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Corporate & Securities Law

Truth on the Market

Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more.

Post Frequency: 39.9/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 00:51:38

AEA Meeting

Posted on January 02, 2009
I’m off to the American Economics Association meeting in San Francisco tomorrow. Any of our loyal readers attending who want to try to meet, please let me know. Happy New Year!

Is Antitrust Too Complicated for Generalist Judges?

Posted on December 30, 2008
One of the highlights of my recent time as Scholar in Residence at the Federal Trade Commission was the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds around on antitrust issues on investigations and policy projects as well some academic projects...

Caplan on the Law as a Phony Discipline

Posted on December 30, 2008
Bryan Caplan writes: At risk of offending my many friends in the legal academy, I think that law is a shockingly phony discipline. Virtually everyone - liberal, conservative, Marxist, libertarian, or whatever - imagines that the law conveniently agrees with what they favor on non-legal grounds...

More on Letter of Intent and Release Bargaining

Posted on December 30, 2008
Last month I highlighted the story of DeMarcus Cousins, a blue chip high school basketball recruit who was playing a game of chicken with the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) over signing his National Letter of Intent — the letter that commits a player to attend the university and imposes the penalty of giving up a [...

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Economic Issues in the Ovation Complaint

Posted on December 29, 2008
On December 16, 2008, the FTC filed a complaint against Ovation Pharmaceuticals that challenged its 2006 acquisition of the drug Neoprofen from Abbott. (The acquisition had fallen beneath the HSR thresholds and thus was not subject to an HSR investigation prior to consummation)...

Welcome Guest Blogger Mary Coleman

Posted on December 28, 2008
Bill’s shift to emeritus status and move to Arizona are not the only changes at TOTM for the coming new year. We’ve also got some plans to make sure that we’re feeding our loyal readers a steady stream of law, economics, and business content...

Bill’s News

Posted on December 28, 2008
There’s good and bad news for Truth on the Market, and I wanted to share both with our loyal readers. The good news: Bill, co-founder of this blog and stalwart of our early blogging days’ focus on securities regulation and corporate law and governance, has accepted a new, senior position at the University of Arizona Rogers [...

Dominant Incumbent, Meet the New Entrant

Posted on December 27, 2008
The new Competition Law Center at George Washington University School of Law (see earlier post at ACP here), funded by a $5.1 million cy pres award from alum and plaintiff’s lawyer Michael Hausfeld (formerly of Cohen, Milsten Hausfeld and Toll, now Cohen, Milsten, Sellers and Toll) will be providing some competition to the nearby American [...

Presenting Complex Economic Theories to Judges

Posted on December 23, 2008
This fascinating OECD document compiling submissions on the topic is a gold mine of observations on purported best practices for presenting economic testimony to judges and issues facing competition authorities and judges deciding complex antitrust cases on the basis of complex economic evidence...

Interim Final Rules Amending Parts III and IV Rules of FTC Rules of Practice Issued

Posted on December 23, 2008
The FTC announced today that it has approved a notice adopting interim final rules amending Parts III and IV of its rules of practice. As boring as that sound, this is a big deal. Here is the Federal Register notice. There are a number of changes, for instance, deadlines are imposed to [...

DOJ Files Another Section 2 Case

Posted on December 23, 2008
Press release here. Here’s an excerpt: The complaint alleges that post-acquisition Microsemi raised prices significantly on small signal transistors certified by the Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC), a component of the DOD, at the Joint Army-Navy Technical Exchange-Visual Inspection (JANTXV) and Joint Army-Navy Space (JANS) levels of reliability on its qualified manufacturers list or [...

Teachable Moments

Posted on December 22, 2008
Don Boudreaux turns the Illinois corruption scandal into a teachable moment on rent seeking (HT: Todd Zywicki). By the way, there has never been a better time to read this. In another teachable moment story related to George Mason, my colleague Neomi Rao’s Constitutional Law students were treated to an end of the year lecture [...

The NOSMART Petition

Posted on December 18, 2008
To: The 110th and the Incoming 111th United States Congress From: The National Organization of Silly Men Against Risk Taking (NOSMART) Distinguished Congressmen and Congresswomen: Our nation is in crisis. It is a nation of gamblers. If ever your help was needed, now is the time...

Comings and Goings at the FTC Office of Policy and Planning

Posted on December 17, 2008
Congratulations to Maureen Ohlhausen, outgoing Director of the Office of Policy and Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, who is headed to a new position as Technology Policy Counsel at the Business Software Alliance, a nonprofit trade association that promotes innovation, growth, and a competitive marketplace for commercial software and related technologies...

Fool me once, shame on?shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.

