Law and Economics Commons^™

What Directors Do (And Fail To Do): Some Comparative Notes On Board Structure And Corporate Governance, Simon Deakin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Short, But Interesting Life Of Good Faith As An Independent Liability Rule, Robert B. Thompson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Producing Corporate Text: Courtrooms, Conference Rooms, And Classrooms, Mae Kuykendall

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Lyondell: Reconstructing Revlon, Lawrence Lederman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Good Faith After Disney: Justice Berger’S Closing Discussion, Carolyn Berger

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

If Not A Commercial Republic? Political Economy In The United States After Citizens United, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

In

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , a majority of the Supreme Court conceived the United States to be an oligarchy and ruled accordingly. What this decision might come to mean for political economy in the United States is explored through three interrelated responses to the decision. In the first,

Citizens United is a turning point for constitutional law scholarship, and by extension, for what is expected from our legal system. After

Citizens United , legal scholars may abandon the idea that the Court takes legal argument seriously, and that law thereby constrains, as well as expresses, social privilege. …

The Brains Behind Mediation: Reflections On Neuroscience, Conflict Resolution And Decision-Making, Daniel Weitz

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

On September 13, 1848, an explosives charge sent a three-foot tamping iron about an inch in diameter through the head of Phineas Gage. Although Gage survived, the tamping iron, which entered just under the left eye and exited through the frontal portion of his head, destroyed his prefrontal cortex. Prior to the accident, Gage was a popular foreman of a railroad construction crew. After the accident, he was a tactless, profane, and impulsive man with a dramatically altered personality.

Clearing And Trade Execution Requirements For Otc Derivatives Swaps Under The Frank-Dodd Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act, Willa E. Gibson

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This paper examines Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act entitled the “Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act of 2010” (the “Act”). The Act provides a comprehensive regulatory framework for swap transactions that designates the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the primary regulators of the OTC derivatives swap market. The Act provides a very broad definition of swaps to include most OTC derivatives transactions, and it grants the CFTC regulatory jurisdiction over them with the exception of security-based swaps to which the SEC is granted regulatory jurisdiction. …

Optimal Class Size, Opt-Out Rights, And "Indivisible" Remedies, Jay Tidmarsh, David Betson

Journal Articles

Prepared for a Symposium on the ALI’s Aggregate Litigation Project, this paper examines the ALI’s proposal to permit opt-out rights when remedies and “divisible,” but not to permit them when remedies are “indivisible.” Starting from the ground up, the paper employs economic analysis to determine what the optimal size of a class action should be. We demonstrate that, in some circumstances, the optimal size of a class is a class composed of all victims, while in other cases, the optimal size is smaller. We further argue that courts should consider optimal class size in determining whether to certify a class, …

Foreign Citizens In Transnational Class Actions, Jay Tidmarsh, Linda Sandstrom Simard

Journal Articles

This Article addresses an increasingly important question: When, if ever, should foreign citizens be included as members of an American class action? The existing consensus holds that courts should exclude from class membership those foreign citizens whose country does not recognize an American class judgment. Our analysis begins by establishing that this consensus is flawed. Rather, to minimize the costs associated with relitigation in a foreign forum, we must distinguish between foreign claimants who are likely to commence a subsequent foreign proceeding from those who are unlikely to do so; distinguishing between those who come from recognizing and nonrecognizing countries …

The Psychological Foundations Of Behavioral Law And Economics, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Over the past decade, psychological research has enjoyed a rapidly expanding influence on legal scholarship. This expansion has established a new field—“Behavioral Law and Economics” (BLE). BLE’s principal insight is that human behavior commonly deviates from the predictions of rational choice theory in the marketplace, the election booth, and the courtroom. Because these deviations are predictable, and often harmful, legal rules can be crafted to reduce their undesirable influence. Ironically, BLE seldom recognizes that its intellectual origins lie with psychology more so than economics. This failure leaves BLE open to criticisms that can be answered only by embracing the underlying …

Behavioral Antitrust: A New Approach To The Rule Of Reason After Leegin, William J. Rinner, Avishalom Tor

Journal Articles

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., which replaced the longstanding per-se rule against resale price maintenance (RPM) with a rule of reason approach, has resurrected the debate over RPM. Legal and economic proponents of this practice again point to its potential procompetitive benefits, while RPM detractors emphasize its possible anticompetitive consequences. Despite their disagreements regarding the overall RPM evaluation, however, scholars, the Court, and the limited empirical data appear near-unanimous in agreeing that such arrangements can either increase or decrease efficiency. Consequently, the RPM debate predominantly revolves around theoretical assertions regarding the …

