The quot;Lake Wobegon Effect,quot; which is widely cited as a potential cause for rising CEO pay, is said to occur because no firm wants to admit to having a CEO who is below average, and so no firm allows its CEO's pay package to lag market expectations. We develop a game-theoretic model of...

The paper deals with with one possible Utopian model, according to which law is an important part of the speculative Utopian Myth. This model is illustrated by using two narratives, created centuries apart. Both stories, from Hebrew sources, refer, in some detail to imaginary societies. Both...

This paper studies the influence of the legal environment and economic conditions on the form taken by life insurance company incorporations between 1900 and 1949. It identifies three key factors associated with mutual formation - low initial capital requirements for mutuals, regulatory...

A basic question for the design of bankruptcy law concerns whether value should be divided in accordance with absolute priority. Research done in the past decade has suggested that deviations from absolute priority have beneficial ex ante effects. In contrast, this paper shows that ex post...

This survey of the law and economics of consumer finance discusses economic models of consumer lending, and evaluates the major consumer finance laws in light of them. We focus on usury laws, restrictions on creditor remedies such as the ban on expansive security interests, bankruptcy law,...

The European Directive on Markets in Financial Instruments (hereafter MiFID) and its implementing Directive (hereafter Implementing Directive) impose on investment firms among others rules of conduct that have to be respected when providing investment services to their clients. The aim of these...

This article discusses how the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo, 125 S. Ct. 1627 (2005) (Dura) has, will, and can impact the ways plaintiffs plead loss causation and estimate economic damages in class action securities cases

Risk management provisions can be divided into provisions that require companies to have risk management systems in place, provisions that require the disclosure of information on such systems, and provisions that require the disclosure of information on actual risks. Disclosure requirements...

This paper uses data from the 2001 and 2007 American Housing Surveys (AHS) and the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to document and assess the impact of increased use of home equity lines and decreased private mortgage insurance (PMI) on mortgage markets. The data confirms that in the...