I analyze the basis of the market economy in classical Rome, from the perspective of personal-versus-impersonal exchange and focusing on the role of the state in providing market-enabling institutions. I start by reviewing the central conflict in all exchanges between those holding and those...

How do firms' efforts to prevent harm to third parties change as they approach, enter, and then exit bankruptcy? To help answer this, I investigate a panel of roughly 350 US firms, all of which declare bankruptcy and are regulated under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for pollutants they release into...

I re-code the quot;Antidirector Rights Indexquot; (ADRI) of shareholder protection rules from La Porta et al. 1998 for 46 countries in 1997 and 2005 with the help of local lawyers. My emphasis is on consistent coding; I do not change the original variable definitions. Consistently coded ADRI...

The Antidirector Rights Index from La Porta et al.'s Law and Finance (1998) has been used as a measure of shareholder protection in almost 100 published studies. With articles by legal scholars questioning the accuracy of index values for several countries, I undertake a systematic study to...

The chapter analyzes the basis of the market economy in classical Rome, from the perspective of personal vs impersonal exchange and focusing on the role of the state in providing market-enabling institutions. It starts by reviewing the central conflict in all exchanges between those holding and...

In 2009, the Seventh Circuit ruled in U.S. v. Apex Oil that certain types of injunctions requiring firms to clean up previously released toxic chemicals were not dischargeable in bankruptcy. This was widely perceived to represent a split with Sixth Circuit precedent, although Supreme Court cert...

Impersonal exchange increases trade and specialization opportunities, encouraging economic growth. However it requires the support of sophisticated public institutions. This paper explains how Classical Rome provided such support in the main areas of economic activity by relying on public...

This article empirically investigates the impacts of the board’s rejection of shareholder proposals on corporate value and the appropriate approach to regulation. Using a hand-collected dataset on shareholder-proposal-rejection incidents in China, I find that a rejection decision would on...

Local governors that hold office for longer periods are thought to be more likely to collude with various groups to increase their own benefit through long-term interaction. There is no term limit for local governors in Japan, seemingly causing such collusive behavior. However, since 1987, local...

This chapter proposes two hypotheses on the publicity requirement and the limitations of possession to provide information for legal titling. It then tests these hypotheses by examining how legal systems deal with possession in movable and immovable property, and comparing actual and documentary...