What Matters in Design of Corporate Law

• For the corporate business model to be successful, it is important to align the interests of thosewho control and finance the firm. Corporate law has here an important task to fulfill. It offers alegal framework that can facilitate for parties to conclude mutually preferable agreements atlow transaction costs. The purpose of the paper is to show how to design corporate law to fulfillthis task. A two-dimension model that simultaneously considers both regulation intensity andthe level of default of the corporate law is presented. Earlier literature treats these dimensionsseparately. By adding a transaction cost perspective to our model, we assess different regulatorytechniques and examine how legislation can help corporations by offering a standard contractthat lowers transaction costs of contracting. This can be achieved through a legislation thatcovers most contingencies and take the heterogeneity of firms into consideration. Furthermore,default rules or standards of opt-out character should be combined with other regulatorytechniques with lower transaction costs such as opt-in alternatives and menus.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik -- Juridik och samhälle (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law -- Law and Society (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Corporate law

regulation

contracts

transaction costs

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)