An important goal of financial risk regulation is promoting coordination. Law's coordinating function minimizes costly conflict and encourages greater uniformity among market participants. Likewise, privately developed market standards, such as standard-form contracts and rules incorporated into...

This chapter, from the forthcoming Research Handbook on the Economics of Corporate Law (Claire Hill & Brett McDonnell, eds.), provides an introduction to the law and economic theory relating to creditors and debt governance.The chapter begins with a look at the traditional role of debt, focusing...

The traditional agency cost framing of the firm is premised on the low-cost ability of banks to monitor borrowers and enforce loan covenants in order to mitigate credit risk. Covenants and monitoring constitute a principal governance function of debt, whose effectiveness is tied to the...

The traditional law and finance focus on agency costs presumes, without acknowledgement, that the premise that diversified public shareholders are the cheapest risk-bearers is immutable. In this Essay, we raise the possibility that changes in the capital markets have called this premise into...

Efforts to control bank risk address the wrong problem in the wrong way. They presume that the financial crisis was caused by CEOs who failed to supervise risk-taking employees. The responses focus on executive pay, believing that executives will bring non-executives into line - using incentives...

Comprising essays specially commissioned for the volume, leading scholars who have shaped the field of corporate law and governance explore and critique developments in this vibrant and expanding area and offer possible directions for future research.