Economic concentration has become a political and social issue, beyond its direct economic implications. Public outrage has been expressed at the concentration of economic power in the hands of few large conglomerates and those wielding power through them. In this paper I explore the legal...

One of the fundamental questions in business tax reform is whether to allow firms to immediately expense investments or require economic cost recovery. The conventional view is that expensing would generate stronger growth effects holding revenues constant. This view is rooted in traditional...

Taxation and corporate governance interact in various ways. Tax law influences corporate governance structures in companies by offering tax privileges or imposing penalties. On the other hand actual corporate governance structures in place have an impact on the way companies manage their tax...

Corporations that are governed on a one-vote per share basis create a plutocracy. This undermines democracy as corporations govern most economic activity in nations. Because of this and unexpected corporate failures, significant political constituencies demand that government increases the scope...

Becker and Fuest (forthcoming) provides a new explanation for the important and puzzling link between limited liability and corporate taxation. The authors argue that a corporate tax on all entrepreneurs with limited liability is optimal when entrepreneurs can offset potential losses and when...

This essay explores the policy bases for, and the political economy of, the law's long-standing regulation of corporate political speech. The essay has three parts. First, it contends that the conventional justifications for regulating corporate interventions in politics - that corporate...

Comparative corporate governance has captured the interest of economists and legal scholars during the past two decades. In view of intensified economic globalization, it has become apparent that the public corporation, one of the keystones of the modern market economy, has produced very...

We document that, since 2011, mortgage lenders reduced credit to middle-class households by 15% and increased credit to wealthy households by 21%. Credit to low-income households was unaffected. Results hold at the individual-loan level and zip-code level, and at the intensive margin and...

Traditional economic theory holds that a business cash-flow tax is superior to a business income tax because it is more efficient and progressive. But much of the literature espousing this view does not explicitly specify the full range of assumptions underlying these claims, let alone explore...

This paper discusses different means of regulation, taking the example of post-crisis financial markets regulation. It is remarkable that the general discussion about reforming financial regulation centres on the substantive standards of the new rules and neglects the problem of choosing the...