Reinventing Homeownership: A Compendium Of Concepts To Consider,
2012
Filene Research Institute
Reinventing Homeownership: A Compendium Of Concepts To Consider, Denise Gabel, David J. Reiss
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This policy brief presents a compendium of innovative mortgage products that challenge the dominant mortgage product of the 20th Century, the high down payment, thirty year amortization, fixed interest rate mortgage. These innovative products do not, however, go to the other extreme like the subprime and Alt-A mortgages of the early 21st Century with attributes such as low down payments, balloon payments and quick to adjust interest rates. Rather, they take into account demographic trends, changes in the workplace and existing barriers to homeownership to structure new products for contemporary households. These innovative products take on the big questions in …
License To Deal: Mandatory Approval Of Complex Financial Products,
2012
Cornell Law School
License To Deal: Mandatory Approval Of Complex Financial Products, Saule T. Omarova
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Article explores the possibility of creating a system of mandatory pre-approval of complex financial products as an ex ante solution to the problem of systemic risk containment. Building on the concept of regulatory precaution borrowed from environmental and health law, and elements of pre-CFMA regulation of commodity futures, the Article outlines the broad contours of a new licensing scheme that would place the burden of proving social and economic utility of complex financial instruments on the intermediaries that structure and market them. Fundamentally a thought experiment, this proposal seeks to enrich the current policy debate by expanding the range …
Bankruptcy, Backwards: The Problem Of Quasi-Sovereign Debt,
2012
Georgetown University Law Center
Bankruptcy, Backwards: The Problem Of Quasi-Sovereign Debt, Anna Gelpern
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Feature considers the debts of quasi-sovereign states in light of proposals to let them file for bankruptcy protection. States that have ceded some but not all sovereign prerogatives to a central government face distinct challenges as debtors. It is unhelpful to analyze these challenges mainly through the bankruptcy lens. State bankruptcy posits an institutional fix for a problem that remains theoretically undefined and empirically contested. I suggest a way of mapping the problem that does not work back from a solution. I highlight the implications of sovereign immunity, immortality, concurrent authority, macroeconomic policy, and democratic accountability for quasi-sovereign debt …
Regulation Goes Medieval,
2012
University of Colorado Law School
Regulation Goes Medieval, Andrew A. Schwartz
Publications
Section 301 of the 2009 federal Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act prohibits the issuance of consumer credit cards to young adults ages 18–20 unless the credit contract is cosigned by an older adult who accepts joint liability for the card, or else the young adult proves she has “independent means of repaying” her credit card obligations. This prohibition is at odds with a 50-year trend of extending the rights of adulthood to people ages 18–20. It also blocks an important source of credit for young entrepreneurs, who often use consumer credit to launch their enterprises.
Reversible Rewards,
2012
Columbia Law School
Reversible Rewards, Omri Ben-Shahar, Anu Bradford
Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a new mechanism of private enforcement, combining sanctions and rewards into a scheme of “reversible rewards.” The enforcing party sets up a precommitted fund and offers it as reward to another party to refrain from violation. If the violator turns down the reward, the enforcer can use the money in the fund for one purpose only – to pay for punishment of the violator. The article shows that this scheme doubles the effect of funds invested in enforcement and allows the enforcer to stop violations that would otherwise be too costly to deter. It argues that reversible …
Corporate Form And Social Entrepreneurship: A Status Report From California (And Beyond),
2012
Columbia Law School
Corporate Form And Social Entrepreneurship: A Status Report From California (And Beyond), Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
In January 2012, amendments to California’s corporate code permitted a new type of corporate form designed around for-profit entities also wishing to commit to serving a broader “social purpose” (or purposes). Although not the first state to embrace such reforms, California’s experiment is unique, in that it allowed companies to opt for one of two different social benefit entity forms: the “Benefit Corporation” (BC) and the “Flexible Purpose Corporation” (FPC). This essay summarizes the reforms and presents basic descriptive data about the rate at which business organizations have embraced them. Thus far, both forms have had relatively modest take-up rates; …
After The Great Recession: Regulating Financial Services For Low- And Middle-Income Communities,
2012
Columbia Law School
After The Great Recession: Regulating Financial Services For Low- And Middle-Income Communities, Ronald J. Mann
Faculty Scholarship
