239 research outputs found
The Evolution of Sherman Act Jurisdiction: A Roadmap for Competitive Federalism
Recent Supreme Court decisions confirm for the first time in over six decades that federal regulatory authority under the Commerce Clause truly is limited. These decisions coincide with an increasing appreciation among scholars and jurists for the concept of competitive federalism. This paper derives the implications of competitive federalism for the evolution of federal jurisdiction over trade restraints under the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). It provides a clear and substantively reasoned jurisdictional test based on the analysis of geographic market power familiar to antitrust scholars, practitioners, and regulators in evaluating horizontal mergers. To be subject to federal antitrust jurisdiction under this test, Sherman Act defendants must control a sufficiently large share of the geographic antitrust market that their trade restraint could plausibly affect prices âin more states than one.â This test resolves a number of troubling inconsistencies in the case law on federal antitrust jurisdiction and provides a useful roadmap for how the Court can constructively realign its approach to general Commerce Clause jurisdiction. As the Courtâs economic understanding of the market failure underlying a regulatory statute advances, general Commerce Clause jurisdiction should evolve to require a closer substantive nexus between the market failure and the effect on interstate commerce necessary to justify federal jurisdiction This approach will allow the Court to iterate toward an appropriate and workable balance of dual sovereignty that takes seriously the concept of competitive federalism without requiring a dramatic departure from existing constitutional precedent
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A Transaction Cost Assessment of SEC Regulation Best Interest
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (âSECâ) is required to provide an economic analysis of proposed regulations and to show they plausibly meet a cost-benefit test. It recently proposed Regulation Best Interest (RBI) to replace the longstanding suitability rule for securities brokers when providing their retail clients with incidental investment advice. Despite a dearth of empirical support, the proposing release concludes that a best interest standard would better mitigate the conflicts of interest brokers face between providing their clients with impartial advice and inflating their own compensation. The empirical vacuum is a result of the SECâs failure to ask the right economic questions, which Nobel laureate Ronald Coase raised over half a century ago: why does the rule of liability matter? What transaction costs prevent partiesâwho in this setting negotiate face-to-faceâfrom correcting any market failure through private ordering? This essay provides a transaction cost assessment of RBI and concludes that a far more thorough economic analysis is necessary to justify imposing a best interest standard on retail brokers
Does Soft Dollar Brokerage Benefit Portfolio Investors: Agency Problem or Solution?
With soft dollar brokerage, institutional portfolio managers pay brokers âpremiumâ commission rates in exchange for rebates they use to buy third-party research. One hypothesis views this practice as a reflection of the agency problem in delegated portfolio management; another views it as a contractual solution to the agency problem that aligns the incentives of investors, managers, and brokers where direct monitoring mechanisms are inadequate. Using a database of institutional money managers, we find that premium commission payments are positively related to risk-adjusted performance, suggesting that soft dollar brokerage is a solution to agency problems. Moreover, premium commissions are positively related to management fees, suggesting that labor market competition does not punish managers for using soft dollars
A Culturally Correct Proposal to Privatize the British Columbia Salmon Fishery
Canada now faces two looming policy crises that have come to a head in British Columbia. The first is long-term depletion of the Pacific salmon fishery by mobile commercial ocean fishermen racing to intercept salmon under the rule of capture. The second results from Canadian Supreme Court case law recognizing and affirming âthe existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canadaâ under Section 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. This essay shows that the economics of property rights provides a joint solution to these crises that would promote the Canadian commonwealth by way of a privatization auction while respecting the tribesâ distinctive aboriginal culture
Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies from the CHARGE consortium identifies common variants associated with carotid intima media thickness and plaque
Carotid intima media thickness (cIMT) and plaque determined by ultrasonography are established measures of subclinical atherosclerosis that each predicts future cardiovascular disease events. We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data in 31,211 participants of European ancestry from nine large studies in the setting of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium. We then sought additional evidence to support our findings among 11,273 individuals using data from seven additional studies. In the combined meta-analysis, we identified three genomic regions associated with common carotid intima media thickness and two different regions associated with the presence of carotid plaque (P < 5 Ă 10 -8). The associated SNPs mapped in or near genes related to cellular signaling, lipid metabolism and blood pressure homeostasis, and two of the regions were associated with coronary artery disease (P < 0.006) in the Coronary Artery Disease Genome-Wide Replication and Meta-Analysis (CARDIoGRAM) consortium. Our findings may provide new insight into pathways leading to subclinical atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular events
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