George B. Shepherd

Delaware Corporate Law: Failing Law, Failing Markets

In this timely book, the law and economics of corporate governance is approached from various angles. Alessio Pacces shows that perspectives are evolving and that they differ between the economic and the legal standpoint, as well as varying between countries. A group of leading scholars offers their views and provides fresh empirical evidence on existing theories as well as developing new theoretical insights based on empirical puzzles. They all analyse the economics of corporate governance with a view to how it should, or should not, be regulated.

U.S. Labor Market Regulation and the Export of Employment: Major League Baseball Replaces U.S. Players with Foreigners

Our analysis of the market for professional baseball players shows that domestic labor-market restrictions have reduced domestic employment, especially of African-Americans, with employers instead shifting employment overseas. Our theoretical model suggests that, in 1965, the imposition of both the player draft and stricter age minimums for hiring U.S. players reduced the benefits of signing and developing U.S. players, especially players from disadvantaged groups such as African-Americans. Our empirical analysis, using a new data set, then shows that, in response, teams have shifted to developing and hiring players from other countries where the regulations do not apply, such as Latin America.

Homeschooling: Choosing Parental Rights Over Children's Interests

Homeschooling, the most extreme form of privatization of education, often eliminates the possibility of the child gaining the resources essential for success in adult life. It sacrifices the interests of the child to the interests of the parents, allowing them to control and isolate the child’s development. In addition, homeschooling frustrates the state’s legitimate interest in the child’s receiving a sound, diverse education, so that the child can achieve her potential as a productive employee and as a constructive participant in civic life. This Article uses vulnerability theory as a heuristic frame both to reexamine the dominant rhetoric of parental choice and to underscore the importance of a robust sense of state responsibility for the nature and content of education. It discusses the harms to the individual child and the larger society that might result when that responsibility is ignored. Finally, because privatizing education is often framed in economic terms, the final section argues that homeschooling is inefficient because competition in the market for education leads to market failure. For all of these reasons, homeschooling should be prohibited, as it is in many other countries.