The Supreme Court was presented with an opportunity to bring fundamental reform to securities class actions last term in Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. The Court ducked that opportunity, passing the buck to Congress to undo the mess that the Court had created a quarter century prior...

The paper examines the interdependence of historical legacies and current contextual factors as determinants of economic and political performance. It shows that behavioral patterns based on identical legacies could lead to very different (if not the opposite) results in regions with different...