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LPE Originals

“As if the Last 30 Years Never Happened”: Towards a New Law and Economics, Part 1

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The empirical research we present in this post itself exemplifies how economics can be a powerful tool for examining (and not just assuming) the relationships between the formal structure of the law and the activities of economic exchange. As we lay out further in a subsequent post, legal leftists who fail to engage with the richness of academic economics miss out on many important insights.
LPE Originals

Accounting for Incorporation: Part 2

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Introduction: From ‘Accounting For’ to ‘Accountable To’     In an earlier post I welcomed legislation recently proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her Accountable Capitalism Act, I suggested, not only bids fair in the long run to render incorporated business firms less sociopathic, but also affords in the short run a fine opportunity to recall what…
LPE Originals

Accounting for Incorporation: Part 1

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Last month Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed an innovative – or better yet, restorative – new piece of legislation to the US Senate. Something like the Senator’s Accountable Capitalism Act, which would, among other things, hold corporations accountable to other stakeholders besides shareholders, is long overdue. It is in consequence much more than welcome. This owes…
LPE Originals

How Shareholder Primacy Hurts Jobs and Wages

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The debate around stagnant wages and job creation seems well-settled: scholars point to globalization, or skill-biased technical change, or the decline of union density.  Others point to the ‘rise of the robots’, claiming that automation and technology are driving us towards a jobless future. But few consider that the dominance of shareholder primacy within America’s…
LPE Originals

Against the Cult of Competition

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Competition is one of the talismanic words in law and economics and American life. It is often hailed as an unqualified good and touted as a solution to what ails society. The value of competition is endorsed across the ideological spectrum: Conservatives decry the lack of competition in schools and taxi cab services, while progressives…
LPE Originals

The Epicycles of Health Care Market Design: Time for a Paradigm Shift in Health Policy

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Back in June, I attended the annual conference of health law professors held by the ASLME. This conference is a real intellectual feast for anyone interested in political economy. National experts describe the latest developments in the Affordable Care Act’s exchange marketplaces. Antitrust scholars consider the proper balance between delivery system integration and competition in…
LPE Originals

Your Money or Your Life?

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High drug prices are a major problem in the United States. In the Washington Post today, Aaron Kesselheim and I have an op-ed about what President Trump could do – immediately – to lower drug prices, if he had any intention of following through on all of those campaign promises and tweets. (We also explain…
LPE Originals

Why “Intellectual Property” Law?

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When I entered law school in 1999, I was primarily interested in two things: HIV/AIDS, and critical approaches to human rights. I was also young and queer, and Bowers v. Hardwick was the law of the land. Sodomy was illegal in many states, and so, it seemed, was I. So, I was also deeply interested…