Private legal systems ("PLSs") are to the universe of law as dark matter is to the physical universe: while PLSs are invisible to the casual study of law, they are observable by their impact on individuals' behavior and by their interaction with the public legal system. PLSs expand to fill voids...

From the legal point of view, "person" is not co-extensive with "human being." Nor is it synonymous with "rational being" or "responsible subject." Much of the confusion surrounding the issue of the firm’s legal personality is due to the tendency to address the matter with only these, all too...

The paper explores the current changes in the global strategy of the elite of the international oil companies, the so-called supermajors, within the context of the potential business model innovation. The work aims to make two main contributions. First, by analyzing recent shifts in the world...

The emergence of digital technologies has significantly reduced the economic costs of data—search, storage, computation, transmission—and enabled new economic activities. Over the years, firms able to create a platform-based ecosystem have become a force of “creative destruction.”...

Firm integration is fundamentally shaped by contractual frictions. But do better contracting institutions, reducing these frictions, induce firms to be more or less deeply integrated? To address this question, this paper exploits unique micro data on ownership shares across more than 200,000...

This paper analyzes decisions of managers on restructuring before privatization. After privatization, the new owner decides on manager's future based on his/her beliefs on manager's quality. Manager and owner are playing a signaling game, in which restructuring is a signal of manager's quality....

I study the properties of optimal long-term contracts in an environment in which the agent's type evolves stochastically over time. The model stylizes a buyer-seller relationship but the results apply quite naturally to many contractual situations including regulation and optimal income -...

This paper studies the impact of decentralisation on corruption in a hierarchy, where decentralisation is intended as the delegation of power to lower levels. More decentralisation has a positive impact on corruption, raising individual propensity to accept bribes. It has also a two-fold effect...

An important component of corporate governance is the regulation of significant transactions – mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring. This paper (a chapter in Oxford Handbook on Corporate Law and Governance, forthcoming) reviews how M&A and restructuring are regulated by corporate and...

This chapter first describes the standard economic analysis of privacy, data protection and surveillance, looking at the costs and benefits to different parties and the incentives each therefore has, as well as the aggregate social welfare impacts of their decisions. It then considers the market...