SelectedWorks @ Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law
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Pioneers in Finance: Vernon Smith Interview
No full textOn January 9th 2009, Terry Odean and Betty Simkins interviewed Vernon L. Smith for this issue of the Journal of Applied Finance. Vernon Smith is widely regarded as the father of experimental economics for his pathbreaking work in this area. After decades of research, the once novel field of ‘experimental economics’ has become a recognized strand of the literature that contributes to our understanding of market mechanisms and more broadly, to the field of behavioral financial economics.
In 2002, Vernon Smith was a co-recipient for the Nobel Prize in Economics for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms . In this interview, Vernon Smith shares his insights on markets. Among the issues he addresses are:
* the relation between experimental economics and behavioral economics,
* the insights his research on speculative bubbles in experimental markets provides for understanding the recent bubble is US residential real estate, and
* his view as to reasons for the dramatic rise and fall in oil prices last year
Acing Your First Year of Law School: The Ten Steps to Success You Won\u27t Learn in Class
No full textFirst published in 1999, Acing Your First Year of Law School has become one of the bestselling law school preparation books of all time. Every law student will tell you that the first year is the most important and the most frustrating. This is a manual that teaches first year law students the ten basic skills they need to know to start learning their first day and ace their first year. The Second Edition has been updated to reflect the best use of technology. It includes a Preface that addresses the Socratic Method and how to beat it. It also includes an Epilogue that focuses on tasks that are necessary to ensure a successful transition from the first to the second semester
Historical Property RIghts, Sociality, and the EMergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-distance Trade
No full textMuch Ado about Pluralities: Pride and Precedent Amidst the Cacophony of Concurrences, and Re-Percolation after Rapanos
No full textConflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to explore this topic of concurrences precedential complexities, and confusion. It addresses these issues by introducing the Marks doctrine\u27s ability to assist jurists and others who are wrangling with precedents written by pluralities. Part of the precedential system is the signaling function to lower courts, and that signal can be disrupted by plurality opinions, and it analyzes lower courts\u27 reaction to the fractured nature of Rapanos. But plurality decisions may open the door to re-percolation in interpretations. Finally, this Article examines Marks and this situation in relation to judicial motives. The legal treatment of separate opinions may alter incentives to concur rather than join, thus creating the possibility that their nuance on the holding will have greater influence once a case must be applied in the lower courts. Rapanos provides an excellent case study of a fragmented decision in the era of many such decisions. The confusion that it has caused is serious and reflects the limitations of lower courts\u27 ability to apply the Marks doctrine as well as the limitations of the doctrine itself. Thus, while the Marks doctrine creates self-interested incentives to write separately, its limitations act as a check on these incentives. Whether that check is enough to control the pride, prejudice or prudence that causes the Court to issue a fractured decision is questionable. As a result, some plurality decisions are much ado about nothing, but others are a source of ongoing confusion and uncertainty that seriously undermines our system of precedent
Serfs at the Mercy of a Hungry Beast: Aggressive Regressivity, Private Equity, and the Quandary of the St. Luke Imperative
No full textCurrently, there exists a split in the U.S. Courts of Appeals with respect to whether certain amounts paid to university professors relinquishing tenure and retiring early constitute wages with respect to employment. This Article addresses that split before exploring, more broadly, the troubled concepts of wages and employment. Though some courts have struggled to draw discernable lines of demarcation to separate wages from income and the income tax conception of wages from the payroll tax conception, other courts, apparently yielding to expansive conceptual pressures and the visceral tug of the existence of the employer/employee relationship, have pursued regressive taxes from low- and mid-wage earners by embracing tangential precedent, importing broad conceptions of wages and employment, and looking to shifting administrative interpretations for guidance. And yet, at the same time that Congress, certain courts, and administrative agencies have undertaken to sniff out the merest trace of low- and mid-wage earner revenue (lest the serfs take tax holiday), certain entities/individuals in the capital-gain Mecca of private equity have managed, in breathtaking defiance of longstanding tax principles, to survive a degree of scrutiny despite raking in billions of dollars as compensation for services rendered. Having presented commentary on this contrast, the Article turns to the impending Social Security crisis and presents rational alternatives to the enhancement of systemic inequities which would result from raising payroll tax rates, sharply increasing the FICA Wage Base, or reducing benefit levels for those who have, quite literally, earned the right to retire with financial dignity
Civic Republicanism, Public Choice Theory, and Neighborhood Councils: A New Model for Civic Engagement
No full textThis paper analyzes the lack of civic engagement in local government decision-making and the problems that result from it. I consider one explanation as viewed through public choice theory: dominant special interest groups capture local governments for their own private interests. Thus, average citizens are not only alienated from their local government, but they also find the barriers to entry into local politics too high for collective action and participation. While at first glance this account seems descriptively accurate, public choice theory has normative limitations in explaining local governments because it fails to recognize these features of the local politics process as problematic (much less to offer any solutions). Therefore, I argue that we ought to reject this model of local government in favor of a model based on civic republicanism, which does offer a solution to the problem of civic disengagement. Civic republicanism envisions local government substructures that provide meaningful opportunities for stakeholders to deliberate with one another regarding matters facing their community and correspondingly inform the local decision-making process. In this light, this Article explores whether neighborhood councils - new substructures of local government that aim to involve citizens in policy- and decision-making processes - can improve civic engagement