Competing Views on the Economic Structure of Corporate Law

Written for a symposium issue celebrating the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of The Economic Structure of Corporate Law by Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel (“E&F”), this essay discusses the interaction of my research over the years with their writings. During the period in which the book and articles were written, and in the many years since then, I have paid close attention to E&F’s writings in my research in the economics of corporate governance. Indeed, a significant part of my research in this field engaged closely with E&F’s writing and reached conclusions that substantially differed from theirs. Below I discuss this engagement of my work with E&F’s writings, and our respective approaches, in five corporate research areas: (i) takeover policy and rules; (ii) contractual freedom in corporate law; (iii) state competition in the provision of corporate law rules; (iv) efficiency and distribution in corporate law; and (v) corporate purpose.