Law and Economics Commons^™

Pluralism And Regulatory Response To The Sharing Economy, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Providers use platforms in dissimilar ways. Some providers create new capacity and designate it for exclusively commercial use via platforms. For example, a provider buys a car that serves predominantly for driving paying passengers, converts a standard residential rental to a short-term rental, or works full-time via a platform. Conversely, other providers leverage their idle capacity and monetize it (e.g., a provider uses the family car to drive platform passengers in the evenings). This chapter argues that the distinction between new and idle capacity is a fundamental concept that should guide regulation of activities in the platform economy. Creating new …

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Structural Integrity And A Call For Adaptive And Incremental Agency Design Policy, Hannah Clendening

Indiana Law Journal

INTRODUCTION

I. UNDERSTANDING AND RATIONALIZING COMPETING DESIGN OBJECTIVES

A. CONGRESSIONAL INTENT AND THE CFPB’S FORMATION

B. D.C. CIRCUIT’S REASONING IN PHH CORP. V. CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU

C. BASIC TENETS OF LEADING ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN THEORIES

D. ANOTHER LOOMING CONSIDERATION: AGENCY CAPTURE

II. A NEED FOR ADAPTIVE AND INCREMENTAL APPROACHES TO AGENCY DESIGN

CONCLUSION

Learning From Law Students: How Phds Might Seek Legal Remedy In The Face Of Widespread Unemployment, Emily Grothoff

Indiana Law Journal

This Note examines overproduction and underemployment problems facing the academic market and PhD graduates9 from a legal perspective. Part I will briefly review key legal takeaways from several distinctive cases that law school graduates brought against their almae matres regarding poor employability. Part II then describes the particularities of the “PhD problem” and how it compares and contrasts with the problem that J.D. holders recently faced. Finally, Part III will examine what legal remedies disenfranchised PhDs might pursue and whether such remedies could—and should—be sought in the courts.

The Fortification Of Inequality: Constitutional Doctrine And The Political Economy, Kate Andrias

Indiana Law Journal

As Parts I and II of this Essay elaborate, the examination yields three observations of relevance to constitutional law more generally: First, judge-made constitutional doctrine, though by no means the primary cause of rising inequality, has played an important role in reinforcing and exacerbating it. Judges have acquiesced to legislatively structured economic inequality, while also restricting the ability of legislatures to remedy it. Second, while economic inequality has become a cause célèbre only in the last few years, much of the constitutional doctrine that has contributed to its flourishing is longstanding. Moreover, for several decades, even the Court’s more liberal …

Presenting A Critical Perspective On “Economic Efficiency” In Law And Economics Courses, Gregory S. Crespi

SMU Law Review

“Law and Economics” courses are sometimes criticized for inadequately explaining the normative criterion of “economic efficiency” and then applying this criterion throughout the course in a superficial and biased manner that pejoratively labels most governmental market interventions and wealth redistribution measures as inefficient. These criticisms have merit, and in this article I point out a number of conceptual problems, empirical difficulties, and normative shortcomings of the economic efficiency criterion that students need to understand in order to be able to effectively counter policy arguments that rest upon dubious efficiency assessments.

The eight specific shortcomings of the economic efficiency criterion that …

A Critical Examination Of A Third Employment Category For On-Demand Work (In Comparative Perspective), Miriam A. Cherry, Antonio Aloisi

All Faculty Scholarship

A number of lawsuits in the United States are challenging the employment classification of workers in the platform economy. Employee status is a crucial gateway in determining entitlement to labor and employment law protections. In response to this uncertainty, some commentators have proposed an “intermediate”, “third,” or “hybrid” category, situated between the categories of “employee” and “independent contractor.”

