Would Collective Action Clauses Raise Borrowing Costs?

We examine the implications for borrowing costs of including collective-action clauses in loan contracts. For a sample of some 2,000 international bonds, we compare the spreads on bonds subject to UK governing law, which typically include collective-action clauses, with spreads on bonds subject to US law, which do not. Contrary to the assertions of some market participants, we find that collective-action clauses in fact reduce the cost of borrowing for more credit-worthy issuers, who appear to benefit from the ability to avail themselves of an orderly restructuring process. In contrast, less credit-worthy issuers pay, if anything, higher spreads. We conjecture that for less credit-worthy borrowers the advantages of orderly restructuring are offset by the moral hazard and default risk associated with the presence of renegotiation-friendly loan provisions.

Group assertion and group silencing

Jennifer Lackey (2018) has developed an account of the primary form of group assertion, according to which groups assert when a suitably authorized spokesperson speaks for the group. In this paper I pose a challenge for Lackey's account, arguing that her account obscures the phenomenon of group silencing. This is because, in contrast to alternative approaches that view assertions (and speech acts generally) as social acts, Lackey's account implies that speakers can successfully assert regardless of how their utterances are taken up by their audiences. What reflection on group silencing shows us, I argue, is that an adequate account of group assertion needs to find a place for audience uptake

The Successor Employer\u27s Obligation to Bargain: Current Problems in the Presumption of a Union\u27s Majority Status

This Note examines federal labor policy as it relates to successor employers\u27 duty to negotiate with the labor union of the previous employer. Specifically, this Note analyzes the impact that the successor employers\u27 right to refuse to negotiate if it has a good faith doubt that the union retains its majority status has on employee\u27s freedom of choice. Finally, it examines national labor policy and concludes that the policy of the National Labor Relations Board unduly sacrifices the determination of actual employee free choice

Weak Scientism Defended Once More: A Reply to Wills

Bernard Wills (2018) joins Christopher Brown (2017, 2018) in criticizing my defense of Weak Scientism (Mizrahi 2017a, 2017b, 2018a). Unfortunately, it seems that Wills did not read my latest defense of Weak Scientism carefully, nor does he cite any of the other papers in my exchange with Brown

A solution to Karttunen's Problem

There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert a ‘must’-claim versus those in which one can use the corresponding non-modal claim. But it is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is even harder to account for this difference, since assertions of 'Must ϕ' and assertions of ϕ alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, coming to agreement that [[ϕ]] is true. In this paper I take on this puzzle, known as Karttunen’s Problem. I begin by arguing that a ‘must’-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for its prejacent. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that ‘must’-claims are felicitous only if the speaker’s evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I sketch a pragmatic derivation of Support

Transcending Whose Past? A critical view of the politics of forgetting in contemporary Taiwan

The repeated renaming of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and ensuing debates (2007–2009), reveal the multiple presences of collective memory andthe ongoing ideological struggles between the Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party in contemporary Taiwan. This paper examines the dynamicand intertwined relationships between collective memories and competing histories which are exposed by the renaming and its aftermath. An emphasis on forgetting as well as ‘transcending the past(s)’ (chaoyue guochu) have become common strategies that function to incorporate the two contradictory versionsof national history in contemporary Taiwan—implying not only amnesia about the other side’s past but also the suppression of diverse voices. Moreover, bothparties compete to narrate a ‘national history’ from victimized perspectives, resulting in the adoption of different periods of Taiwan’s past to support theirpolitical assertions.   Keywords: Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, collective memory, national histor

What are ‘universalizable interests’?

Many of Habermas's critical commentators agree that Discourse Ethics fails as a theory of the validity of moral norms and only succeeds as a theory of the democratic legitimacy of socio‐political norms. The reason they give is that the moral principle (U) is too restrictive to count as a necessary condition of the validity of norms. Other commentators more sympathetic to his project want to abandon principle (U) and remodel Discourse Ethics without it. Still others want to downplay the role of universalizing moral discourse and to make more of Habermas's less demanding, though still somewhat vague, conception of ethical discourse. Against this chorus of critical voices Habermas maintains that his conception of moral discourse and the moral principle (U) are central to Discourse Ethics in general, and to the normative heart of his political theory in particular. The conflict may have arisen in part because the concept of a ‘universalizable interest’ which is central to Habermas's understanding of moral discourse and of the moral principle (U) remains opaque even after nearly two decades of critical debate. Actually Habermas's concept of interest is pretty obscure too. But the obscurity surrounding the concept of interest is not the source of the confusion. For our present purposes we can simply stipulate that an interest is a reason to want. The notion of reason rests loosely on the notion of a need, and the concepts of need and desire are take left deliberately vague. The source of the current confusion lies in the notion of universalizability that is in play. Once we pay due attention to the conditions of the universalizability of interests contained in Habermas's formulation of the moral principle (U), we can distinguish between a weaker and a stronger version of the principle. I argue that only the weaker version is defensible. But I also want to show that Habermas is tempted into defending the stronger version, and to explain why he does so