This manuscript summarizes a speech given at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia on May 14, 2013. The speech begins with a discussion of ethical theory and how it can be applied to the topic of government regulation of business, and proceeds to summarize some recent studies on the costs...

Should managers be liable for ill-conceived business decisions? One answer is given by U.S. courts, which almost never hold managers liable for their mistakes. In this paper, we address the question in a theoretical model of delegated decision making. We find that courts should indeed be lenient...

This Article seeks to challenge the corporate-constructed image of American business and American industry. By focusing on the automotive industry and particularly on the tenuous relationship between the rhetoric of automotive industry advertising and the realities of doctrinal corporate law, I...

This article is based on a lecture at Nihon College of Law in Tokyo and draws on William K.S. Wang & Marc I. Steinberg, Insider Trading (Oxford University Press 3d ed. 2010); and William K.S. Wang, Stock Market Insider Trading: Victims, Violators, and Remedies–Including an Analogy to Fraud in...

Insider trading, the most conspicuous misbehaviour of the stock market, is additionally one of the most troublesome & difficult one to crack by regulators around the globe. Insider trading is a term dependent upon numerous definitions and meanings and it envelops both lawful and disallowed...

Reverse termination fees (RTFs) are required payments by bidders when they “walk away” from a merger or acquisition, and vary significantly in size and design. In a large sample of manually collected U.S. deal contracts involving publicly traded bidders and targets, we examine the...

This paper describes the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality and in so doing investigates the degree of insurance to income shocks. It combines panel data on income from the PSID with consumption data from repeated CEX cross-sections and distinguishes between permanent...

In this paper, we quantitatively analyze to what extent a benevolent government should issue debt in a model where households are subject to idiosyncratic productivity shocks, insurance markets are missing and borrowing is restricted. In this environment, issuing government bonds facilitates...

This paper analyzes the welfare costs of business cycles when workers face uninsurable idiosyncratic labor income risk. In accordance with the previous literature, this paper decomposes labor income risk into an aggregate and an idiosyncratic component, but in contrast to the previous...

This paper studies the effects of both labor market conditions and asset poverty on the property crimes involvement of American males. Since the mid 60's the property crimes arrest rate has been four times higher for black males if compared to white ones. Another set of stylised facts show for...