After investigating the status of platform workers in the United States, the authors provide snapshot summaries of five legal systems that have experimented with implementing a legal tool similar to an intermediate category to cover non-standard workers: Canada, Italy, Spain, Germany, and …

Typhoid Mario: Video Game Piracy As Viral Vector And National Security Threat, Andrew V. Moshirnia

Indiana Law Journal

Current academic and policy discussions regarding video game piracy focus on the economic losses inherent to copyright infringement. Unfortunately, this approach neglects the most significant implication of video game piracy: malware distribution. Copyright-motivated efforts to shut down file-sharing sites do little to reduce piracy and actually increase viral malware infection. Pirated video games are an ideal delivery device for malware, as users routinely launch unverified programs and forego virus detection. The illicit nature of the transaction forces users to rely almost entirely on the reputation of websites, uploaders, and other users to determine if a file is safe to download. …

Are Charter Schools The Second Coming Of Enron?: An Examination Of The Gatekeepers That Protect Against Dangerous Related-Party Transactions In The Charter School Sectors, Preston C. Green Iii, Bruce D. Baker, Joseph O. Oluwole

Indiana Law Journal

INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW OF ENRON

A. ENRON AND DEREGULATION

B. THE LJM SPES

C. ENRON’S COLLAPSE

II: ENRON’S GATEKEEPER PROBLEMS

A. ARTHUR ANDERSEN

B. INDEPENDENT ANALYSTS

C. CREDIT RATING AGENCIES

D. ENRON’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS

E. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION (SEC)

III: CHARTER SCHOOLS AND RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

A. CHARTER SCHOOL DEREGULATION AND PRIVATE INVESTORS

B. EXAMPLES OF ENRON-LIKE RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS

1. IMAGINE SCHOOLS

2. IVY ACADEMIA CHARTER SCHOOL

3. AMERICAN INDIAN MODEL CHARTER SCHOOLS

4. GRAND TRAVERSE ACADEMY

5. PENNSYLVANIA CYBER CHARTER SCHOOL

C. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, RELATED-PARTY TRANSACTIONS, AND THE NEED FOR STRONG GATEKEEPING

IV: CHARTER SCHOOL GATEKEEPERS

A. AUDITORS …

The Promises And Pitfalls Of Harmonization: What Insurance Guarantee Schemes Tell Us About When Harmonization Works, Jordan Burton

Indiana Law Journal

In Part I, this Note considers the mechanisms of harmonization and the regulatory and fairness policy concerns that harmonization is designed to address. Part II explores some of the problems harmonization can create, with an eye toward how those problems manifest in the IGS context. Finally, Part III discusses how IGS address an urgent and inevitable problem that affects actors in the insurance market at every level. By analyzing comments on the Commission’s White Paper, Part III proposes that these three factors—convergence of stakeholder interest, inevitability, and urgency— are key to understanding when member states, EU citizens, and industry actors …

Too-Big-To-Fail 2.0? Digital Service Providers, Nizan Geslevich Packin

Indiana Law Journal

The Article explains why addressing Too-Big-To-Fail 2.0 has not yet become a political and societal priority. First, digital service providers are technology companies, which, many believe, are shaped by market forces such that they fail and succeed in equal measure without producing negative ripple effects on the economy or society. Second, technology giants are not as carefully regulated as banks becauseunlike banks, they do not take insured deposits backed by the government. Third, even heavily regulated financial institutions have not been required until recently to focus on cybersecurity. Finally, some believe that there is no point in worrying about Too-Big-To-Fail …

Book Review: Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation By Renate Klein, Kate Rose

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Aligning Incentives And Cost Allocation In Discovery, Jonathan R. Nash, Joanna M. Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Recent proposals to revise Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 to incorporate cost allocation of discovery have sparked considerable controversy. Advocates for reform argue that replacing the long-standing “producer-pays” presumption with something more akin to a “requester-pays” rule would better align economic incentives and reduce litigants’ ability to wield discovery as an instrument to force settlement. Opponents argue that such a reform would limit access to justice by saddling requesters with an ex ante burden of funding the opposition’s discovery.

