We argue that partisan elected judges have an incentive to redistribute wealth from out-of-state defendants (nonvoters) to in-state plaintiffs (voters). We first test the hypothesis by using cross-state data. We find a significant partisan effect after controlling for differences in injuries,...

The corporate governance literature is rich with empirical tests of the relation between board composition and firm performance. We consider the effect of board composition on a different measure of performance, the probability a firm will be sued by shareholders. We find firms that are...

Corporations in the United States have come under intense scrutiny for how they report their finances. Enforcement of financial regulation in the United States depends on both the actions of the SEC and private citizens. Because of limited enforcement resources, the SEC argues that private suits...

It is generally agreed that boards are endogenously determined institutions that serve both an oversight and advisory role in a firm. While the oversight role of boards has been extensively studied, relatively few studies have examined the advisory role of corporate boards. We examine the...

Oliver Williamson has coined the term “fundamental transformation”. It captures the following situation: before they strike a deal, buyer and seller are protected by competition. Yet thereafter they find themselves in a bilateral monopoly. With common knowledge of standard preferences, both...

Under the federal judicial recusal rules, judges and justices who directly own stock in companies must recuse themselves in cases involving those companies. However, there has been little effort to measure the impact of these recusals on the pool of judges and justices that hear cases involving...