Posted on December 17, 2008
I?d like to share a quote on banking industry regulation: ?To restrain private people, it may be said, from receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker for any sum, whether great or small, when they themselves are willing to receive them; or, to restrain a banker from issuing such notes, when all his neighbours [...

Clearing the Way for an Organ Market?

Posted on December 17, 2008
From the WSJ on potential legislation clearing the way for compensation to donors in the form of tax deductions: While the chilling effect of the federal ban has remained since 1994, the national transplant waiting list has more than quadrupled. This may be why organizations like the National Kidney Foundation, which has previously opposed all incentives [...

No Ovation for FTC’s Latest Enforcement Theory

Posted on December 17, 2008
The Federal Trade Commission announced a puzzling complaint filed in a new consummated merger & monopolization case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Here’s the explanation of the case from the press release: The Federal Trade Commission today filed a complaint in federal district court challenging Ovation Pharmaceuticals, Inc...

Price Discrimination is Good, Part 3

Posted on December 16, 2008
At Knowledge Problem, Michael Giberson collects anecdotal evidence on New York’s zone pricing ban, i.e. a prohibition on price discrimination. While gasoline prices are falling all over the country, the anecdotal evidence is that New York’s zone pricing ban is resulting in higher profits for retailers at the expense of consumers...

Zywicki on the Bankruptcy and the Bailout

Posted on December 16, 2008
My colleague Todd Zywicki is in the Wall Street Journal today on the merits of bankruptcy along with some public choice: General Motors looks like a financially failed rather than an economically failed enterprise — in need of reorganization not liquidation...

Hamermesh on the Point of the Bailout

Posted on December 15, 2008
Some simple economics and common sense: Governments intervene in markets all the time ? and they should, in order to make markets more competitive; to solve problems of externalities (which are ubiquitous); to resolve difficulties caused by individuals? shortsightedness, including the spurring of innovation; and to reduce transactions costs...

Kolasky on What Happens with the Section 2 Report

Posted on December 14, 2008
William Kolasky (Wilmer Hale, and one of the frontrunners for the DOJ AG spot according to the rumormill) has an interesting piece in the Antitrust Source on the DOJ Section 2 Report arguing that while: even the objecting Commissioners would probably agree that the Justice Department Report does a good job analyzing particular types of exclusionary [...

Antitrust, The Bailout, and the Coming Boom in Monopolization Enforcement

Posted on December 13, 2008
From the WSJ comes an editorial from Martin Neal Baily and Matthew Slaughter describe a forthcoming report from the Private Equity Council making the link between product market competition and productivity: A central theme of this report is the critical role that competitive product markets play in spurring productivity growth and boosting standards of living...

Law and Economics 2.0

Posted on December 12, 2008
Readers of TOTM know that the future of law and economics is a frequent topic of discussion here, and a topic in which I am both personally invested and spend a good deal of time thinking about (see, e.g. my blog series on the future of law and economics here)...

The Devilish Details of Detroit’s Deal

Posted on December 10, 2008
There are some pretty scary devils in the details of this Detroit bailout legislation. This WSJ article provides some specifics. Under the terms of the draft legislation, “the government would receive warrants for stock equivalent to at least 20% of the loans any company receives...

Whole Foods Brings It.

Posted on December 09, 2008
“Now for the evidence,” said the King. “And then the sentence.” “No!” said the Queen. “First the sentence, and then the evidence.” So goes a famous passage of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland...

Are We Reinvigorated Yet?

Posted on December 04, 2008
Despite rumors, slogans, and “new” conventional wisdom to the contrary (See, e.g. here, here and the Obama campaign promise to “reinvigorate merger enforcement), it is apparently not the case that the current DOJ is not interested in enforcing the antitrust laws...

The D.C. Circuit Re-Disappoints in Whole Foods: An Analysis of the Amended Opinions

Posted on December 04, 2008
Being a “glass is half-full” type of guy, I figured there was no way the D.C. Circuit’s decision on Whole Foods’ petition for rehearing en banc could turn out poorly: Either the court would grant the motion and correct the panel’s mistakes, or the court would deny the motion, setting up an attractive opportunity for [...

American Airlines Announces New Pricing Scheme

Posted on December 03, 2008
At least, thats what the Onion (the go to source for antitrust humor, by the way) headline says: American Airlines Now Charging Fees To Non-Passengers December 1, 2008 | Issue 44?49 FORT WORTH, TX?Cash-strapped American Airlines announced a new series of fees this week that will apply to all customers not currently flying, scheduled to fly, or [...

Price Discrimination Is Good, Part I

Posted on December 01, 2008
Price discrimination involves a firm taking advantage of different elasticities of demand for the same goods by charging different prices relative to marginal cost. Price discrimination is ubiquitous in our economy but remains a four letter word in policy and regulation circles...

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