Summarizes and further develops themes from "Secret Liens and the Financial Crisis of 2008".Secret Liens:This article explains the roots of financial crises in one of the oldest and most fundamental problems of commercial law: hidden leverage. Common law courts wrestled with this problem for...

Financial analyses such as valuation, solvency and capital adequacy play a crucial role in bankruptcy. Over the course of the 20th century, methods of financial analysis in bankruptcy have shifted from earnings multiples to discounted cash flow (DCF) and recently to market-based approaches such...

Private firms often withhold information or contest scientific knowledge when public revelation could lead to costly regulations or liability. This concealment leads to negative externalities and public harm. But what if private firms' superior knowledge and self-interest could be harnessed to...

The U.S. economy is growing more slowly than it can and should be growing because it does not invest enough in infrastructure, science, and education. There is an important procedural obstacle to funding public investments — a process of scoring the economic effect of legislation. This process...

Contract law treats consumer attention as if it were unlimited. We instead view consumer attention as a scarce resource that must be conserved. We argue that consumer contracts generate negative externalities by overwhelming consumers with information that depletes their attention and prevents...

Accompanying slide presentation available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=4019705Pigouvian taxes are often used to limit environmental externalities such as pollution. We argue that consumer contracts generate externalities by overwhelming consumers’ attention. Depleting each consumer’s...