In this Article, we explain that either a rule requiring both parties to share the costs of discovery (“cost-sharing rule”) …

Burying Lochner: Why Courts Should Reject Coming Attempts To Revive Economic Due Process, Brandon R. Magner

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Assessing Access-To-Justice Outreach Strategies, Jj Prescott

Law & Economics Working Papers

The need for prospective beneficiaries to “take up” new programs is a common stumbling block for otherwise well-designed legal and policy innovations. I examine the take-up problem in the context of publicly provided court services and test the effectiveness of various outreach strategies that announce a newly available online court access platform. I study individuals with minor arrest warrants whose distrust of courts may dampen any take-up response. I partnered with a court to quasi-randomly assign outreach approaches to a cohort of individuals and find that outreach improves take-up, that the type of outreach matters, and that online platform access …

Adolf Berle During The New Deal: The Brain Truster As An Intellectual Jobber, Robert Thompson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thirty-seven year old law professor Adolf Berle had a career year in 1932. His book published that year, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (written with Gardiner Means), framed the fundamental twentieth century change in understanding modern corporations. Berle’s exchange with Merrick Dodd on the purpose of the corporation that played out that spring on the pages of the Harvard Law Review launched a still fierce debate over the role of shareholders and other stakeholders. His service as a brain truster for Franklin Roosevelt during the fall election gave voice to the transformative economic policies of the New Deal. This …

Innovation Diffusion In The Legal Industry, William D. Henderson

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This article is adapted from a series of blog posts originally found in my recently-started blog entitled Legal Evolution. The foundational material set forth in this article (and in those blog posts) applies to the legal services market insights gained from disciplines other than law. This article begins by setting forth the well-established theory of an “innovation diffusion curve” and the research that has identified the factors that affect the rate of adoption of innovations. This article identifies why innovation in the legal services market is desirable and applies to the legal services field insights drawn from this research …

Platform Law And The Brand Enterprise, Sonia K. Katyal, Leah Chan Grinvald

Scholarly Works

The emergence of platforms has transformed the digital economy, reshaping and recasting online transactions within the service industry. This transformation, as many have argued, has created new and unimagined challenges for policymakers and regulators, as well as for traditional, offline companies. Most scholarship examining platforms discuss their impact on employment law or consumer protection. Yet trademark law, which is central to the success of the platform enterprise, has been mostly overlooked within these discussions. To address this gap, this article discusses the emergence of two central forms of platform entrepreneurship-the platform, or "macrobrand" and the platform service provider, or the …

Feeding The Eco-Consumer, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

There is a lot of talk about making our food system more “sustainable,” and eco-consumers — those who consider environmental sustainability as an important purchasing priority — are making themselves heard. This growing consumer segment is rapidly gaining national attention for moving more sustainable products to the market, and for its willingness to pay more for these options. However, while economists normally predict that higher prices lead profit-minded suppliers to enter a market to meet a new and growing demand, this transition is not occurring at the pace one would expect.

This Article argues that land tenure status — whether …

The Economics Of American Higher Education In The New Gilded Age, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Gatekeepers Of Crowdfunding, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

Securities crowdfunding is premised on two core policy goals: inclusivity and efficiency. First, crowdfunding is conceived as an inclusive system where all entrepreneurs are given a chance to pitch their idea to the "crowd." Second, crowdfunding is supposed to be an efficient way to channel funds from public investors to promising startup companies. There is a fundamental tension between these two policy goals, however. A totally inclusive system would ensure that platforms list any and every company that wants to participate. But platforms need to curate and select the companies they list in order to establish a reputation as a …

Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, And Diversity, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information are framed and presented (also known as choice architecture and information architecture). Although choice architecture and information architecture can nudge people into better outcomes, choice architecture and …

Adventures In Higher Education, Happiness, And Mindfulness, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This Article recounts my unique adventures in higher education, including being a Princeton University freshman mathematics major at age 14, Harvard University applied mathematics graduate student at age 17, economics and finance faculty at multiple schools, first-year law student at the University of Chicago, second- and third-year law student at Stanford University, and law faculty at multiple schools. This Article also candidly discusses my experiences as student and professor and openly shares how I achieved sustainable happiness by practicing mindfulness to reduce fears, rumination, and worry in facing adversity, disappointment, and setbacks. This Article analyzes why law schools should teach …

Corporate Governance As Privately-Ordered Public Policy: A Proposal, Lynn A. Stout, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci

Faculty Works

In this Article, we show how our society can use corporate governance shifts to address, if not entirely resolve, a number of currently pressing social and economic problems. These problems include: rising income inequality; demographic disparities in wealth and equity ownership; increasing poverty and income insecurity; a need for greater innovation and investment in solving problems like disease and climate change; the “externalization” of many costs of corporate activity onto third parties such as customers, employees, creditors, and the broader society; the corrosive influence of corporate money in politics; and discontent and loss of trust in the capitalist system among …

