In the U.S., unlike much of the rest of the world, the mixing of banking and commerce is largely prohibited. One exception is industrial loan companies (ILCs), state chartered depository institutions some of which are owned by commercial parents. In 2006, the FDIC put a moratorium on the...

Recent rate increases by U.S. freight railroads have refocused attention on regulation, deregulation, and regulatory reforms in the railroad industry. Legislation introduced into Congress would render a variety of railroad behavior newly subject to the jurisdiction of the antitrust statutes,...

A variety of proposals for creating more competition within the railroad sector are under consideration in countries throughout the world. Brazil, though something of latecomer to wider infrastructure reform, has recently taken large steps in restructuring its railroad system. This paper...

During a recent study of how 1991 federal sentencing guidelines have affected the penalities that federal courts impose on public coporations, we performed an independent evaluation of the quality of the data on corporate sanctions released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to the public (as...

This research addresses the question of how many registered trademarks are optimal to protect a brand. By assigning property rights in brand names, trademarks give firms the ability to protect their brands from free riders. The optimal number of trademarks depends on factors that affect expected...

This paper presents empirical evidence on why firm become corporate criminals. We investigate the relationship between corporate ownership structure and the prior probability of observing corporate crime.

The intuition tat poorly performing corporations are more likely to engage in crime is found through-out the contemporary literature on the economics of corporate misconduct. Yet little evidence of such a relationship exists. This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between prior...