This coming Friday (Oct. 12), the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Law School will host what promises to be a terrific symposium on executive compensation.  Presenters include TOTM alumnus Todd Henderson (Chicago Law), Jill Fisch (Penn Law), Jesse Fried (Harvard Law), David Walker (Boston U Law), David Larcker (Stanford Business), Stephen L. Brown (TIAA-CREF), Paul Hodgson (GMI Ratings), William Mulligan (Primus Venture Partners).

Here’s a description of the symposium:

Executive compensation has become the most contentious issue in corporate governance. Many claim that poorly designed executive compensation helped cause the recent financial collapse, but critics disagree widely about what was wrong with those designs. Management and investors are wrestling over their roles in structuring executive compensation through say-on-pay and over the role of proxy advisory services. The symposium brings together prominent practicing attorneys, institutional investors, proxy advisors, and academics to discuss the current issues and where we are, or should be, headed.

If you’re in Cleveland and able to make it to the symposium (for which 4.5 hours of CLE is available), do it.  Otherwise, check out the webcast.

Filed under: announcements, executive compensation

My paper with Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg (D.C. Circuit; NYU Law), Behavioral Law & Economics: Its Origins, Fatal Flaws, and Implications for Liberty, is posted to SSRN and now published in the Northwestern Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

Behavioral economics combines economics and psychology to produce a body of evidence that individual choice behavior departs from that predicted by neoclassical economics in a number of decision-making situations. Emerging close on the heels of behavioral economics over the past thirty years has been the “behavioral law and economics” movement and its philosophical foundation — so-called “libertarian paternalism.” Even the least paternalistic version of behavioral law and economics makes two central claims about government regulation of seemingly irrational behavior: (1) the behavioral regulatory approach, by manipulating the way in which choices are framed for consumers, will increase welfare as measured by each individual’s own preferences and (2) a central planner can and will implement the behavioral law and economics policy program in a manner that respects liberty and does not limit the choices available to individuals. This Article draws attention to the second and less scrutinized of the behaviorists’ claims, viz., that behavioral law and economics poses no significant threat to liberty and individual autonomy. The behaviorists’ libertarian claims fail on their own terms. So long as behavioral law and economics continues to ignore the value to economic welfare and individual liberty of leaving individuals the freedom to choose and hence to err in making important decisions, “libertarian paternalism” will not only fail to fulfill its promise of increasing welfare while doing no harm to liberty, it will pose a significant risk of reducing both.

Download here.

 

Filed under: behavioral economics, behavioral economics, consumer financial protection bureau, consumer protection, economics, free to choose, Hayek, law and economics

From the NY Times:

Uber, a company based in San Francisco, is introducing a smartphone app to New York that allows available taxi drivers and cab-seeking riders to find one another. The company said the service would begin operating on Wednesday in 105 cabs — a bit less than 1 percent of the city’s more than 13,000 yellow cabs. Uber added that it hoped to recruit 100 new drivers each week.

But the program may have a significant problem: Taxi officials say that Uber’s service may not be legal since city rules do not allow for prearranged rides in yellow taxis. They also forbid cabbies from using electronic devices while driving and prohibit any unjustified refusal of fares. (Under Uber’s policy, once a driver accepts a ride through the app, no other passenger can be picked up.)

So, who else might be interested in fighting the rise of Uber and similar services?

The influx of apps appears to have created a moment of unity among yellow-taxi, livery and black-car operators, all of whom have raised concerns about the apps’ legality. Some industry officials said the commission was not acting forcefully enough; the result, said Avik Kabessa, the chief executive of Carmel Car and Limousine Service and a member of the board of the Livery Roundtable, a group representing livery drivers, is a New York City version of “the Wild West.”  An analysis conducted by the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents yellow-taxi operators, identified what it deemed to be 11 potential violations of taxi guidelines in Uber’s model. These included charging a tip automatically, not allowing for cash payments and turning away passengers while being on duty.

Uber and similar services face similar threats in other cities, including here in DC, where Uber faced the “Uber Amendments” which would require Uber to charge five times the price of a cab!  At least the DC Commission was incredibly clear about the role of the regulation: to suppress competition and harm consumers:

Explanation and Rationale
· This section would clarify how sedan services operate.

· Sedans would be required to charge a minimum fare of 5 times the drop rate for taxicabs.

· Sedans would be required to charge time and distance rates that are greater as those for taxicabs.

· These requirements would ensure that sedan service is a premium class of service with a substantially higher cost that does not directly compete with or undercut taxicab service.

Here is Uber’s response to the DC Council:

The Council’s intention is to prevent Uber from being a viable alternative to taxis by enacting a price floor to set Uber’s minimum fare at today’s rates and no less than 5 times a taxi’s minimum fare. Consequently they are handicapping a reliable, high quality transportation alternative so that Uber cannot offer a high quality service at the best possible price. It was hard for us to believe that an elected body would choose to keep prices of a transportation service artificially high – but the goal is essentially to protect a taxi industry that has significantexperience in influencing local politicians. They want to make sure there is no viable alternative to a taxi in Washington DC, and so on Tuesday (tomorrow!), the DC City Council is going to formalize that principle into law.

