Holmes’s “bad man” view of the common law and his effort to capture contractual liability as option to perform or pay damages grew out of a debate he was having with another legal scholar in an exchange of letters that has largely been forgotten. Holmes’s opponent in this debate —...

When a firm encounters financial distress, there is a significant possibility that, at some point, the firm itself should be shut down and its assets put to a better use. But Chapter 11 and indeed all market-mimicking reorganization regimes other than a speedy auction entrust the shutdown...

This paper revisits two examples of vertical integration in the early automobile industry: GM and Fisher Body on the one hand and Ford Motor and Keim Mills on the other. The paper shows that asset-specific investment and the fear of hold-up played at best a negligible role. What mattered in the...

This paper considers the proposed settlement agreement between Google and the Authors Guild relating to Google Book Search (GBS). I focus on three issues that raise antitrust and competition policy concerns. First, the agreement calls for Google to act as agent for rightsholders in setting the...