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Truth on the Market 

Academic commentary on law, business, economics and more.
Post Frequency: 39.9/day Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 00:51:38 Recent Entries: 1318
Go to Truth on the Market, find other Corporate & Securities Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Dares, Jokes and Contracts
Posted on July 15, 2010A fun example for contracts class, to be paired with Judge Kimba Wood’s opinion in Leonard v. Pepsico (remember the Pepsi Points commercial with the Harrier Jet?): Dustin Kolodziej of the San Antonio area said attorney James Mason offered in a “Dateline NBC” interview he would pay $1 million to anyone who could prove him [...
Bundles
Posted on July 14, 2010HT: Freakonomics, photo from Tim Long. Send your other unique bundling examples or put them in the comments. Filed under: antitrust, business, economics, musings
What I’m Watching Now
Posted on July 14, 2010“The Future of Individual Tax Rates: Effects on Economic Growth and Distribution,” United States Senate Committee on Finance Hearing (HT: Taxprof Blog). Scheduled witnesses include: Carol Markman (CPA, Feldman, Meinberg & Co.) David Marzahl (President, Center for Economic Progress) Donald Marron (Director, Tax Policy Center) Douglas Holtz-Eakin (President, American Action Forum) Leonard Burman (Professor, Maxwell School, Syracuse [...
Nudging Antitrust (Part 2): Do Critiques of Behavioral Antitrust Have Any Bite?
Posted on July 14, 2010Part 1 of this short blog series on ?Nudging Antitrust,? focused on defining Commissioner Rosch?s recently articulated vision of behavioral economics as it relates to antitrust and competition policy and its differences with more ?conventional? economic approaches that are bound by the rationality assumption...
Nudging Antitrust? Commissioner Rosch’s Weak Case for “Behavioral Antitrust” (Part 1)
Posted on July 12, 2010Increasingly, the notion that updating antitrust policy with the insights of behavioral economics would significantly improve matters for consumers. Others have called for more major surgery, favoring an outright rejection of the current economic foundation of antitrust policy — and especially the portions of the foundation “Made in Chicago” — in favor of a new [...
Predicting LeBron
Posted on July 08, 2010Intrade says the Heat: Bill Simmons column is a must read: If LeBron picks anyone other than the Cavaliers, it will be the cruelest television moment since David Chase ended “The Sopranos” by making everyone think they lost power. Cleveland fans will never forgive LeBron, nor should they...
ELS, Technical Fetishization vs. Legal Relevance, and a Partial Defense of the Perfectly Proportional Mediocrity of Legal Empiricists
Posted on July 08, 2010Brian Leiter brings the always fun “what’s wrong with empirical legal studies” meme back to the front page. Professor Leiter’s post is a really good one. He sets up the “problem” with ELS as such: There is now too much empirical work being done simply because it looks ‘empirical...
This week?s Forbes.com column: financial reform
Posted on July 08, 2010Light holiday blogging, and this week I’m on the road. But I did have time to blast Dodd-Frank on Forbes.com. Filed under: financial regulation, Forbes
Who Will Run the New CFPB and How Will They Run It?
Posted on July 06, 2010The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is right around the corner Talk has now turned to who might run the powerful agency and what it might do. The WSJ names names: Democratic leaders in Congress say their top pick for the post is Elizabeth Warren, the high-profile Harvard law professor and an outspoken critic of [...
Why So Many No-Hitters?
Posted on July 06, 2010I read a really interesting column in Sports Illustrated, full of anecdotal accounts from players, managers and well-informed baseball observers, explaining the perceived dramatic uptick in no-hitters so far this season. With four no-hitters in a short period of time in the 2010 season, the most popular explanation has been steroids...
Antitrust Exemption Time Machine
Posted on July 05, 2010I’ve been struck of late by the level of activity surrounding antitrust exemptions: health care, insurance, beer and wine wholesalers, retail merchants for the purpose of negotiate interchange fees, newspapers, agricultural cooperatives, and sports leagues...
Some Links
Posted on July 03, 2010Bainbridge’s latest on insider trading inside the beltway Google and antitrust, everywhere (declared a monopoly in France, the ITA acquisition, and maybe Google not barred from selling targeted ads on iPhone’s and iPad’s afterall) The DOJ ag / antitrust hearings turn their attention to dairy No link for this one, but does anybody have any [...
Business and the Supreme Court
Posted on July 01, 2010David Zaring has noted that courts have formed an unimportant part of the financial crisis interventions by the government, and that the end of the Supreme Court’s most recent term suggests that it gets to matters years, if not decades, after they have become settled law one way or the other...
“I?m not going to praise the Leegin decision”
Posted on June 30, 2010Compared to the nominations of Justices Alito, Roberts and Sotomayor, there has been little excitement for the antitrust community on the most recent Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan. But there is something. The WSJ Law Blog reports that while Kagan refused to “praise the Leegin decision...
Judge Posner on Financial Reform and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Posted on June 30, 2010Judge Posner offers his thoughts on financial reform, mostly negative, at Bloomberg. The thrust of the essay is that the financial regulation produced by the political process has, at best, a poor nexus to the actual causes of the economic crisis, and that what we are left with is primary reorganization and reshuffling to look [...
The Supremes: Congress messed up SOX but no big deal
Posted on June 28, 2010The PCAOB members’ tenure unconstitutionally insulated them from executive supervision, but in David Zaring’s succinct summary The remedy is the key, and although the Court didn’t explain the remedy too clearly, it basically excised the removal protections, making members of the PCAOB removable at will by the President * * * and handed petitioners a [...
Congratulations to Steve Salop
Posted on June 28, 2010Steve Salop (Georgetown Law antitrust economist, and occasional guest-blogger here at TOTM) took home the American Antitrust Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award last week. Jonathan Baker (American, FCC) and Carl Shapiro (Berkeley, DOJ) presented the award and summarized Salop’s contributions to industrial organization economics and antitrust...
