Truth on the Market: Corporate & Securities Law

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Corporate & Securities Law Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

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

USDA Pushes Regulatory Elimination of Consumer Harm Requirement

Posted on June 21, 2010
Danny Sokol points to the Obama administration’s most recent effort to “reinvigorate” competition policy: some new proposed rules adding new sections to the existing regulations under the Packers & Stockyards Act. Emerging from the joint DOJ/ USDA agriculture workshops (see comments from Manne & Wright here; TOTM archives on agricultural antitrust here), the USDA must [...

Does the Supreme Court Deem Price Discrimination to be an “Anticompetitive” Effect of Tying?

Posted on June 21, 2010
One of my summer writing projects is a response to Einer Elhauge?s recent, highly acclaimed article, Tying, Bundled Discounts, and the Death of the Single Monopoly Profit Theory. In the article, which appeared in the December 2009 Harvard Law Review, Elhauge defends current tying doctrine, which declares tie-ins to be per se illegal when the [...

Federalizing proxy access: the SEC vs. Congress and the states

Posted on June 21, 2010
Lucian Bebchuk objects to efforts in the financial regulatory conference committee to “gut proxy access” by imposing a 5% share ownership threshold requirement for access: He says: Hard-wiring such an ownership threshold in the financial regulatory bill would be a significant setback for shareholders and corporate governance reform...

Pre-formation fiduciary duties in LLCs: another NY problem

Posted on June 21, 2010
I have often complained (e.g., here) of the troubling lawlessness of NY LLC law, a problem that may be affecting the use of LLCs in that state and thereby NY’s business environment. A recent example is Roni LLC v Arfa. Investors in a real estate deal sued the promoters for breach of fiduciary duty by [...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Some Links

Posted on June 21, 2010
Intel and FTC settlement talks heat up (WSJ) Connecticut AG Richard Blumenthal leads state AG crusade against Google’s Street View data collection (WSJ) Some good coverage of the FTC Workshop on the future of journalism, i.e. whether and how to save newspapers (here, here and here) Greg Mankiw on crisis economics New antitrust complaint against [...

Solving Shelf Space Incentive Conflicts With Vertical Integration and By Contract in the Soda Market

Posted on June 21, 2010
There is a nice example in the WSJ concerning the economics of vertical contractual arrangements. I’ve noted previously the apparent trend in the soda industry toward vertical integration and the link to the economics of promotional shelf space...

Will the FTC Sue Apple?

Posted on June 18, 2010
I don’t know. But apparently, industry analysts preliminarily think not. I tend to disagree. At least, I think its far too early to be confident in either direction. Press reports, such as this one, are primarily relying on the report of an analyst who correctly points out that Apple’s market share would be an [...

Broad preemption and the federal takeover of state law

Posted on June 18, 2010
Last fall Guhan Subramanian, Steve Herscovici and Brian Barbetta (“SHB”) posted a paper claiming that Delaware’s antitakeover statute (Delaware GCL Section 203) was preempted by the Williams Act because it did not leave hostile bidders the “meaningful opportunity for success” required by three 1988 federal district courts which had upheld the Delaware law back in [...

The nature of the L3C

Posted on June 17, 2010
LLCs have always been all about experimentation. This keeps things interesting for those like me who study them. It also provides evidence of the laboratory of state law at work, particularly in business associations, and more particularly uncorporations...

The rise of the LLC

Posted on June 17, 2010
Last March I discussed a new article by Rodney Chrisman which shows “that LLCs are by far and away the predominant choice of business structure for newly-formed entities.” I noted then the article’s findings that LLCs are increasingly choosing to be taxed as S Corporations, indicating, as I said, that “the increase in LLCs therefore [...

TOTM Email Subscriptions

Posted on June 17, 2010
In addition to the switch to our new platform and new design here at TOTM, you may also notice on toward the top of the right hand sidebar on the blog we’ve added an “Email Subscription” feature. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive TOTM posts via email.

Capitalism on film

Posted on June 17, 2010
Although I wasn’t doing any blogging the last couple of weeks, one of my theories was out there frolicking on its own. Now that I’m back, it’s time to do a little cleaning up. I was chagrined by the attention I received from Marc Abrahams, identified as “editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research [...

Back from Asia

Posted on June 17, 2010
I returned yesterday from travel in Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. I’m happy that TOTM is back on line, buttressed by a new and more secure platform. Time to get back to blogging. First I need to shake off the dust of my travels. I took 1500 pictures, and so am overwhelmed with images which [...

Law as an immature industry

Posted on June 17, 2010
It’s no news that law grads can’t find good law jobs and can’t pay their debts. Steve Bainbridge explains: The post-war expansion of the regulatory state, the opening of the courthouse doors to new claims during the warren Court era, and the litigation explosion provided an exogenous shock that caused demand for lawyers to rise [...

