Financial regulation should be countercyclical, strengthening during speculative booms to contain excessive leverage and loosening following crises so as to not limit credit extension in hard times. And yet, financial regulation in fact tends to be procyclical, strengthening following crises and...

Can someone running a business do good while doing well? Can they benefit society and the environment while still making money? Supporters of social enterprises believe the answer is yes, as these companies aim at both making money for shareholders while also pursuing other social benefits....

There has been extensive discussion recently of how corporate stakeholders other than shareholders should be treated within corporate governance, but little examination of whether and how companies actually involve stakeholders in decision-making. This Article surveys disclosure by the S&P 100...

This paper considers how some recent developments affect our understanding of the relative superiority of our mixed federal system of corporate lawmaking as compared with either a purely state system or a purely national one. The mixed federal system can potentially capture the gains of...

Economists and scholars in law and economics typically assume that preferences are exogenous; that is, that the policies being considered will not change the preferences of economic actors. This assumption is wrong for many policies that law and economics scholars study. This essay examines some...

Law and economics holds that people are rational maximizers of their own self-interest. What people regard as being in their interest turns enormously on their priors -- which include, among other things, their beliefs, temperaments, sense of identity and identification, values, and other...

Interpersonal trust is currently receiving widespread attention in the academy. Many legal scholars incorrectly assume that interpersonal trust is an unmitigated good (or bad) and that legal policy should therefore be crafted to maximize (or minimize) trust. A more nuanced understanding of trust...

Taxation is one of the few things that we can take as a given in life. People will always look for ways to minimize the tax burdens that governments seek to impose on them. Indeed, there is a very well-developed industry devoted to that end. How should governments proceed? We develop an economic...