Moin A. Yahya

An Economic Model of Click Fraud in Publisher Networks

Click fraud occurs when a Web user clicks on a sponsored link with the malicious intent of hurting a competitor or gaining undue monetary benefits. Advertisers and the media accuse search engines of not doing enough to curb this practice. This paper develops a game-theoretical model of click fraud in a publisher network that sheds light on the economic trade-offs search engines face. On the supply side, search engines try to create incentives for publishers to generate clicks honestly and to reward honest publishers who generate legitimate clicks. The negative strategic effect of undercounting invalid clicks deters the search engine from undercounting. Since better filtering is beneficial to search engines, publishers, and advertisers, search engines have an incentive to invest in filtering technology.

Private Interests, Public Borders, and the NAFTA 's Chapter 11: Lessons from the Mad-Cow Saga

This article provides a detailed overview of the mad-cow saga that took place from 2003 until 2005, and discusses its adverse impact on the economic markets of Canada and the United States in terms of trade synergies and amicable commercial relationships. The authors go on to discuss the remedies and dispute resolution mechanisms offered by the NAFTA , particularly c. 11. Ultimately, the article argues that c. 11 is a useful tool for parties to redress their loss when they have been subjected to unfair treatment by interest groups that pursue litigation in domestic courts. This argument is grounded in a discussion of Leowen v. O’Keefe and the litigation pursued by Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund.

Shareholders, Creditors, and Directors' Fiduciary Duties: A Law and Finance Approach

The debate surrounding fiduciary duties owed to creditors by directors, especially in the vicinity of insolvency, has resurfaced in light of two court decisions in Canada and the United States. In this paper, we contribute to the discussion by looking at the issue from a corporate finance perspective, where we utilize well-established theorems and results. We show that creditors are able to protect themselves by the use of covenants. While this idea has been reported extensively in previous discussions about fiduciary duties, we focus on studies that show the extent to which creditors use covenants to protect themselves against opportunistic behavior by managers and shareholders. Additionally, we show that debt can actually increase the value of the firm and the shares, and therefore, the idea that shareholders use debt for opportunistic behavior is misplaced. If anything, debt is used to align managerial incentives to maximize the value of the firm. The Fisher Separation theorem is also introduced and used to show that all stakeholders in a firm will want the firm to pursue projects with the maximum net present value. Hence, we propose that fiduciary duties should always be owed to the corporation as a whole, where the main focus of the managers is investing in those projects that have the highest expected net present value.