There appears to be subsequent history, including a temporary shelving of the Amendment with the potential to bring it back on its own in the future.  Councilwoman and George Washington Law Prof Mary Cheh is a force behind the Uber Amendment and complained that a settlement could not be reached with Uber that would shed the requirement of having prices 5 times higher, but retain a price differential in the name of shielding taxi cabs from competition (emphasis my own):

Establishing a minimum fare is important to distinguish premium sedan service from traditional taxicab service and to prevent sedans from directly competing with or undercuting taxicabs.  Taxi companies want minimum fares that are much higher than what I am proposing in my amendment.  However, I believe that simply preserving the status quo is appropriate and reasonable.

I am deeply disappointed that Uber has decided that it no longer supports this amendment that we negotiated in good faith.  The taxi industry is one that has been regulated for a very long time.  If Uber wishes to operate taxis, then it is free to do so, but it should then be subject to the same regulations and requirements of taxis.

As I frequently point out on the blog, local barriers to entry cause substantially greater dissipation of consumer surplus than is conventionally acknowledged (e.g., here, here, and here).

HT: Hal Singer.

Filed under: barriers to entry, business, economics, licensing, markets, technology

For those who follow these things (and for those who don’t but should!), Eric Goldman just posted an excellent short essay on Section 230 immunity and account terminations.

Here’s the abstract:

An online provider’s termination of a user’s online account can be a major-and potentially even life-changing-event for the user. Account termination exiles the user from a virtual place the user wanted to be; termination disrupts any social network relationship ties in that venue, and prevents the user from sending or receiving messages there; and the user loses any virtual assets in the account, which could be anything from archived emails to accumulated game assets. The effects of account termination are especially acute in virtual worlds, where dedicated users may be spending a majority of their waking hours or have aggregated substantial in-game wealth. However, the problem arises in all online environments (including email, social networking and web hosting) where account termination disrupts investments made by users.

Because of the potentially significant consequences from online user account termination, user-rights advocates, especially in the virtual world context, have sought legal restrictions on online providers’ discretion to terminate users. However, these efforts are largely misdirected because of 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(2) (“Section 230(c)(2)”), a federal statutory immunity. This essay, written in conjunction with an April 2011 symposium at UC Irvine entitled “Governing the Magic Circle: Regulation of Virtual Worlds,” explains Section 230(c)(2)’s role in immunizing online providers’ decisions to terminate user accounts. It also explains why this immunity is sound policy.

But the meat of the essay (at least the normative part of the essay) is this:

Thus, broadly conceived, § 230(c)(2) removes legal regulation of an online provider’s account termination, making the marketplace the main governance mechanism over an online provider’s choices. Fortunately, the marketplace is effective enough to discipline those choices.

Eric doesn’t talk explicitly here about property rights and transaction costs, but that’s what he’s talking about.  Well-worth reading as a short, clear, informative introduction to this extremely important topic.

Filed under: constitutional law, contracts, technology, telecommunications, torts Tagged: Communications Decency Act. Section 230, Eric Goldman, Immunity, ISPs, Online Communities

Our greatly lamented colleague Lary Ribstein was a movie buff. Some time ago he wrote an encyclopedic article on business in the movies, “Wall Street and Vine: Hollywood’s View of
Business.”  At the time of his death, he and I were in discussions about publishing this article in the journal I edit, Managerial and Decison Economics.  After his tragic death, I contacted his widow, Ann, and received permission to publish the article.  It is now published in the June issue of MDE.  (If your library does not subscribe to MDE, the article is still available on SSRN.)  Anyone with any interest in the movies and their perception of business must read this article. Given the volume of Larry’s scholarship, it is amazing that he had time to see as many movies as he discusses in this article.

Filed under: art, business, film, larry ribstein rip

From the WSJ:

White House regulatory chief Cass Sunstein is leaving his post this month to return to Harvard Law School, officials said Friday.

Mr. Sunstein has long been an advocate of behavorial economics in setting policy, the notion that people will respond to incentives, and has argued for restraint in government regulations. As such, he was met with skepticism and opposition by some liberals when he was chosen at the start of the Obama administration.

As administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, his formal title, Mr. Sunstein led an effort to look back at existing regulations with an eye toward killing those that are no longer needed or cost effective. The White House estimates that effort has already produced $10 billion in savings over five years, with more to come.

“Cass has shown that it is possible to support economic growth without sacrificing health, safety and the environment,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. He said these reforms and “his tenacious promotion of cost-benefit analysis,” will “benefit Americans for years to come.”

Even so, conservatives point to sweeping new regulations for the financial sector and health care in arguing that the administration has increased the regulatory burden on businesses.

Mr. Sunstein will depart this month for Harvard, where he will rejoin the law school faculty as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy.

It will be interesting to hear, once Professor Sunstein returns to an academic setting, his views on whether and in what instances — aside from the CFPB — behavioral economics actually had much impact on the formation of regulatory policy within the Administration.

Filed under: behavioral economics, regulation

Richard Epstein replies to Judge Posner’s Apple v. Motorola opinion and follow-up article in The Atlantic.

