The priority structure of debt claims against business entities is a key feature of corporate finance. The American Bankruptcy Institute's Commission to Study Reform of Chapter 11 recently recommended that U.S. bankruptcy law grant junior, out-of-the-money creditors a distribution in the...

This paper examines common arrangements for separating control from cash flow rights: stock pyramids, cross-ownership structures, and dual class equity structures. We describe the ways in which such arrangements enable a controlling shareholder or group to maintain a complete lock on the control...

The law and economics movement has transformed the analysis of private law in the United States and increasingly around the world. As the field developed from 1970 to the early 2000s, scholars have developed countless insights about the operation and effects of law and legal institutions....

The design of legal obligations, whether by a public body such as a legislature or by private contract, should anticipate the enforcement process that induces compliance. Judicial enforcement is costly and imperfect, largely because of limits on the court's ability to detect facts accurately. In...