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,...

CalFed Bancorp is one of 126 Samp;Ls suing the U.S. government for breach of contract related to supervisory goodwill, a form of goodwill created by the acquisition of insolvent thrifts during the early 1980s. Before a determination of damages in its lawsuit, CalFed announced and issued a...

In this paper we investigate the history of negotiable instruments and the holder in due course rule and contrast their function and consequences in the 1700s with their function and consequences today. We explain how the holder in due course rule works and identify ways in which the rule's...

The relationship between corporate governance and financial stability is an intermediate one. Firms have no obligation to take financial stability into account except when the law or the applicable regulation imposes it. In several fields this is the case: regulation of auditors or credit rating...

This paper deals with the corporate governance thematic area of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Its contribution to the literature is twofold: (1) It provides additional evidence that a microeconomic perspective of studying governance leads to a better understanding of key reform...

This study offers an examination of the decision and implementation in New Zealand of a personal property security regime based in North American Article 9 Models, with specific focus on the approach in force in Saskatchewan at that time. Subsequent to the New Zealand Personal Property...

This paper seeks to explain the widespread use of independent directors in the governance of VC-backed firms, and in particular their use as quot;tie-breakersquot; on the boards of these firms. Allocating a tie-breaking vote to an unbiased quot;arbiterquot; commits the entrepreneur and VCs to...

This paper analyzes debt contracting in the presence of gambling on resurrection under different bankruptcy regimes. Ex-ante effects on investment levels, interest rates and profit, and ex-post effects on debtor's strategy choices are examined. A model of a debtor-creditor relationship is...

In project finance, sponsors and lenders set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that receives limited or no-recourse lending for the design, construction and management of a specific project with limited economic life. A network of nonfinancial contracts (NFCs) is set up in order to limit the...

In the game theory literature, Garrett Hardin's famous allegory of the tragedy of the commons has been modeled as a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma, labeled the Herder Problem (or, sometimes, the Commons Dilemma). This brief paper argues that important differences in the institutional...