แนวทางในการนำค่าใช้จ่ายเงินบริจาคที่ยังไม่ได้ใช้สิทธิเป็นยอดยกไปเพื่อหักค่าใช้จ่ายเงินบริจาคของประเทศไทย, วันวิสาข์ พาบุญ

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

จากการศึกษาการใช้สิทธิประโยชน์เงินบริจาคในประเทศสิงคโปร์ พบว่ามีการให้สิทธิประโยชน์ในการนำเงินบริจาคที่ไม่สามารถใช้สิทธิในปีภาษีปัจจุบัน เนื่องมาจากมียอดเงินบริจาคมากกว่ารายได้ในปีภาษีเดียวกัน โดยสำนักงานสรรพากรสิงคโปร์มีการให้สิทธิประโยชน์โดยการนำเงินบริจาคดังกล่าวยกไปใช้ได้ภายใน 5 ปีภาษีถัดไป เนื่องมาจากประเทศสิงคโปร์มีนโยบายในการกระตุ้นให้ผู้เสียภาษีมีการช่วยเหลือสังคมโดยการบริจาค เมื่อทำการศึกษาการหักเงินบริจาคในประเทศไทยตามประมวลรัษฎากร ที่มีเงื่อนไขในการปฏิบัติตามมาตรา 65 ตรี (3) และพระราชกฤษฎีกาฯ ฉบับที่เกี่ยวข้องโดยให้สิทธิในการหักเงินบริจาคเป็นจำนวน 2 เท่า แต่หักได้ไม่เกินร้อยละ 10 ของกำไรสุทธิก่อนหักค่าใช้จ่ายเงินบริจาคในปีภาษีที่เงินบริจาคเกิดขึ้นสำหรับภาษีเงินได้นิติบุคคล และหักได้ไม่เกินร้อยละ 10 ของเงินได้หลังจากหักค่าใช้จ่ายและค่าลดหย่อนอย่างอื่นก่อนหักลดหย่อนเงินบริจาคสำหรับภาษีเงินได้บุคคลธรรมดา พบว่าการหักเงินบริจาคดังกล่าวไม่ได้เอื้อประโยชน์ต่อผู้เสียภาษี และยังส่งผลให้ไม่สามารถผลักดันให้ผู้เสียภาษีมีการบริจาคเพิ่มขึ้น นอกจากนี้ขั้นตอนในการออกกฎหมายที่เกี่ยวกับสิทธิประโยชน์ทางภาษีเกี่ยวกับการบริจาคของประเทศไทยนั้นจะเริ่มต้นจากมีมติคณะรัฐมนตรีออกมา โดยจะมีสถานะและผลทางกฎหมาย คือ การใช้อำนาจบริหารของคณะรัฐมนตรี ไม่มีสถานะเป็นกฎหมายตามแบบพิธีและไม่มีผลบังคับต่อประชาชน และในเวลาต่อมาถึงจะมีการออกพระราชกฤษฎีกา และประกาศอธิบดีกรมสรรพากรตามลำดับ ซึ่งในการจะใช้สิทธิประโยชน์ทางภาษีเกี่ยวกับการการบริจาคที่ถูกต้องครบถ้วนตามหลักทางภาษีอากรนั้น ผู้เสียภาษีทั้งบุคคลธรรมดาและนิติบุคคลจะต้องปฏิบัติให้เป็นไปตามหลักเกณฑ์ วิธีการ และเงื่อนไขที่ประกาศอธิบดีกรมสรรพากรประกาศกำหนดเท่านั้น จากที่กล่าวมาข้างต้น สิทธิในการนำค่าใช้จ่ายเงินบริจาคที่ยังไม่ได้ใช้สิทธิในปีปัจจุบันเป็นยอดยกไปเพื่อใช้สิทธิในอีก 5 ปีภาษีของประเทศสิงคโปร์นั้นเป็นการยึดตามหลักความแน่นอนและการประหยัดของสิทธิที่ผู้เสียภาษีทั้งนิติบุคคลและบุคคลธรรมดาพึงมีจะได้รับสิทธิที่เกิดจากความเสียสละเงินหรือทรัพย์สินต่างๆเพื่อบริจาคให้กับองค์การที่ได้รับการอนุมัติให้เป็นหน่วยงานที่มีการให้ความช่วยเหลือกับสังคม และเพื่อเป็นประโยชน์และลดภาระของรัฐบาลในการที่จะทำให้ประเทศพัฒนาในด้านต่างๆต่อไปได้อย่างต่อเนื่องจึงควรนำมาปรับใช้กับกฎหมายของประเทศไทย