The anti-patent sentiment has just been fueled by a remarkable opinion by Judge Richard Posner, my long-time colleague at the University of Chicago, sitting as a trial judge in the major case, Apple v. Motorola. The high-profile case concerns five patents—four by Apple and one by Motorola—that are involved in mobile phone technology, and it has drawn more than its fair share of attention. Judge Posner took the extraordinary step of dismissing the claims of both sides with prejudice—meaning, the case cannot be filed again elsewhere—on the grounds that neither side could make good on its argument for either damages or injunctions.

Thus, when the dust settled, there was no reason at all to have a trial on whether either side had infringed the patents of the other. In a subsequent piece written for The Atlantic, grandly entitled “Why There are Too Many Patents in America,” Posner delivered a general critique of the patent system, discussing the broader issues involved in his judicial decision.

There is much of interest, as always, in Epstein’s column.  But the closing section on damages and injunctions is where the action is:

What is so striking about Posner’s relentless dissection of the imprecision in these claims was that he could apply it with equal conviction in any patent software dispute. The estimates of damages under the law are not confined to a single standard, but often involve an uncertain choice between reasonable royalties for licensing the patent and actual damages that were incurred because the patents were not licensed. The injunctive relief is (or at least should be) awarded precisely because it is so difficult to figure out what those damages really ought to be.

But Posner said that he would not allow an injunction if the best that the plaintiffs could garner was $1 in nominal damages. That surely seems over the top, because if there is infringement, the one number that is manifestly wrong is $1. A more sensible approach here, therefore, is to mix and marry the two remedies, so that the injunction does not pull the past product off the market, but awards some damages for past losses, while giving the infringer some period of time—say three to six months—to invent around the patent for future output. This then sets the stage for a negotiated license if that is cheaper.

By putting the remedial cart before the liability horse, we have the odd situation that no one can find out anything about the strength of the patent or the potential range of damages. If that is done on a common basis, then we will have knocked out the entire patent system for software, without having the slightest idea of the relative strength of the Apple and Motorola contentions.

The Posner decision looks doubly worrisome against the backdrop of his ominous Atlantic column, which shows his ill-concealed disdain for a complex industry with which he has had no direct engagement. It is an odd way to make patent policy. Right now, a similar Apple-Samsung dispute is before Judge Lucy Koh, which will involve a real trial. The Posner opinion is already on the fast track to appeal before the Federal Circuit, which will give us more information as to whether these submarine assaults on the patent system will take hold. Let us hope that Posner’s mysterious patent adventurism dies a quick and deserved death.

Do go read the whole thing.  For interested readers, here is Posner’s Atlantic column.

Filed under: business, economics, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, licensing, litigation, markets, patent, technology

Food trucks must remain at least 200 feet away from restaurants under the new Chicago regulation (HT: Reason).  It also appears food trucks must carry a GPS that will allow detection of violations (parking within 200 feet of a restaurant — apparently, any restaurant) which carry a fine of up to $2,000.  Protection of restaurants is the obvious and apparently express rationale for the restraint imposed upon food trucks:

“We see no health or safety justification behind the 200-foot rule, and the city has never offered one,” says Kregor. “The only explanation for the rule is the restaurants’ demand for protectionism and the city government’s deference to those demands.”  That’s no exaggeration. Even supporters of the new regulations freely admit they’re designed to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants.  “We want food trucks to make money, but we don’t want to hurt brick-and-mortar restaurants,” says Alderman Walter Burnett.

Chicago’s Institute for Justice has more.

I continue to think, as I’ve mentioned here previously, the consumer welfare losses associated with local and city barriers to entry are greatly underestimated.

Filed under: barriers to entry, business, economics, food

Given the enthusiasm for application of behavioral economics to antitrust analysis from some corners of the Commission and the academy, I found this remark from Alison Oldale at the Federal Trade Commission interesting (Antitrust Source):

Behavioral economists are clearly correct in saying that people and firms are not the perfect decision makers using perfect information that they are portrayed to be in many economic models. But alternative models that incorporate better assumptions about behavior and which give us useful ways to understand the likely effects of mergers, or particular types of conduct, aren’t there yet. And in the meantime our existing models give us workable approximations. So we haven’t done much yet, but we’ll keep watching developments.

For myself, I wonder whether the first place behavioral economic analysis might be brought to bear on antitrust enforcement will be in areas like coordinated effects or exchange of information. These are areas where our existing theories are not very helpful. For example when looking at coordinated effects in merger control the standard approach focuses a lot on incentives to coordinate. But there are lots and lots of markets where firms have an incentive to coordinate but they don’t seem to be doing so. So it seems there is a big piece of the puzzle that we are missing, and perhaps behavioral economics will be able to tell us something about what to look at in order to get a better handle when coordination is likely in practice.

I certainly agree with the conclusion that the behavioral economics models are not yet ready for primetime.  See, for example, my work with Judd Stone in Misbehavioral Economics: The Case Against Behavioral Antitrust or my series of posts on “Nudging Antitrust” (here and here).

Filed under: antitrust, behavioral economics, behavioral economics, economics, federal trade commission