Distressed firms with publicly issued bonds often seek to restructure the bonds' payment terms to better reflect the firm's weakened repayment capabilities and thereby avoid a bankruptcy. But Depression-era securities law bars the bondholders from agreeing via a binding out-of-bankruptcy vote to...

This article demonstrates that the Trust Indenture Act, a Depression-era statute governing bond indentures, cannot have been intended to prohibit debt restructurings like the one in Marblegate. In that decision, a federal court recently held that a debt restructuring violated the non-impairment...

This article responds to the question: "Capitalism: What has gone wrong, what needs to change and how to fix it" for a special volume on capitalism in Oxford Review of Economic Policy. Debates on capitalism get muddled by blind spots about essential institutions, particularly effective...

This paper critically examines the conventional view that the lack of fiduciary duty protections for corporate shareholders in civil law systems explains crucial differences in corporate structure and finance. It questions the thesis that the structure of civil law systems militates against the...

This book examines the law governing asset management in a wide range of commercial contexts across 15 jurisdictions of the European Union. The study includes the basic features of the available legal institutions (for example, whether they provide bankruptcy protection or allow free choice of...

Using aggregate data from national accounts, we study whether strengthening and harmonizing securities regulation across the European Union increases household equity ownership. We find a significant increase in the proportion of liquid assets invested in equity, both when a household's own...

Blockchain - distributed ledger technology - is seen as heralding what some call the internet of trust because it provides an immutable chain of authority that is difficult to hack. Satoshi Nakamoto created an algorithm that required immense amounts of computing power to solve cryptographic...

This written testimony accompanied Professor J.W. Verret's oral testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This testimony outlines flaws in the Trust Agreement established by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to manage the government's $180 Billion investment in...