Lollapalooza and Antitrust
Posted on June 28, 2010Apparently, the Illinois Attorney General is investigating Lollapalooza for potential antitrust violations arising out of exclusivity clauses that the concert promoter includes in the contracts signed with artists who play the show. The controversial radius clauses prohibit Lollapalooza acts ranging from the top headliners to the smallest ?baby bands? at the bottom of the bill [...
The Olmstead decision and the problem of single member LLCs
Posted on June 27, 2010The Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. FTC on the surface is a highly convoluted case that outwardly appeals only to the sort of people who think about LLCs in the shower. Since I qualify, I suppose it falls to me to explain what this is all about...
The pot market
Posted on June 27, 2010The NYT discusses the market developing in the wake of the federal government’s decision in January to leave pot regulation to state law. Colorado’s working on regulations that other states may use as a model. Boulder now has more marijuana dispensaries than liquor stores and Starbucks combined...
Google Search Trends
Posted on June 26, 2010I’ve been having some fun with Google Trends lately, which offers unique analysis of search trends. For example, below is an excerpt from a search on the phrase “law and economics” that shows the top ten cities from which the phrase has been a search term, along with a graph of volume: 1...
Proxy Access Defense #1
Posted on June 25, 2010I’ve been spending my summer trying to get ahead of the ball on proxy access and consider the types of defenses Boards might employ against insurgents making use of the federal proxy access provision in the Dodd Bill. An article will hopefully be shipped to editors by mid-August...
F Cubed and jurisdictional competition
Posted on June 25, 2010The Supreme Court, per Scalia, opined yesterday in Morrison v. National Australia Bank that foreign plaintiffs who transacted in foreign shares on a foreign exchange (hence, “f cubed”) could not bring a 10b-5 action. Margaret Sachs has a good analysis on the Glom...
Antitrust at George Mason
Posted on June 25, 2010Danny Sokol has posted the most downloaded antitrust law professors. I come in 4th behind Damien Geradin, David Evans, and Herb Hovenkamp. It is flattering to be in company like that by any measure. Cool. But, as Danny points out, what is even cooler is that George Mason is one of only a handful of [...
Carried interest and Swiss cheese
Posted on June 24, 2010When I last wrote on the carried interest debate I commented on the NYT’s Andrew Sorkin’s support for characterizing private equity managers’ carried interest as ordinary income rather than capital gains. This is supposed to be a simple change that cuts fat cat fund managers down to size and fairly distinguishes what is essentially compensation [...
My Forbes.com column on BP
Posted on June 24, 2010It’s now up. As previously announced, I’ll be appearing regularly as the “Creative Destroyer.” I hope Schumpeter won’t mind.
The Supreme Court partially decriminalizes agency costs
Posted on June 24, 2010In the Skilling-Black case, the Court struck down “honest services” wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1346 in the absence of bribery/kickback allegations and remanded for determinations whether the errors in applying the statute justify reversals...
Ideoblog archives
Posted on June 23, 2010For those who want an easy way to get into six years of Ideoblog posts, here’s the old archives (also linked in the top bar and listed on the bottom left hand side).
Where’s the Evidence? Do Employers React to Grade Inflation?
Posted on June 23, 2010All the rage around the law blogs this week is the question of whether law schools should be engaging in grade inflation. The issue arises from time to time. The NYT kicked off the discussion most recently with its story on the (gasp) retroactively applied bump given to Loyola LA law students...
Clawbacks
Posted on June 23, 2010Dennis Berman, writing in yesterday’s WSJ, discussed the SEC’s case against Maynard Jenkins, former ceo of CSK, to return $4.1 million in stock option grants because accounting fraud, in which Jenkins was not involved, allegedly inflated the returns the grants were based on...
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Housing Market: Mixed Signals about Falling Prices for February
Two reports have been issued, one by the Massachusetts Association...
Fish on "Religion Without Truth"
Here's a (relatively) recent Stanley Fish Think Again column, call...
Is a child fathered out of wedlock by an American diplomat to a foreign women on foreign soil entitled to US Citizenship by jus sanguinis?
This is a very tough situation your friend is in. It is difficult to know the ex...
Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
Iam interested in tapping the local online search market how do people set up a services like localpull.com or areacodelocal.com? Is there any software that does the job? localpull.com/ areacodelocal are services that he
sign-up on LocalPull. The service is amazing. We love it....
Is it possible to terminate a contract with a real estate brokerage?
First, the Realtor cannot force you to reduce your price. It probably does dissu...
Need urgent answer. Never signed Truth in Lending Disclosure docs - docs at closing had different terms and rates than what we had originally signed up for in the Loan Application. Signed closing docs as assured it would
you have three days to change your mind after closing a re-fi...

Is a child fathered out of wedlock by an American diplomat to a foreign women on foreign soil entitled to US Citizenship by jus sanguinis?
This is a very tough situation your friend is in. It is difficult to know the ex...
Did I harass someone?
Oh, yes. This can be taken in as so many things, especially since you had testif...
Iam interested in tapping the local online search market how do people set up a services like localpull.com or areacodelocal.com? Is there any software that does the job? localpull.com/ areacodelocal are services that he
sign-up on LocalPull. The service is amazing. We love it....
Is it possible to terminate a contract with a real estate brokerage?
First, the Realtor cannot force you to reduce your price. It probably does dissu...
Need urgent answer. Never signed Truth in Lending Disclosure docs - docs at closing had different terms and rates than what we had originally signed up for in the Loan Application. Signed closing docs as assured it would
you have three days to change your mind after closing a re-fi...








