{"title":"Access, Veto and Ownership in the Theory of the Firm","authors":"Roland Bel","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS003","url":null,"abstract":"Ownership may not always be the best driver of investment incentives in an incomplete contract context. Instead, we argue that ownership contains two facets--access and veto--that can be used specifically, and sometimes independently, to foster investment. Whereas prior studies in the literature have reported the effect of these mechanisms separately on incentives and welfare, we cast them within a single framework. Access is closer to efficiency than ownership when assets are complements at the margin; veto is sometimes closer to efficiency when assets are substitutes at the margin. Access increases the incentives of the beneficiary agent, whereas veto increases the incentives of the constrained agent. By defining control over an asset as \"access with no outside veto,\" we provide a rationale for the optimality of intriguing organizational structures, such as open access, hybrid organizations, outside ownership, joint ownership, partnerships, and employment contracts. (JEL C70, D23, G30, L20) The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80975386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Left, Right, and Center: Strategic Information Acquisition and Diversity in Judicial Panels","authors":"M. Spitzer, E. Talley","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR013","url":null,"abstract":"This article develops and analyzes a hierarchical model of judicial review in multimember appellate courts. In our model, judicial panels acquire information endogenously, through the efforts of individual panelists, acting strategically. The resulting equilibria strongly resemble the empirical phenomena collectively known as \"panel effects\"--and in particular the observed regularity with which ideological diversity on a panel predicts greater moderation in voting behavior (even after controlling for the median voter's preferences). In our model, nonpivotal panel members with ideologies far from the median have the greatest incentive to acquire additional policy-relevant information where no one on a homogeneous panel would be willing to do so. The resulting information structure pushes deliberation and observed voting patterns toward apparent moderation. We illustrate the plausibility of our model by calibrating it to empirical data and explore various normative implications of our theory. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74681919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Policing Statutes: Do They Reduce Pollution and Save Regulatory Costs?","authors":"Santiago Guerrero, R. Innes","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR012","url":null,"abstract":"State-level statutes provide firms that engage in environmental self-audits, and that self-report their environmental violations, a variety of regulatory rewards, including \"immunity\" from penalties and \"privilege\" for information contained in self-audits. This article studies a panel of state-level industries from 1989 through 2003, to determine the effects of the different types of statutes on toxic pollution and government inspections. We find that, by encouraging self-auditing, privilege protections tend to reduce pollution and government enforcement activity; however, sweeping immunity protections, by reducing firms' pollution prevention incentives, raise toxic pollution and government inspection oversight. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87521076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Occasionally Libertarian: Experimental Evidence of Self-Serving Omission Bias","authors":"Andrew T. Hayashi","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS046","url":null,"abstract":"People evaluate outcomes, in part, by how those outcomes came about and who caused them. For example, attitudes about the proper amount of redistributive taxation reflect beliefs about the causal roles played by luck and human agency in creating the pre-tax income distribution. Causal attribution, however, is a process both complicated and subject to bias. I generate individual-level data from a variation on the dictator game in which the participants' initial endowments are manipulated to identify one aspect of how people care about causal attribution. The data are inconsistent with models of preferences defined solely over outcomes and also with a general bias toward inaction. Subjects care independently, but conditionally, about the effects of their own actions and demonstrate a bias toward inaction only when it is in their self-interest. (JEL A12, A13, C91, D63) The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89917381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Enforcing Agreements and Relational Contracting: Evidence from California Highway Procurement","authors":"Ricard Gil, Justin Marion","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR026","url":null,"abstract":"We empirically examine the impact of relationships between contractors and subcontractors on firm pricing and entry decisions in the California highway procurement market using data from auctions conducted by the California Department of Transportation. Relationships in this market are valuable if they mitigate potential hold-up problems and incentives for ex post renegotiation arising from contractual incompleteness. An important characteristic of informal contracts is that they must be self-enforcing, so the value of relationships between firms and suppliers depend on the extent of possibilities for future interaction. We construct measures of the stock of contractors' prior interactions with relevant subcontractors and, most importantly, an exogenous instrument to measure the future value of ongoing relationships that is orthogonal to contractor--subcontractor match-specific productivity. We find that a larger stock of relationships leads to a greater likelihood of entry and to lower bids. Importantly, this relationship does not hold in periods of time and areas with little future contract volume, suggesting that the value of the future is crucial in providing value for informal contracts. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90570709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Value Destruction in the New Era of Chapter 11","authors":"B. Adler, V. Capkun, L. A. Weiss","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR004","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past two decades, control over the US bankruptcy reorganization process has shifted from a debtor's pre-bankruptcy managers to holders of secured claims. The result has been increased adherence to absolute priority and a harder landing for the debtor's managers and shareholders. Because managers still make or can influence the decision whether or when to file a bankruptcy petition, we hypothesize that anticipation of bankruptcy under these new conditions will result in a delay in filing, increased leverage, increased secured debt, and a reduction of asset value for firms at the time they file. We present empirical evidence consistent with our hypotheses. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84753676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Confirmation Bias in the United States Supreme Court Judicial Database","authors":"A. Harvey, Michael J. Woodruff","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR003","url":null,"abstract":"We ask whether the widely used direction of decision and direction of vote variables in the United States Supreme Court Judicial Database (USSCJD) are contaminated by confirmation bias, or have been affected by expectations about the likely effects of judicial preferences on case outcomes. Using a sample of generally comparable cases, we find evidence that the assignment of issue codes to these cases, codes that govern the subsequent assignment of \"direction\" to the Court's judgments, is conditional on both case disposition and the known preferences of the deciding court, in the direction predicted by the hypothesis of confirmation bias. We also find that the USSCJD direction variables overstate the effect of judicial preferences and understate the effect of congressional preferences on case outcomes, relative to objectively coded measures of the Court's judgments. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78433701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contract Form and Technology Adoption in a Network Industry","authors":"Silke J. Forbes, Mara Lederman","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS017","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the relationship between transaction characteristics and contractual form as well as the role of technology adoption as a driver of variation in transaction characteristics. Our setting is the US airline industry, where many large airlines have outsourcing relationships with smaller regional carriers. In the late 1990s, fixed price contracts began to replace revenue sharing agreements as the dominant contractual form in these relationships. Moreover, this change coincided with the diffusion and adoption of a new aircraft technology, the regional jet. We present evidence that the new aircraft technology changed the set of flights that airlines subcontracted to their regional partners and did so in a way that favored the use of fixed price rather than revenue-sharing contracts. In particular, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the new flights being subcontracted had characteristics that would have led to significant haggling costs under route-level revenue sharing. (JEL L14, D86, L22) The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86859191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can Celebrity Endorsements Affect Political Outcomes? Evidence from the 2008 US Democratic Presidential Primary","authors":"Craig L. Garthwaite, T. Moore","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWR031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWR031","url":null,"abstract":"Identifying the effects of political endorsements has historically been difficult. Before the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by talk show host Oprah Winfrey. In this article, we assess the impact of this endorsement using, as measures of Winfrey's influence, subscriptions to her magazine and sales of books she recommends. We find that her endorsement increased Obama's votes and financial contributions, and also increased overall voter turnout. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah's influence and previous elections, nor with underlying political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for approximately 1 million additional votes for Obama. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90405014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Are Criminals Less Educated than Non-Criminals? Evidence from a Cohort of Young Australian Twins","authors":"D. Webbink, P. Koning, S. Vujić, N. Martin","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS014","url":null,"abstract":"Many studies find a strong negative association between crime and education. This raises the question whether crime reduces investment in human capital or whether education reduces criminal activity. This article investigates posed question by using fixed-effect estimation on data of Australian twins. We find early arrests (before the age of 18) both to have a strong effect on human capital accumulation, as well as strong detrimental effects on adult crime. Schooling does not have an effect on adult crime if there is variation in early arrests. However, schooling reduces crime if there is little variation in early crime. (JEL code: I2, K42).","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83402241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}