This paper, prepared as a speech at Washington and Lee Law School, discusses regulatory strategies for lending to LMI households after the Great Recession. It argues that the CFPB's emphasis on behavioral economics is likely to lead it astray, especially if it relies on assumptions drawn from experience with middle-class behavior to interfere with the choices made by LMI households that face a different set of opportunities than the middle-class households more familiar to regulators. More generally, the paper suggests that most of the financial distress faced by LMI households is a result of broader social and institutional problems, and …
The Measure Of A Mac: A Quasi-Experimental Protocol For Tokenizing Force Majeure Clauses In M&A; Agreements,
2012
Columbia Law School
The Measure Of A Mac: A Quasi-Experimental Protocol For Tokenizing Force Majeure Clauses In M&A; Agreements, Eric L. Talley, Drew O'Kane
Faculty Scholarship
This paper develops a protocol for using a familiar data set on force majeure provisions in corporate acquisitions agreements to tokenize and calibrate a machine-learning algorithm of textual analysis. Our protocol, built on regular expression (RE) and latent semantic analysis (LSA) approaches, serves to replicate, correct, and extend the hand-coded data. Our preliminary results indicate that both approaches perform well, though a hybridized approach improves predictive power further. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that our results are generally robust to out-of-sample predictions. We conclude that similar approaches could be used more broadly in empirical legal scholarship, especially including in business law.
Fragmentation Nodes: A Study In Financial Innovation, Complexity, And Systemic Risk,
2012
Columbia Law School
Fragmentation Nodes: A Study In Financial Innovation, Complexity, And Systemic Risk, Kathryn Judge
Faculty Scholarship
This Article resents a case study in how complexity arising from the evolution and proliferation of a financial innovation can increase systemic risk. The subject of the case study is the securitization of home loans, an innovation which played a critical and still not fully understood role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The Article introduces the term "fragmentation node" for these transaction structures, and it shows how specific sources of complexity inherent in fragmentation nodes limited transparency and flexibility in ways that undermined the stability of the financial system. In addition to shedding new light on the processes through which …
Stock Unloading And Banker Incentives,
2012
Columbia Law School
Stock Unloading And Banker Incentives, Robert J. Jackson Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
Congress has directed federal regulators to oversee banker pay. For the first time, these regulators are now scrutinizing the incentives of risk-takers beyond the bank's top executives. Like most public company managers, these bankers are increasingly paid in stock rather than cash. The ostensible reason is that stock-based pay aligns manager and shareholder interests. But portfolio theory predicts that managers will diversify away, or "unload," stock-based pay unless they are restricted from doing so. One way to deter unloading may be to require managers to disclose it, as investors and colleagues will assume that managers are unloading because they are …
Litigation Finance: What Do Judges Need To Know?,
2012
Columbia Law School
Litigation Finance: What Do Judges Need To Know?, Bert Huang
Faculty Scholarship
In our classic image of an American lawsuit, including class actions, the plaintiffs lawyer pays the upfront costs and then hopes to recoup them from a share of the winnings. But today, this picture is incomplete. It is no longer only the law firm's own war chest that finances a case – so can outside investors and lenders. As Judge Hellerstein has just reminded us, the 9/11 cases he presided over involved such third-party financing. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs' environmental case against Chevron, now pending in the Southern District of New York, is another prominent example in the news.
The Financial Crisis And The Path Of Reform,
2012
University of Michigan Law School
The Financial Crisis And The Path Of Reform, Michael S. Barr
Articles
In the lead-up to the financial crisis, the U.S. financial sector was overleveraged, short-funded, risky, and opaque. "Shadow banking" permitted institutions to avoid comprehensive supervision and capital requirements. Innovation outpaced the ability or willingness of private- and public-sector guardians to rein in risks. An asset bubble fed the system, until the market imploded in the fall of 2008. When the crisis hit, our society found itself illequipped to deal with the failure of leading financial firms. In the wake of the crisis, the Obama Administration proposed a set of reforms that were eventually embodied, in large part, in the Dodd-Frank …
Beyond Microfinance: Creating Opportunities For Women At The Base Of The Pyramid,
2012
Unviersity of Michigan Law School
Beyond Microfinance: Creating Opportunities For Women At The Base Of The Pyramid, Deborah Burand
Articles
A growing number of innovative social entrepreneurs are tackling this problem by creating 'busmesses in a bag' mspired by the world's largest direct seller of beauty products - Avon. These very small franchise or consignment businesses are affordable enough to be acquired and operated by women living at the base of the economic pyramid. Just as commercial franchise networks such as Avon have helped people with httle or no experience grow mto successful business owners around the world, microfranchise and microconsignment networks may hold similar promise.
