A market can have a lemon's problem when one party to the transaction has far superior information to the other and defects are not obvious. The classic bad car, the "lemon" led to the name for this theory. A lemon's market is inefficient. Both consumers and reputable sellers of high quality...

In the last dozen years, economists have produced a considerable body of research suggesting that the historical origin of a country’s laws is highly correlated with a broad range of its legal rules and regulations, as well as with economic outcomes. Much of this research has dealt with rules...

In 2009, the Seventh Circuit ruled in U.S. v. Apex Oil that certain types of injunctions requiring firms to clean up previously released toxic chemicals were not dischargeable in bankruptcy. This was widely perceived to represent a split with Sixth Circuit precedent, although Supreme Court cert...

How do firms' efforts to prevent harm to third parties change as they approach, enter, and then exit bankruptcy? To help answer this, I investigate a panel of roughly 350 US firms, all of which declare bankruptcy and are regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for pollutants they release into...

By treating derivatives and financial repurchase agreements much more favorably than it treats other financial vehicles, American bankruptcy law subsidizes these arrangements relative to other financing channels. By subsidizing them, the rules weaken market discipline during ordinary financial...

Systemically important financial institutions are broadly considered to impose a risk to the entire economy upon failure; thus taxpayers act upon their failure, providing them with an implied insurance policy for ongoing liquidity. Yet taxpayers frequently provide de-facto liquidity insurance for...

Lehman's bankruptcy has triggered calls for new approaches to rescuing systemically important institutions. This essay assesses and confirms the need for a new approach. It identifies the inadequacies of the Bankruptcy Code and advocates an approach modeled on the current regime governing...

We present a model of an insolvent firm that may take advantage of a "soft-touch" government creditor in order to buy time before filing for reorganization, behavior we refer to as "claims substitution." Parameters in the model reflect the enforcement of absolute priority and government priority...