Corporate Finance in the Law School Curriculum

Review of: Corporate Finance: Cases and Materials. By Robert W. Hamilton: West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minnesota, 1984

Reflections on Convenience Translations: A Reply to Professor Brooks

The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has a de facto requirement that the consolidated income statements of foreign companies registering under the Securities Act of 1933 be presented, not only in their domicile currency, but also in American dollars for the convenience of the American investor. The author uses valuation theory to demonstrate that these convenience translations serve no useful purpose

Taxing Stock Dividends and Economic Theory

Since 1936, the Internal Revenue Code has treated elective stock dividends on common stock, which are taxed on receipt as shareholder ordinary income gain, differently from pro rata stock dividends on common, which are received tax-free. This difference in treatment was reenacted in Section 305 of the 1954 Code; and while the Tax Reform Act of 1969 changed many details of stock dividend taxation, the basic distinction between elective and pro rata stock dividends was, if anything, reinforced. The major purpose of the 1969 amendments to Section 305 was to impose a shareholder ordinary income tax on transactions with the same substance, but lacking the formal indicia, of the receipt of elective stock dividends on common stock. Therefore, a reexamination of the rationale for current distinctions between taxable and nontaxable stock dividends is particularly appropriate

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