In an earlier companion essay, Regulating in the Dark, I contended that there is a systemic pattern in major U.S. financial regulation: (i) enactment is invariably crisis driven, adopted at a time when there is a paucity of information regarding what has transpired, (ii) resulting in...

Corporations operate in numerous markets -- product markets, labor markets, capital markets. This chapter focuses on the market that is the prerequisite for firms' successful operation in all other markets, as it is the market that frames their organizational structure and governance: the market...

An extensive literature has analyzed the accountability of administrative agencies, and in particular, their relationship to Congress. A well-established strand in the literature emphasizes that Congress retains control over agencies by their design, with a focus on the structure and process by...

This article provides an analysis of why regulatory competition in corporate law has operated, for the most part, successfully in the United States, and critiques the position of commentators who are skeptical of the significance and extent of state competition. The article begins by setting out...

This paper provides an evaluation of the substantive corporate governance mandates of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that is informed by the relevant empirical accounting and finance literature and the political dynamics that produced the mandates. The empirical literature provides a metric for...

Major financial legislation is invariably enacted in the wake of a financial crisis. Yet legislating following a crisis is hazardous, because information is scarce regarding causes of the crisis, let alone what would be an appropriate response. Compounding the lack of information, crisis-driven...

Confidential voting in corporate proxies is a principal recommendation in activist institutional investors' guidelines for corporate governance reforms. This paper examines the impact of the adoption of confidential corporate proxy voting on proposal outcomes through a panel data set of...

Event studies are among the most successful uses of econometrics in policy analysis. By providing an anchor for measuring the impact of events on investor wealth, the methodology offers a fruitful means for evaluating the welfare implications of private and government actions. This paper is the...