The primary conclusion from prior literature is that firm size, as a measure of firm resources and capacity to pay, is a key predictor of class action securities settlement amount, and the merits of the case are less important in settlement negotiations. The purpose of this study is to shed...

Apart from the loss of time and money, disputes between public authority and private partner in China’s public-private partnership (PPP) projects are destroying the government’s image of PPP support and the private partner’s investment confidence. This article aims to explore the main...

Much of the research in law and finance reduces long, complex texts down to a small number of variables. Examples include the coding of corporate charters as an entrenchment index or characterizing dense securities complaints by using variables that capture the amount at issue, the statutes...

We test the predictability of investment fraud using a panel of mandatory disclosures filed with the SEC. We find that disclosures related to past regulatory and legal violations, conflicts of interest, and monitoring have significant power to predict fraud. Avoiding the 5% of firms with the...

In this Essay, we revisit our analysis in A Sober Look at SPACs and assess whether that analysis—based on the 47 SPACs that merged between January 2019 and June 2020—provided a basis on which to predict that the dilution embedded in the SPAC structure would lead to severe shareholder losses...

Professor Colleen Chien recently developed an innovative and important model that relies on a patent's "after-acquired" characteristics to predict the chances that the patent will be involved in litigation. This comment critiques Professor Chien's model by identifying certain weaknesses,...

The patent system - and information about the patent system - is becoming more available and more digitalized. One area of interest involves using newly available information to predict patent litigation - to identify patents that will in the future be litigated. If patents that will be...

Patent lawsuits are disruptive, unpredictable, and costly. The inability to anticipate patent litigation makes it practically uninsurable, exposes companies to late-stage suits, and drives companies to rapidly accumulate patents in order to ward off litigation. This article confronts this...