Lawyer Expertise and Contract Design – Evidence from M&A Negotiations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel Karsten ◽  
Ulrike Malmendier ◽  
Zacharias Sautner
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Contract Design ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Risk Allocation ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
League Tables ◽  
Legal Fees

Abstract We argue that the relative expertise of contracting parties strongly affects contractual outcomes. Using unique data on company acquisition contracts, we document that lawyers with higher expertise relative to their counterparties negotiate better risk allocation for their clients and more favourable target prices. The benefits of high expertise outweigh its costs, largely because high-expertise lawyers economize on transaction costs by shortening negotiation times. Our findings suggest a need for explicit modelling of contracting skills, and they help explain heterogeneity in legal fees across law firms and the role of league tables of law firms.

The Hired Gun as Facilitator: Lawyers and the Suppression of Business Disputes in Silicon Valley

1996 ◽  
Vol 21 (03) ◽  
pp. 679-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Suchman ◽  
Mia L. Cahill
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Silicon Valley ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Local Law

This article draws on interview data from California's Silicon Valley to explore the role of local business attorneys in shaping the market for high-technology start-up financing. Far from exerting a disruptive or disputatious influence on business relations, Silicon Valley lawyers actively facilitate the functioning of the region's venture capital sector. In particular, attorneys intervene in the start-up process to absorb, suppress, and avert crucial uncertainties that might otherwise elevate transaction costs, imperil economic activity, and foster interorganizational discord. Local law firms moderate the hazards of new-company financing in at least three distinct ways: (1) by directly absorbing economic uncertainties in individual transactions; (2) by constructing, preserving, and reproducing normative and cognitive understandings within the community as a whole; and (3) by incorporating these local practices into the external legal regime.

Joint Venture Contract Design: The Role of A Host Country’s Formal Institutional Environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 11954
Author(s):  
Jeongho Choi ◽  
Andres Velez-Calle ◽  
Farok Contractor
Keyword(s):  
Joint Venture ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Contract Design

Labor lawsuits and debt maturity

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Omer Unsal
Keyword(s):  
Chief Executive ◽  
Debt Maturity ◽  
Employee Relations ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Debt Market ◽  
Legal Fees

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how firms’ relationships with employees define their debt maturity. The authors empirically test the role of employee litigations in influencing firms’ choice of short-term versus long-term debt. The authors study employee relations by analyzing the importance of the workplace environment on capital structure. Design/methodology/approach The author’s test hypotheses using a sample of US publicly traded firms between 2000 and 2017, including 3,056 unique firms with 4,256 unique chief executive officer, adopting the fixed effect panel model. Findings The authors document that employee litigations have a significant negative effect on the use of short-term debt and a significant positive affect on long-term debt. Employee litigations, along with legal fees, outcomes and charging parties, matter the most in explaining debt maturity. In addition, frequently sued firms abandon the short-term debt market and use less shareholders’ equity to finance their operations while relying more on the longer debt market. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the role of employee mistreatment in debt maturity choice. The study extends the lawsuit and finance literature by examining unique, hand-collected data sets of employee lawsuits, allegations, violations, settlements, charging parties, case outcomes and case durations.

scholarly journals Information Asymmetry and Trust: A Framework for Studying Microfinance in India

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
M S Sriram
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Imperfect Information ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
Financial Transactions