Why Congress Should Reject the FTC’s Request for a Trinko Exemption

Posted on June 16, 2010
One of the most significant issues in current US antitrust policy has been the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to avoid some of the rigorous requirements imposed by Section 2 of the Sherman Act in monopolization cases by expanding FTC authority under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA)...

Some Links

Posted on June 16, 2010
TOTM guest blogger Steve Salop makes the case for Vertical Merger Guidelines National Supermarkets Association files class action interchange-based antitrust suit against American Express (apparently alleging the relevant market is “American Express payment card services”!) Dell puts aside $100 million reserve fund in case it has to settle the SEC allegations we blogged about here [...

An Antitrust Analysis of the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint Against Intel

Posted on June 15, 2010
As readers of TOTM know, I’ve been critical of both the Federal Trade Commission’s Complaint against Intel from a consumer welfare perspective as well as the wobbly intellectual underpinnings of the Commission’s attempt to expand its FTC Act Section 5 authority to evade (see also here) the more stringent monopolization standards under Section 2 of [...

Intel, Dell, and Some Costs of Disclosing Rebates

Posted on June 14, 2010
Intel’s rebates are apparently given rise to a potentially whole new class of suits based on the notion recipients of the rebates at the center of the Commission’s antitrust action should have been disclosed. The WSJ reports: Dell said last week that it and Mr...

Antitrust Law and Economics

Posted on June 14, 2010
Antitrust Law and Economics, a volume edited by Keith Hylton, is now available from Edward Elgar Publishing. Here is the description: This comprehensive book provides an extensive overview of the major topics of antitrust law from an economic perspective...

We’re Back!

Posted on June 13, 2010
Our apologies again for the interrupted service. In light of some spam attacks and other problems, we’ve been in a slow and painful process of switching to a more stable and secure platform on WordPress. While we were at it, we’ve updated our look a little bit as well, with more possibly to come in [...

Congratulations to ICLE Research Fellow Judd Stone

Posted on June 08, 2010
Congratulations to International Center for Law and Economics Research Fellow — also my former George Mason law student, long-time research assistant, and now co-author — and Northwestern University School of Law graduate, Judd Stone. Judd somehow managed to finish his 3L year at Northwestern Law with with a “perfect” semester involving 5 A+?s in 5 classes, turning in a whopping 4...

Two Submissions to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines Review Project

Posted on June 08, 2010
This week, I submitted two comments to the Horizontal Merger Guidelines Revision Project. The first, submitted with a group of economists focusing on the use of price/cost margins in merger analysis. The submission lays out the basic relationship between margins and elasticities that flows from the profit-maximization assumption, and then discusses several of the factors that arise in the implementation of this analysis in practice and how the proposed HMGs take them into account...

Externalities and Future Selves

Posted on June 08, 2010
Paternalism is a turn-off. We humans seem to have an innate desire for autonomy, a desire that generally leads us to resist efforts by elites to force us to make “wise” decisions. It’s rhetorically useful, then, for opponents of a proposed regulation to demonstrate that the rule at issue aims merely to save folks from their own improvident choices, not to protect the interests of others...

Our Apologies for the Interrupted Service

Posted on June 08, 2010
Our apologies for the intermittent posting. We’ve had some technical difficulties to work out after being shut down from spam attacks on a few occasions of late (some of you may have noticed a pottery website that was parked here while we were shut down)...

The Economics and Regulation of Payment Card Interchange Fees: Paper and Conference

Posted on June 08, 2010
Two related items from ICLE: As regular readers know, interchange fees are a frequent topic of conversation around the blog. Taking the conversation from the ether to the real world, ICLE has funded a white paper and is putting on a conference next week on the topic...

The Economics and Regulation of Payment Card Interchange Fees: Paper and Conference

Posted on June 04, 2010
Two related items from ICLE: As regular readers know, interchange fees are a frequent topic of conversation around the blog. Taking the conversation from the ether to the real world, ICLE has funded a white paper and is putting on a conference next week on the topic...

Off to Taiwan

Posted on June 01, 2010
A two week trip, including stops on the way back in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Posting will be light, but I may have some comments on the local scene or on earthshaking business-related developments back home. Printposted in administrative by Larry Ribstein Leave A Comment

“Prosocial,” Output-Reducing Collusion

Posted on May 27, 2010
One of my antitrust students recently pointed me to a television commercial that could inspire a great exam question. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the ad until I’d finished drafting this semester’s antitrust exam (which I’ve been grading…hence the absence from TOTM)...

"Prosocial," Output-Reducing Collusion

Google’s Very Public Efficiencies Defense

Posted on May 26, 2010
Here is Google’s attempt to measure its the economic impact of Google search and adwords, adsense and its Google grants programs. Some media coverage (including a critique of the calculations) here. The total? $54 billion. The report includes state-by-state breakdowns...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Housing Market: Mixed Signals about Falling Prices for February
Two reports have been issued, one by the Massachusetts Association...

Fish on "Religion Without Truth"
Here's a (relatively) recent Stanley Fish Think Again column, call...