Accountability And The Bureau Of Consumer Financial Protection,
2012
Fordham University School of Law
Accountability And The Bureau Of Consumer Financial Protection, Susan Block-Lieb
Faculty Scholarship
Some industry and political actors oppose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the grounds that its institutional design ensures its lack of accountability. Specifically, opponents point to the CFPB’s regulatory and financial independence and to the fact that a single director heads the Bureau rather than a bipartisan panel of commissioners. But to focus on the Bureau’s financial independence and single director misses the distinctive political deal struck when Congress created the CFPB. The CFPB has been uniquely and intentionally structured to insulate it not only from interest group influence and executive interference, but also from congressional control, while …
On The Theoretical Foundations For Regulating Financial Markets,
2012
Columbia Law School
On The Theoretical Foundations For Regulating Financial Markets, Katharina Pistor
Faculty Scholarship
How we think about financial markets determines how we regulate them. Since the 1970s modern finance theory has shaped how we think about and regulate financial markets. It is based on the notion that markets are or can be made (more) efficient. Financial markets have been deregulated when they were thought to achieve efficient outcomes on their own; and regulation was designed to lend crutches to them when it appeared that they needed support. While modern finance theory has suffered some setbacks in the aftermath of the global crisis, defenders hold that improving market efficiency should still be the overriding …
Governing Interdependent Financial Systems: Lessons From The Vienna Initiative,
2012
Columbia Law School
Governing Interdependent Financial Systems: Lessons From The Vienna Initiative, Katharina Pistor
Faculty Scholarship
Financial markets have become globally interdependent, yet their governance has remained national at the core. This friction encumbers crisis management and distorts incentives for crisis prevention. The Vienna Initiative, formed to manage the fallout from the global crisis in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), offers an alternative coordinated, multi-stakeholder governance framework. A critical prerequisite for such a regime is a coordinating agent, or ‘anchor tenant’, that is deeply vested in the stability of transnational financial systems, but does not directly compete with market actors or regulators. Lessons for more effective governance of financial interdependence are discussed.
Dispersed Ownership: The Theories, The Evidence, And The Enduring Tension Between "Lumpers" And "Splitters",
2012
Columbia Law School
Dispersed Ownership: The Theories, The Evidence, And The Enduring Tension Between "Lumpers" And "Splitters", John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
This article argues that dispersed ownership resulted less from inexorable forces and more from private ordering. Neither legal nor political conditions mandated or prevented the appearance of dispersed ownership. Rather, entrepreneurs, investment bankers, and investors — all seeking to maximize value — sometimes saw reasons why selling control into the public market would maximize value for them. But when and why? That is the article's focus. It argues that law played less of a role than specialized intermediaries — investment banks, securities exchanges, and other agents — who found it to be in their self-interest to foster dispersed ownership and …
Symposium Introduction: Offshore Accounts, Corporate Income Shifting, And Executive Compensation,
2012
Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Symposium Introduction: Offshore Accounts, Corporate Income Shifting, And Executive Compensation, Leslie Book
Villanova Law Review (1956 - )
No abstract provided.
Some Suggestions For Tax Reform,
2012
Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Some Suggestions For Tax Reform, Michael C. Durst
Villanova Law Review (1956 - )
No abstract provided.
The Use Of Voluntary Disclosure Initiatives In The Battle Against Offshore Tax Evasion,
2012
Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The Use Of Voluntary Disclosure Initiatives In The Battle Against Offshore Tax Evasion, Leandra Lederman
Villanova Law Review (1956 - )
No abstract provided.