In recent times, microfinance has emerged as a major innovation in the rural financial marketplace. Microfinance largely addresses the issue of access to financial services. In trying to understand the innovation of microfinance and how it has proved to be effective, the author looks at certain design features of microfinance. He first starts by identifying the need for financial service institutions which is basically to bridge the gap between the need for financial services across time, geographies, and risk profiles. In providing services that bridge this gap, formal institutions have limited access to authentic information both in terms of transaction history and expected behaviour and, therefore, resort to seeking excessive information thereby adding to the transaction costs. The innovation in microfinance has been largely to bridge this gap through a series of trustbased surrogates that take the transaction-related risks to the people who have the information — the community through measures of social collateral. In this paper, the author attempts to examine the trajectory of institutional intermediation in the rural areas, particularly with the poor and how it has evolved over a period of time. It identifies a systematic breach of trust as one of the major problems with the institutional interventions in the area of providing financial services to the poor and argues that microfinance uses trust as an effective mechanism to address one of the issues of imperfect information in financial transactions. The paper also distinguishes between the different models of microfinance and identifies which of these models use trust in a positivist frame and as a coercive mechanism. The specific objectives of the paper are to: Superimpose the role of trust in various types of exchanges and see how it impacts the effectiveness of repeated transactions. While greater access to information fosters trust and thus helps social networks to reduce transaction costs, there could be limits to which exchanges could solely depend on networks and trust. Look at the frontiers where mutual trust cannot work as a surrogate for lower appraisal costs. Use an example in the Canadian context and see how an entity that started on the basis of social networks and trust had to morph into using the techniques used by other formal nonneighbourhood institutions as it grew in size and went beyond a threshold. Using the Canadian example, the author argues that as the transactions get sophisticated, it is possible to achieve what informal networks have achieved through the creative use of information technology. While we find that the role of trust both in the positivist and the coercive frame does provide some interesting insights into how exchanges with the poor could be managed, there still could be breaches in the assumptions. This paper identifies the conditions under which the breaches could possibly happen and also speculates on the effect of such breaches.

scholarly journals Positive collaboration: Factors and mechanisms of evolution

2016 ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Polterovich
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Planning Horizon ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Further Development

T is proposed in the article to distinguish between two types of collaboration: a positive (not directed against third parties) and a negative one. I consider the hypothesis that in the process of social development, transaction costs ratio of the three main types of coordination - competition, power, and collaboration - is changing in favor of the latter. The mechanisms responsible for the implementation of this tendency are studied, and an attempt to explain its nonmonotonicity is made. It is shown that the strengthening role of positive collaboration is largely explained by cultural changes: the enhance of tolerance culture, the spread of cosmopolitanism and altruism, increasing planning horizon as well as trust radius. I demonstrate the importance of the institutions of positive collaboration in the process of catchingup development; it is shown that shock reforms could lead to the formation of negative collaboration mechanisms. For the further development of these ideas, a program of interdisciplinary researches is outlined.

Agricultural Co-operatives

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samira Nuhanovic-Ribic ◽  
Ermanno C. Tortia ◽  
Vladislav Valentinov
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Vertical Integration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scale Production ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Large Scale Production ◽  
Entrepreneurial Action

Over the last decades, agricultural co-operatives grew substantially in most developed and developing countries, often reaching dominant market positions. We inquire into the economic mechanism behind this growth, by elaborating on the relation between co-operative identity and co-operative benefits. We highlight the ability of agricultural co-operatives to co-ordinate large-scale production, to monitor work contributions and product quality, and to ensure economic independence of farmer members. Following the two principal streams in the economic literature, we distinguish between the conceptions of agricultural co-operatives as units of vertical integration and as firms characterized by common governance of collective entrepreneurial action and ability to reduce transaction costs and economic risk. We describe the financial and governance limitations of agricultural co-operatives while taking account of new co-operative models presenting institutional tools introduced to overcome these limitations. We conclude by suggesting directions for enhancing the role of co-operatives in agricultural and rural development.

English Apprenticeship: A Neglected Factor in the First Industrial Revolution

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Humphries
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Contract Enforcement ◽  
Human Capital Accumulation ◽  
Poor Children

This chapter examines the role of apprenticeship in the British Industrial Revolution. The apprenticeship system contributed in four ways. First, it provided training of necessary skills in the expanding area of employment and newer sectors. Second, it promoted efficient training among masters and men. Third, it reduced the transaction costs involved in transferring resources from agriculture to non-agriculture and facilitated the expansion of sectors which promoted trade and commerce. Finally, apprenticeship saved poor children from social exclusion and enabled them to become more productive adults. The chapter also suggests that the apprenticeship system also created a structure of contract enforcement which ensured that both masters and trainees would derive the benefits from human capital accumulation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document