentially a research of an interdisciplinary nature, this thesis seeks to carefully combine budding thoughts from two different areas of scholarship in order to present a unique underlying perspective. On the one hand, there is the study of conflict and its resolution from such intrinsic standpoint as to appreciate it as constitutive of the Society with the aim of achieving more wholesome outcomes that accentuates the uniqueness of each society. On the other hand, the recent coming to force of AfCFTA has left so much for scholars to grapple with, including how its dispute settlement regime could reflect more on …

The Province Of (Substantive) Legitimate Expectation In Nigeria's Tax Administration: A Law And Policy Evaluation, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

LLM Theses

The interplay between tax administration and legitimate expectation has been the subject of debate and scholarship in many jurisdictions. Questions around how much discretion tax authorities should be allowed and whether courts should uphold the (substantive) legitimate expectations of taxpayers – by implication, bind the tax authority – when the tax authority reverses itself on a guidance, promise, position, etc. feature prominently in this conundrum. In Nigeria, the disposition of both the tax authority and the court appears to lean towards outright dismissal of legitimate expectation. Put differently, it seems that the tax authority does not consider itself bound by …

Congressional Securities Trading, Gregory Shill

Indiana Law Journal

The trading of stocks and bonds by Members of Congress presents several risks that warrant public concern. One is the potential for policy distortion: lawmakers' personal investments may influence their official acts. Another is a special case of a general problem: that of insiders exploiting access to confidential information for personal gain. In each case, the current framework which is based on common law fiduciary principles is a poor fit. Surprisingly, rules from a related context have been overlooked.

Like lawmakers, public company insiders such as CEOs frequently trade securities while in possession of confidential information. Those insiders' trades are …

Blockchain Stock Ledgers, Kevin V. Tu

Indiana Law Journal

American corporate law contains a seemingly innocuous mandate. Corporations must maintain appropriate books and records, including a stock ledger with the corporation's shareholders and stock ownership. The importance of accurate stock ownership records is obvious. Corporations must know who owns each of its outstanding shares at any point in time. Among other things, this allows corporations to determine who receives dividends and who is entitled to vote. In theory, keeping accurate records of stock ownership should be a simple matter. But despite diligent efforts, serious share discrepancies plague corporations, and reconciliation is often functionally impossible. Doing so may require the …

Consent To Student Loan Bankruptcy Discharge, John P. Hunt

Indiana Law Journal

As the Department of Education reconsiders its rules governing consent to discharge of federal student loans in bankruptcy, this Article argues for the first time that the Department should approach the problem specifically as an operator of programs to promote education and benefit students, rather than as an entity interested only in debt collection. This Article shows that the Department’s rules to date have treated whether to consent to discharge primarily as a pecuniary issue, without regard to the educational goals of the student loan programs. For example, the Department apparently has never considered whether making it difficult to discharge …

Patent Accidents: Questioning Strict Liability In Patent Law, Patrick R. Goold

Indiana Law Journal

Accidental infringement of patent rights is a pervasive and growing problem in the Information Age. As IP rights proliferate and expand in scope, it is becoming increasingly easy for companies and individuals to inadvertently infringe patents. When such accidental infringement occurs, patent law holds the infringer strictly liable. This contrasts with many areas of tort law where defendants are only liable if they act negligently.

This Article questions the normative desirability of strict liability in patent law. Assuming the primary value of patent law is utilitarian, this Article poses the research question: what liability rule will maximize social welfare? This …

Toward A Theory Of Intercountry Human Rights: Global Capitalism And The Rise And Fall Of Intercountry Adoption, Barbara Stark

Indiana Law Journal

This Article proposes another mechanism for enforcement, an alternative to self-serving domestic policing and weak international bureaucracy. “Intercountry,” as opposed to “international,” human rights would apply to specific rights in specific contexts and be enforceable through the legal mechanisms and other resources of the state parties that accepted them. Intercountry adoption is a useful context in which to consider this proposal for several reasons.

First, as a practical matter, there have probably never been more babies and children in orphanages, on the street, on the market, or on their own. Yet intercountry adoptions have declined to levels not seen for …

Mandatory Tax Penalty Insurance, Michael Abramowicz

Indiana Law Journal

In a mandatory tax penalty insurance regime, taxpayers would be required to find insurers to certify portions of their tax returns. A certifying insurer would be subject to a governmental auditing regime insurers of randomly selected filings would pay an amount equal to the inverse of the selection probability multiplied by the underpayment, or they would receive money from the government in the case of overpayment. The insurers function as private auditors with no incentive to underestimate their customers' tax liability. Such a regime will consume real resources, ultimately paid by taxpayers, and thus should not be imposed universally. But …

The Comet Framework: Greenhouse Gas Data Transparency To Enable The Success Of Eu Climate Policy, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Solina Kennedy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

To further and fully understand how to plan for the decarbonization of mining value chains, we need better data on carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, neither consumers, corporates, or financial institutions know the embodied emissions in the products they produce or sell. While methods like life-cycle analysis and environmental product declarations exist, none use a verifiable, comparable, or widely adopted emissions reporting framework capable of sending supply chain signals.

