The Economics of Corporation Law and Securities Regulation

To evaluate this book as a teaching tool one must consider several questions. First, of what value is an economic analysis of law? Second, should one consider economics in a corporations or securities law course? Third, does this book offer a worthwhile approach to bringing economics into the corporate law curriculum? Last, how well has this approach been executed in the book? It may be a bit late to ponder the value of an economic analysis of the law. Economic legal theorists are both extending and deepening the thinking about economics\u27 role in facilitating an understanding of law. This new thinking encompasses broad nonmarket areas of the law, including privacy, criminal law,\u27 and constitutional law.\u27 In addition, scholars now are attempting to transcend the descriptive or positive focus of the analysis--arguing that the law develops in accordance with economic principles such as the desire of individuals in society to maximize their wealth-and articulate a normative theory of economic legal analysis--arguing that the legal system should be founded upon economic principles such as wealth maximization. Indeed,the economic approach to law has taken on the trappings of a new and competing jurisprudential philosophy.\u2

Flux et crues singulières d'un petit cours d'eau andin ou les effets pervers de l'urbanisation

Sur un petit bassin de haute montagne (4000 m), situé dans les Andes à proximité de La Paz, la canalisation des "rios" en vue de gagner des terrains urbanisables, n'a guère modifié, en termes de bilan annuel, les régimes hydrologiques mais a eu des conséquences inattendues sur leur comportement en crue. Au delà d'un certain débit, bien inférieur au débit maximum décennal, apparaissent des vagues, parfois plus hautes que le canal, qui déferlent à près de 10 m/s, endommageant sur leur passage ponts et parois de l'ouvrage, et provoquant d'importants débordements en zone urbaine. Plus en amont, dans le lit naturel, l'écoulement demeure stable. Plusieurs hypothèses sont avancées pour expliquer ce phénomène. (Résumé d'auteur

Quantification of CO2 generation in sedimentary basins through carbonate/clays reactions with uncertain thermodynamic parameters

We develop a methodological framework and mathematical formulation which yields estimates of the uncertainty associated with the amounts of CO2generated by Carbonate-Clays Reactions (CCR) in large-scale subsurface systems to assist characterization of the main features of this geochemical process. Our approach couples a one-dimensional compaction model, providing the dynamics of the evolution of porosity, temperature and pressure along the vertical direction, with a chemical model able to quantify the partial pressure of CO2resulting from minerals and pore water interaction. The modeling framework we propose allows (i) estimating the depth at which the source of gases is located and (ii) quantifying the amount of CO2generated, based on the mineralogy of the sediments involved in the basin formation process. A distinctive objective of the study is the quantification of the way the uncertainty affecting chemical equilibrium constants propagates to model outputs, i.e., the flux of CO2. These parameters are considered as key sources of uncertainty in our modeling approach because temperature and pressure distributions associated with deep burial depths typically fall outside the range of validity of commonly employed geochemical databases and typically used geochemical software. We also analyze the impact of the relative abundancy of primary phases in the sediments on the activation of CCR processes. As a test bed, we consider a computational study where pressure and temperature conditions are representative of those observed in real sedimentary formation. Our results are conducive to the probabilistic assessment of (i) the characteristic pressure and temperature at which CCR leads to generation of CO2in sedimentary systems, (ii) the order of magnitude of the CO2generation rate that can be associated with CCR processes

An Intersection of Laws: Citizens United v. FEC

The Georgia State University College of Law will hold a one-day symposium on Friday, November 12, 2010, to discuss the controversial Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. In Citizens United, the Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and portions of McConnell v. FEC, holding bans on corporate independent campaign expenditures are unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Specifically, the Georgia State Law Review symposium will focus on how this case reflects the intersection of First Amendment Law, Corporate Law, and Election Law. The symposium itself will feature three 90-minute panel discussions focusing on each of these discreet areas. In addition, we will have a lunch time presentation by Heather Gerken of Yale Law School and a 60-minute panel discussion focusing on the impact of the decision on the Midterm Elections

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe

Association of Variants at UMOD with Chronic Kidney Disease and Kidney Stones—Role of Age and Comorbid Diseases

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide public health problem that is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. To search for sequence variants that associate with CKD, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) that included a total of 3,203 Icelandic cases and 38,782 controls. We observed an association between CKD and a variant with 80% population frequency, rs4293393-T, positioned next to the UMOD gene (GeneID: 7369) on chromosome 16p12 (OR = 1.25, P = 4.1×10−10). This gene encodes uromodulin (Tamm-Horsfall protein), the most abundant protein in mammalian urine. The variant also associates significantly with serum creatinine concentration (SCr) in Icelandic subjects (N = 24,635, P = 1.3×10−23) but not in a smaller set of healthy Dutch controls (N = 1,819, P = 0.39). Our findings validate the association between the UMOD variant and both CKD and SCr recently discovered in a large GWAS. In the Icelandic dataset, we demonstrate that the effect on SCr increases substantially with both age (P = 3.0×10−17) and number of comorbid diseases (P = 0.008). The association with CKD is also stronger in the older age groups. These results suggest that the UMOD variant may influence the adaptation of the kidney to age-related risk factors of kidney disease such as hypertension and diabetes. The variant also associates with serum urea (P = 1.0×10−6), uric acid (P = 0.0064), and suggestively with gout. In contrast to CKD, the UMOD variant confers protection against kidney stones when studied in 3,617 Icelandic and Dutch kidney stone cases and 43,201 controls (OR = 0.88, P = 5.7×10−5)

Obesity and renal cell cancer – a quantitative review

Obesity has been associated with an increased risk of renal cell cancer among women, while the evidence for men is considered weaker. We conducted a quantitative summary analysis to evaluate the existing evidence that obesity increases the risk of renal cell cancer both among men and women. We identified all studies examining body weight in relation to kidney cancer, available in MEDLINE from 1966 to 1998. The quantitative summary analysis was limited to studies assessing obesity as body mass index (BMI, kg m−2), or equivalent. The risk estimates and the confidence intervals were extracted from the individual studies, and a mixed effect weighted regression model was used. We identified 22 unique studies on each sex, and the quantitative analysis included 14 studies on men and women, respectively. The summary relative risk estimate was 1.07 (95% CI 1.05–1.09) per unit of increase in BMI (corresponding to 3 kg body weight increase for a subject of average height). We found no evidence of effect modification by sex. Our quantitative summary shows that increased BMI is equally strongly associated with an increased risk of renal cell cancer among men and women. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaignhttp://www.bjcancer.co