Opening Remarks,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Seattle University Law Review
Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda
Seattle University Law Review
Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter
Seattle University Law Review
Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
Seattle University Law Review
In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii
Seattle University Law Review
In <em>The Modern Corporation and Private Property</em>, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means would use AT&T as a prime example of what they saw as a dangerous new trend, the replacement of ownership-based capitalism with giant corporations controlled by a small group of propertyless managers. Indeed, AT&T became Berle and Means’ favorite example. . . . As we shall see, however, the claim that AT&T was a leading example of the separation of ownership from management is incomplete. More importantly, the common interpretation of Berle and Means’ work is mistaken, placing the emphasis incorrectly on the number of shareholders and reading …
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans,
2010
Chapman University
An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart J. Wilson, David W. Findlay, James W. Meehan Jr., Charissa P. Wellford, Karl Schurter
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
The payday loan industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer financial services market in the United States. We design an environment similar to the one that payday loan customers face and then conduct a laboratory experiment to examine what effect, if any, the existence of payday loans has on individuals' abilities to manage and to survive financial setbacks. Our primary objective is to examine whether access to payday loans improves or worsens the likelihood of financial survival in our experiment. We also test the degree to which people's use of payday loans affects their ability to …
The Birth Of Corporate Governance,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
Seattle University Law Review
Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch
Seattle University Law Review
The Modern Corporation & Private Property is a paradigm-shifting analysis of the modern corporation. The book is perhaps best known for the insights of Berle and Means about the separation of ownership from control and the consequences of that separation for the allocation of power within the corporation. The Berle and Means story focuses on the shareholder as the owner of the corporation. Berle and Means saw the mechanism of centralized management—in which the shareholder retains the economic interest but not the control rights associated with ownership—as threatening the conception of shareholder interests in terms of property rights. In particular, …
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter
Seattle University Law Review
This essay, published in a symposium on the work of Adolf Berle, approaches the Berle-Dodd debate from the perspective that corporate managers have responsibilities beyond pursuing the interests of shareholders. Stock based executive compensation, designed to align managers’ interests with those of shareholders, has, in the investment banking industry in particular, failed to avert, and may have caused, managers (in this case, bankers) to take excessive risks that in the present financial crisis inflicted great damage on creditors and on society as a whole. We describe here the broad outlines of a proposal that we will discuss in future publications …
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman
Seattle University Law Review
Classic works, Mark Mizruchi and Lisa Fein argued, share a particular fate. Authors often cite classic works without reading them—or without reading them carefully. . . . Yet perhaps no single work fits the above description better than one of the most important books on the large corporation ever published: Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property. One can speculate that few works in the social sciences have been as often cited and as little read. As a consequence, we would expect The Modern Corporation to be a good candidate for either selective interpretation or …
Foreign Portfolio Investment Inflows To The United States: The Impact Of Investor Risk Aversion And U.S. Stock Market Performance,
2010
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Foreign Portfolio Investment Inflows To The United States: The Impact Of Investor Risk Aversion And U.S. Stock Market Performance, Peter V. Egly, David W. Johnk, Daniel Perez Liston
Economics and Finance Faculty Publications
This paper examines the relationship of net foreign portfolio investment inflows, namely corporate bonds and stocks, to two pull factors; investor risk aversion and the US stock market. Using a vector autoregressive model, we find that positive shocks to the stock market elicit an insignificant response to the net corporate bond inflow and a significant short term positive response to the net corporate stock inflow. The net corporate stock inflow does not respond to risk aversion, while bond inflows do exhibit a significant midterm response to an increase in risk aversion. Consistent with previous empirical findings, the results show that …
Hyperbolic Systems Modeling Currency Hoarding,
2010
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Hyperbolic Systems Modeling Currency Hoarding, Elena Quercioli, Jeffrey Rauch
Economics and Finance Faculty Publications
We introduce and analyse linear systems of hyperbolic partial differential equations that model the replacement and hoarding of currency. The goal is to deduce the hoarding behavior from observations of circulating bills. The large time asymptotics of the models is identified in all cases. The mathematical analysis is novel, partly because of nonstandard boundary conditions. To identify parameters we suggest the measurement of the age histogram of notes, the rate of growth, and the retard in wear of notes due to hoarding. In our models that suffices to identify all but one quantity.