To truly reform material supply chains, new solutions for markets, capital, and policy are required. COMET (the Coalition on Materials Emissions Transparency)—an alliance launched at Davos in January …

A False Sense Of Security: How Congress And The Sec Are Dropping The Ball On Cryptocurrency, Tessa E. Shurr

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today, companies use blockchain technology and digital assets for a variety of purposes. This Comment analyzes the digital token. If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) views a digital token as a security, then the issuer of the digital token must comply with the registration and extensive disclosure requirements of federal securities laws.

To determine whether a digital asset is a security, the SEC relies on the test that the Supreme Court established in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. Rather than enforcing a statute or agency rule, the SEC enforces securities laws by applying the Howey test on a fact-intensive …

Time For Change: How Google's Anticompetitive Conduct Reveals The Deficiencies Of Modern Antitrust Regulation, Benjamin Clay Hughes

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note examines the divergent approaches of U.S. and EU antitrust regulations in addressing anticompetitive conduct by tech giants, such as Microsoft and Google. It highlights how the EU has adopted a more aggressive and proactive stance in enforcing antitrust laws, whereas the U.S. has taken a more cautious approach. The analysis underscores the challenges of regulating digital platforms and the need for streamlined procedures to address anticompetitive practices effectively.

Shelter Mobility, And The Voucher Program, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What is to be done about the poor and about poor neighborhoods? When it comes to housing policy, the current hope is that the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly the Section 8 Voucher Program) can provide an or ambitiously the answer to this perennial societal question. By piggybacking on the private rental market, the voucher program supposedly has numerous advantages over traditional, project-based, public housing. Not only is it less costly to house poor people in privately owned units compared to the cost of constructing and maintaining public housing, but the voucher program also offers the possibility of deconcentrating the …

Whither The Regulatory "War On Coal"? Scapegoats, Saviors, And Stock Market Reactions, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

Complaints about excessive economic burdens associated with regulation abound in contemporary political and legal rhetoric. In recent years, perhaps nowhere have these complaints been heard as loudly as in the context of U.S. regulations targeting the use of coal to supply power to the nation’s electricity system, as production levels in the coal industry dropped by nearly half between 2008 and 2016. The coal industry and its political supporters, including the president of the United States, have argued that a suite of air pollution regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration seriously undermined coal companies’ …

Publication Selection Biases In Stated Preference Estimates Of The Value Of A Statistical Life, W. Kip Viscusi, Clayton J. Masterman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article presents the first meta-analysis documenting the extent of publication selection biases in stated preference estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL). Stated preference studies fail to overcome the publication biases that affect much of the VSL literature. Such biases account for approximately 90% of the mean value of published VSL estimates in this subset of the literature. The bias is greatest for the largest estimates, possibly because the high-income labor market and stated preference estimates from the USA serve as an anchor for the VSL in other higher income countries. Estimates from lower-income countries exhibit less …

Africa’S Participation In International Economic Law In The 21st Century: An Introduction, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Ohio Omiunu, Amaka Vanni, Regis Y. Simo, Luwam Dirar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This is the introduction to the Manchester Journal of International Economic Law Symposium Issue based on selected papers presented at the Fourth Biennial Conference of the African International Economic Law Network at Strathmore Law School, Nairobi, Kenya in July 2019. The introduction also reflects on four important spaces for the consolidation of the scholarship, teaching and research, practice and policy relating to international economic law in Africa.

Introduction To The Inaugural Issue Of The African Journal Of International Economic Law, James Thuo Gathii, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the African Journal of International Economic Law(AfJIEL) Our goal is to fill a gap in journals covering international economic law relating to Africa and the Global South This first issue fulfills our promise to launch the AfJIEL as announced at the 2019 African International Economic Law Network conference in Nairobi

Redesigning Education Finance: How Student Loans Outgrew The “Debt” Paradigm, John R. Brooks, Adam J. Levitin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article argues that the student loan crisis is due not to the scale of student loan debt, but to the federal education finance system’s failure to utilize its existing mechanisms for progressive, income-based payments and debt cancellation. These mechanisms can make investment in higher education affordable to both individuals and the government, but they have not been fully utilized because of the mismatch between the current system’s economic reality and its legal, financial, and institutional apparatus.

