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Scholarship In this short essay, we take on some of the common claims surrounding the law and economics of the backdating of options. Most of these claims are rooted in the basic argument that backdating options amounts to concealment of compensation.
In this short essay, we take on some of the common claims surrounding the law and economics of the backdating of options. Most of these claims are rooted in the basic argument that backdating options amounts to concealment of compensation. While we agree that backdating may have amounted to a technical rule violation in some cases, there is actually no concealment and, in fact, backdated options are fully disclosed when granted, and their value incorporated into stock price. We also challenge a few other myths surrounding the practice of backdating options.
Scholarship In this article we examine the use of business documents to prove antitrust violations. Such usage has long occurred in the courts and regulatory agencies. More recently, there has been a scholarly effort to justify the use of such documents and the rhetoric they contain in antitrust analysis.
This Article considers the implications for antitrust law and policy of the relationship between business rhetoric and economic analysis. We maintain that antitrust analysis should remain firmly rooted in economics and that courts must be wary of the role of business rhetoric in antitrust analysis and adjudication. This is not to say that “market realities” reflected in business documents and testimony should not be considered in antitrust cases. Rather, courts and policy makers should recognize the distinction between the market realities themselves and expressions or characterizations of those realities for legally irrelevant business purposes. An important implication is that regulators’ and courts’ reliance on business documents is misplaced, and much of this material should be excluded from consideration by courts.
Popular Media Even the smallest economic factor can scarcely escape the effects of global commerce today. For example, a local tomato farmer may be competing with foreign . . .
Even the smallest economic factor can scarcely escape the effects of global commerce today. For example, a local tomato farmer may be competing with foreign imports directly, exporting her produce abroad, or simply selling her tomatoes in a domestic market where the prevailing price is determined in part by the availability of competing foreign products. And it is not simply commercial activity that has an international flavor. Laws enacted in one country to protect the environment, labor standards, and competitive markets invariably affect citizens or governments of other countries.
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Scholarship This article uses property rights theory and the theory of the firm to analyze the behavior of the participants in nonprofit organizations. It locates the failure of nonprofit oversight in the confluence of strict standing rules and nearly insurmountable agency costs.
This article uses property rights theory and the theory of the firm to analyze the behavior of the participants in nonprofit organizations. It locates the failure of nonprofit oversight in the confluence of strict standing rules and nearly insurmountable agency costs. The article repudiates the conventional solutions to the problem (ranging from relaxing standing limitations to restricting the use of the nonprofit form), and proposes a contractual solution through which nonprofits or their founders would secure the services of a set of independent agents to monitor and, where appropriate, enforce the nonprofit’s charter and the relevant fiduciary rules through judicial action. Because the monitoring agents would function within a market framework, market controls should operate to constrain the behavior of these agents. Thus donors, philanthropists, and beneficiaries would receive the benefit of effectively monitored corporate (or trust) agents who do not present a significant agency cost problem. The result should be increased accountability on the part of nonprofit agents to their donors or patrons without the serious threat of frivolous suits or politically-selective attorney general enforcement.
