A Legal Options Approach to EC Company Law

Gerard Hertig and Joseph A. McCahery

Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics

Abstract: In recent years, legal options (ex ante and ex post choices created by law) have gained acceptance in the European Union. Notwithstanding the move toward soft law measures, the EC’s appetite for options or pro-choice company law provisions remains unclear. There are significant barriers to the EC’s ability to promote efficient regulatory choice due to interest group pressures, diffuse control over the agenda-setting process, and a limited capacity to anticipate and meet a wide range of Member State demands. This article shows that bringing options to the forefront of company law reform can reduce costs for small and medium-sized firms and provide clear benefits to companies that differ in their ownership and control structure from most large public corporations. Switching to a company law regime with different sorts of options can have a good effect on stakeholders as well. As a regulatory strategy, we advocate a step-by-step change, beginning with the adoption of a limited number of opt-in provisions.

Date: 2006-02-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7nf0n65z.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt7nf0n65z

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series from Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().