The current economic structure of federal student loans does not resemble a true credit product, but a government grant program coupled with a …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Class Actions And Private Antitrust Litigation, Albert H. Choi, Kathryn E. Sprier

Law & Economics Working Papers

When firms collude and charge supra-competitive prices, consumers can bring antitrust lawsuits against the firms. When the litigation cost is low, firms accept the cost as just another cost of doing business, whereas when the cost is high, the firms lower the price to deter litigation. Class action is modeled as a mechanism that allows plaintiffs and attorneys to obtain economies of scale. We show that class actions, and the firms' incentive to block them, may or may not be socially desirable. Agency problems, settlement, fee-shifting, treble damages, public enforcement, and sustaining collusion through repeat play are also considered.

Equipping The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation For The Low-Carbon Transition: How Are Other National Oil Companies Adapting?, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Francisco Javier Pardinas Favela

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC) persistent governance challenges have both hampered Nigeria’s oil sector development and deprived the country of public resources. The oil, climate, and COVID-19 crises and the ramp-up of the low-carbon transition exacerbate this reality, with the national oil company (NOC) delivering sub-optimal returns to its stakeholders.

Other NOCs have taken meaningful steps to become players in the low-carbon energy transition domestically or in­ternationally – for example, Sau­di Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, Norway’s Equinor, Brazil’s Petrobras, Malaysia’s Petronas, and Algeria’s Sonatrach. These NOCs can serve as sources of inspiration for NNPC. These five NOCs have also undergone …

Mining And The Sdgs: A 2020 Status Update, Responsible Mining Foundation, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In September 2015, the UN member states agreed on a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which represent the global agenda for equitable, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable economic development until 2030. Mining companies have the potential to become leading partners in achieving the SDGs. Through their direct operations, mining companies can generate profits, employment, and economic growth in low-income countries. And through partnerships with government and civil society, mining companies can ensure that benefits of mining extend beyond the life of the mine itself, so that the mining industry has a positive impact on the natural environment, climate …

Federal Forum Provisions And The Internal Affairs Doctrine, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers

A key question at the intersection of state and federal law is whether corporations can use their charters or bylaws to restrict securities litigation to federal court. In December 2018, the Delaware Chancery Court answered this question in the negative in the landmark decision Sciabacucchi v. Salzberg. The court invalidated “federal forum provisions” (“FFPs”) that allow companies to select federal district courts as the exclusive venue for claims brought under the Securities Act of 1933 (“1933 Act”). The decision held that the internal affairs doctrine, which is the bedrock of U.S. corporate law, does not permit charter and bylaw provisions …

Economic Analysis Of Vessel Sox Emission Reduction Measures In The Context Of China, Peng Guan

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Virtual Currency As Crypto Collateral Under Article 9 Of The Ucc: Trying To Fit A Square Peg In A Round Hole, Sharon E. Foster

Arkansas Law Review

This Article addresses the current state of academic discussion regarding the problems of creating an enforceable security interest under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) using virtual currency, such as bitcoin, as collateral. While academic discussion is helpful and, indeed, may one day be adopted by a court and become law, the primary problem in using virtual currency as collateral is the uncertainty regarding using Article 9 to create an enforceable security interest in virtual currency. Simply put, Article 9 does not specifically address virtual currency as collateral, and we have no case law at this time to …

New Things Under The Sun: How The Cftc Is Using Virtual Currencies To Expand Its Jurisdiction, James Michael Blakemore

Arkansas Law Review

A decade has passed since Bitcoin solved a fundamental problem plaguing virtual currencies: How to ensure, without resort to financial intermediaries or other trusted central authorities, that a unit of digital currency can be spent only once. In that time, Bitcoin has inspired countless follow-on projects. Some have attempted to improve the technology’s potential use for digital cash, by, for example, increasing the number of transactions processed per second or improving user privacy. Others have strayed further from Bitcoin’s original intent, building on blockchain—Bitcoin’s central innovation—to enable distributed computing and so-called smart contracting, decentralized lending, governance, data storage, and digital …

Working Hard Or Making Work? Plaintiffs' Attorneys Fees In Securities Fraud Class Actions, Stephen J. Choi, Jessica Erickson, A. C. Pritchard

Articles

In this article, we study attorney fees awarded in the largest securities class actions: “mega- settlements.” Consistent with prior work, we find larger fee awards but lower percentages in these cases. We also find that courts are more likely to reject or modify fee requests made in connection with the largest settlements. We conjecture that this scrutiny provides an incentive for law firms to bill more hours, not to advance the case, but to help justify large fee awards—“make work.” The results of our empirical tests are consistent with plaintiffs’ attorneys investing more time in litigation against larger companies, with …

Industry Concentration And Information Technology, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Industry concentration has been rising in the US since 1980. Firm operating margins have also been rising. Are these signs of declining competition that call for a new antitrust policy? This paper explores the role of proprietary information technology systems (IT), which could increase industry concentration and margins by raising the productivity of top firms relative to others. Using instrumental variable estimates, this paper finds that IT system use is strongly associated with the level and growth of industry concentration and firm operating margins. The paper also finds that IT system use is associated with relatively larger establishment size and …