User Participation In Value Creation, Itai Grinberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines HM Treasury’s proposal to account for the active participation of users in value creation in certain digital platforms. The first key question is whether there is any reason to believe, as HM Treasury suggests, that users only meaningfully or actively contribute to value creation in the context of certain digital platforms. The article accordingly explores the factors HM Treasury sets out for the attribution of income to active user participation, including features such as network effects, multisided business models, and a lack of physical presence in the jurisdiction of the user. It concludes that if a user …

Whose Gig Is It Anyway? Technological Change, Workplace Control And Supervision, And Workers' Rights In The Gig Economy, Alex Kirven

University of Colorado Law Review

Under the current regime of employment and labor laws, coverage is determined on the basis of whether a given worker is an employee as opposed to an independent contractor. These laws contain inadequate definitions of "employee," leaving it up to the court system and administrative agencies to define the term. The current tests that they use fail to capture the realities of the gig economy, a system that purports to promote greater worker freedom through the fragmentation of work assignments into smaller tasks or gigs. The gig economy has offered consumers lower prices and has given workers greater autonomy in …

The Social Cost Of Carbon, Greenhouse Gas Policies, And Politicized Benefit/Cost Analysis, Benjamin Zycher

Texas A&M Law Review

Benefit/cost analysis can be a powerful tool for examination of proposed (or alternative) public policies, but, unsurprisingly, decisionmakers’ policy preferences can drive the analysis, rather than the reverse. That is the reality with respect to the Obama Administration computation of the social cost of carbon, a crucial parameter underlying the quantitative analysis of its proposed climate policies, now being reversed in substantial part by the Trump Administration. The Obama analysis of the social cost of carbon suffered from four central problems: the use of global benefits in the benefit/cost calculation, the failure to apply a 7% discount rate as required …

The Perpetuation Of Mass Incarceration: Analyzing Systemic Effects Of The U.S. Penal System, Lillian Barreto

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is divided into four parts, Part I. Perpetuation of a Disparate System , Part II. Perpetual Marginalization , Part III. My Personal Research and Part IV. Moving Forward . Part I serves to show the pervasive racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system and how these disparities portray a system which discriminates primarily against poor men of color. Part II shows how this community is disadvantaged in various parts of their social, economic and political lives because of the extent of punitivity and criminalization. It explains the way these disadvantages translate to men of color being discriminated against …

Markets And Morals: The Limits Of Doux Commerce, Mark L. Movsesian

Faculty Publications

In this essay for a symposium on Professor Nathan Oman's new book, The Dignity of Commerce, I do three things. First, I describe what I take to be the central message of the book, namely, that markets promote liberal values of tolerance, pluralism, and cooperation among rival, even hostile groups. Second, I show how Oman's argument draws from a line of political and economic thought that dates to the Enlightenment, the so-called "doux commerce" thesis of thinkers like Montesquieu and Adam Smith. Finally, I discuss what I consider the most penetrating criticism of that thesis, Edmund Burke's critique from …

The Elephant Always Forgets: Tax Reform And The Wto, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The “Tax Cuts and Jobs ACT” (TCJA) enacted on December 22, 2017, includes several provisions that raise WTO compliance issues. At least one such provision, the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) rule, is almost certain to draw a challenge in the WTO and is likely to lead to another US loss and resulting sanctions. This outcome would be another addition to the repeated losses suffered by the US for export subsidies from the 1970s to 2004, which led to the imposition of sanctions and the ultimate repeal of the offending regime. The important question for 2018 and beyond is whether the …