The “Non-Cumulation Clause”: An “Other Insurance” Clause By Another Name, Chris French

Faculty Scholarship

How long-tail liability claims such as asbestos bodily injury claims and environmental property damage claims are allocated among multiple triggered policy years can result in the shifting of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from one party to another. In recent years, insurers have argued that clauses commonly titled, “Prior Insurance and Non-Cumulation of Liability” (referred to herein as “Non-Cumulation Clauses”), which are found in commercial liability policies, should be applied to reduce or eliminate their coverage responsibilities for long-tail liability claims by shifting their coverage responsibilities to insurers that issued policies in earlier policy years. The insurers’ argument …

Biased Advice, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

The modern capitalist society, characterized by decentralized decision making and increasingly sophisticated products and services, turns on relationships of epistemic reliance, where laypersons depend upon advisors to guide their most important decisions. Yet many of those advisors lack real expertise and may be biased by conflicting interests. In such situations, laypersons are likely to make suboptimal decisions that sometimes aggregate into systematic failures, from soaring health care costs to market crashes. Regulators can attempt to manage the symptoms and worst abuses, but the fundamental problem of biased advice will remain. There are many potential policy solutions, from outright bans on …

Rural Hospital Ownership: Medical Service Provision, Market Mix, And Spillover Effects, Jill R. Horwitz, Austin Nichols

Articles

Objective. To test whether nonprofit, for-profit, or government hospital ownership affects medical service provision in rural hospital markets, either directly or through the spillover effects of ownership mix. Data Sources/Study Setting. Data are from the American Hospital Association, U.S. Census, CMS Healthcare Cost Report Information System and Prospective Payment System Minimum Data File, and primary data collection for geographic coordinates. The sample includes all nonfederal, general medical, and surgical hospitals located outside of metropolitan statistical areas and within the continental United States from 1988 to 2005. Study Design. We estimate multivariate regression models to examine the effects of (1) hospital …

Narrowing The Tax Gap Through Presumptive Taxation, Kyle D. Logue, Gustavo G. Vettori

Articles

Can the United States government significantly reduce the federal tax gap? This question has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention over the years and has been the focus of numerous government reports. The "tax gap" is the official term for the Treasury Department's estimate of the difference between what American taxpayers should pay to the federal government in a given tax year (that is, the amount of tax they owe, based on a reasonable interpretation of existing tax laws as applied to particular taxpayers' circumstances) and what they actually pay. This estimate is derived from painstaking and detailed audits …

Free Rider: A Justification For Mandatory Medical Insurance Under Health Care Reform?, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

Section 1501 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act added section 5000A to the Internal Revenue Code to require most individuals in the United States, beginning in the year 2014, to purchase an established minimum level of medical insurance. This requirement, which is enforced by a penalty imposed on those who fail to comply, is sometimes referred to as the “individual mandate.” The individual mandate is one element of a vast change to the provision of medical care that Congress implemented in 2010. The individual mandate has proved to be controversial and has been the subject of a number …

The Status Of Recognition And Enforcement Of Judgments In The European Union, Michael D. Larobina, Richard L. Pate

WCBT Working Papers

International trade and the free movement of people are inevitably followed by legal disputes. Such litigants require an efficient and predictable dispute resolution mechanism capable of handling cases between diverse nationals. An essential part of such mechanism is a clearly defined process of judgment enforcement across national boundaries. In the past several decades, the European Union (“EU”) has necessarily addressed judgment enforcement across the boundaries of its member nations (“Member States”). Citizens of the EU need to prosecute and defend their legal rights in their home and in other EU member states. Presently, the EU is, again, considering such issues …

Report To Parliament - On The Readiness Of First Nations Communities And Organizations To Comply With The Canadian Human Rights Act, Naiomi Metallic

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Enacted in 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) aims to ensure equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination in federal jurisdiction. At the time that the CHRA was passed, however, it was understood that adjustments would have to be made before the federal government and First Nations operating under the Indian Act could be fully compliant with the new law. As a result, section 67 of the CHRA explicitly shielded the federal government and First Nations community governments from complaints of discrimination relating to actions arising from or pursuant to the Indian Act. This was intended to be a …