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Seattle University Law Review
Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux
Seattle University Law Review
We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …
Credit Risk And Real Capital : An Examination Of Swiss Banking Sector Default Risk Using Cvar,
2010
Edith Cowan University
Credit Risk And Real Capital : An Examination Of Swiss Banking Sector Default Risk Using Cvar, Robert J. Powell, David E. Allen
Research outputs pre 2011
The global financial crisis (GFC) has placed the creditworthiness of banks under intense scrutiny. In particular, capital adequacy has been called into question. Current capital requirements make no allowance for capital erosion caused by movements in the market value of assets. This paper examines default probabilities of Swiss banks under extreme conditions using structural modeling techniques. Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and conditional probability of default (CPD) techniques are used to measure capital erosion. Significant increase in probability of default (PD) is found during the GFC period. The market asset value based approach indicates a much higher PD than external …
The Role And Relevance Of Domain Knowledge, Perceptions Of Planning Importance, And Risk Tolerance In Predicting Savings Intentions,
2010
Edith Cowan University
The Role And Relevance Of Domain Knowledge, Perceptions Of Planning Importance, And Risk Tolerance In Predicting Savings Intentions, Peter Croy, Paul Gerrans, Craig Speelman
Research outputs pre 2011
The need for individuals to increase retirement savings has been widely promoted, yet our understanding of the motivations of individuals to save at a higher rate remains sparse. This paper reports the findings of a survey of 2300 retirement savings fund members and their motivations to contribute more to savings and to actively manage their investment strategy. Utilising the theory of planned behavior, the study reveals respondent’s self-reported attitudes, subjective norms and perceptions of behavioral control account for a high proportion of the variance in behavioral intention. Contrary to expectations, the study finds that respondent’s risk tolerance adds little to …
Pricing Bond Yields In The European Bond Market,
2010
Claremont McKenna College
Pricing Bond Yields In The European Bond Market, David Cook
CMC Senior Theses
This paper analyzes macroeconomic factors and their effect on 2-year government bonds of 11 countries in the European Monetary Union. I specifically looked at how a simultaneous budget and trade surplus effect a country's bond yield spread relative to Germany's bond yield. My model showed that double surplus countries have a larger yield spread than countries that do not have a double surplus.
Conflict Of Interest?: Executive-Auditor Relationship And The Likelihood Of A Sec-Prompted Restatement,
2010
Claremont McKenna College
Conflict Of Interest?: Executive-Auditor Relationship And The Likelihood Of A Sec-Prompted Restatement, Henry Lyford
CMC Senior Theses
This study examines the relationship between executives and their independent auditor to see if there is a conflict of interest in their interaction. This study was motivated by the meltdowns, partially caused by fraudulent accounting, of many public companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the consequent passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This study examines the variables of audit fees, fees for other services, and auditor tenure to see if they are connected with the occurrence of an SEC-prompted restatement. The results show no significant correlation between amount of fees and the likelihood of an SEC-prompted restatement but …
China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?,
2010
Montclair State University
China And Brazil: Potential Allies Or Just Brics In The Wall?, Anthony Petros Spanakos
Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
Brazil is an increasingly important actor in global governance and for China specifically. Sino-Brazilian relations have deepened considerably but they remain concentrated in areas of trade and investment. There is also considerable overlap in interests between the two countries in other areas, such as diplomatic and political relations. At the same time, China must manage carefully important differences that exist over the enlargement of the UN and the potential challenge to the Brazilian industry.
Risking Returns: Moving From Public To Private Equity,
2010
Singapore Management University
Risking Returns: Moving From Public To Private Equity, Aurobindo Ghosh
Research Collection School Of Economics
The notion of risk identifies a project that matches with the risk appetite of an entrepreneur not necessarily the investors. This can explain why entrepreneurs would start up companies but it cannot explain why ex-post the investors continue, given that a diversified portfolio of publicly traded assets could potentially generate similar return with lower risk. We re-evaluate the evidence through performance measures using relative probability distributions of public and private equity funds, and identify the nature of the deviations. We observe that the heterogeneity in different investor classes are greatly reduced using standard covariates to identify the choice between public …
