How stocks are traded in the United States has been totally transformed. Gone are the dealers on NASDAQ and the specialists at the NYSE. Instead, a company's stock can now be traded on up to sixty competing venues where a computer matches incoming orders. A majority of quotes are now posted by...

Financial indices, like the S&P 500 or the Consumer Price Index, have become a ubiquitous feature of our financial markets. One index, the London InterBank Offered Rate (“Libor”), may be the world's most important number, an interest rate benchmark upon which hundreds of trillions of dollars...

The default rules of corporate law make shareholders’ control rights a function of their voting power. Whether a director is elected or a merger is approved depends on how shareholders vote. Yet, in private corporations, shareholders routinely alter their rights by contract. This phenomenon of...