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This study examines how creditor interventions after debt covenant violations affect corporate tax avoidance. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that creditor interventions increase borrowers' tax avoidance. This effect is concentrated among firms with weaker shareholder governance before creditor interventions and among those with less bargaining power during subsequent debt renegotiations. Our results indicate that creditors play an active role in shaping corporate tax policy outside of bankruptcy.

We investigate the interaction of debt covenants and tax accounting on the adoption of Financial Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48). We examine how firms respond to the potential tightening of covenant slack upon FIN 48 adoption and whether these actions are penalized by creditors and anticipated by equity markets. We find that upon FIN 48 adoption, the majority of sample corporate borrowers increase their tax reserves and reduce equity. Firms close to debt covenant violation were even more likely to increase tax reserves upon FIN 48 adoption; however, the size of the adjustment was relatively smaller, suggesting that the FIN 48 standards limited, but did not eliminate, firms use of discretion in reporting uncertain tax positions to avoid costly covenant violations. For firms near net worth debt covenant violation, the act of decreasing equity upon FIN 48 adoption imposes real economic costs, as the average cost of debt increased by 43 basis points. Finally, we extend prior research on the market response to FIN 48 by showing how the market response to FIN 48 adoption is a function of debt covenant slack and tax aggressiveness. Specifically, the cumulative abnormal return at the FIN 48 exposure draft release date is negative only for tax aggressive firms that are close to debt covenant violation.

The intersection between drug control and the death penalty represents a key nexus for human rights and drug reform advocacy and constitutes one of the most visible examples of the link between abusive law enforcement and drug control in the current period. The issue has emerged as a flashpoint of international debates on drugs and is one that raises important questions and challenges for both ‘abolitionist’ countries that oppose the death penalty and ‘retentionist’ States that continue to execute people. The death penalty for drug offences cannot be dismissed as simply an internal matter for States. Not only do executions for drug offences violate significant international human rights legal protections, domestic capital punishment laws in many cases cannot be separated from the influence of the international drug control treaty regime. This chapter will explore the question of the death penalty for drug offences and the challenges it presents for the international drug control regime more broadly.¹

Scholarly excellence in higher education depends in part on the ability of members of the academic community to be able to travel abroad, to return home and to move freely within a state for the purposes of study, teaching and research. Articles 12 and 13 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966 protect the right to freedom of movement and the right of aliens not to be arbitrarily expelled from a state, respectively. Any person may rely on these provisions to claim various stated entitlements related to freedom of movement. International human rights law does not, however, offer (clear) protection where an alien wishes to enter a state. It appears, however, that Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, prohibiting discrimination on the ground of, amongst other things, ‘political or other opinion’, may be relied on to prevent states from restricting the entry of scholars solely on the basis of the academic opinions they hold or views they have expressed. The right to freedom of movement of scholars – conceived as a right to academic mobility – forms a part of the right to academic freedom. International human rights law does not accord express protection to this right. Whereas the right to freedom of opinion and expression in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights may be relied on to protect a multitude of facets covered by the right to academic freedom, Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 on the right to education may, in fact, be seen to constitute a complete locus for the right to academic freedom.

Licensing from US universities is done within the overall legal framework of the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 and the employment agreements of universities. This chapter explains common contracts used by universities to license technologies developed by their faculty and students within the context of these laws. In addition to the legal framework, the nature of license agreements is affected by the embryonic nature of most university inventions, which necessitates faculty and student involvement in development, and the entrepreneurial goals of the university. Universities have diverse goals in terms of revenue, licenses executed, inventions commercialized, patents filed, and number of startups formed. The somewhat obvious problem is that the goals of faculty, students, the university, and the licensee may not be aligned. Common contracts used are meant to align these goals. While some contracts include multiple terms such as upfront fees, running royalties, annual payments, and equity, Express Licenses are increasingly being used to accommodate the entrepreneurial environment. This chapter discusses these issues and also the importance of the rights to sublicense inventions.

Both the Austrian and Bloomington Schools emphasize the dispersal of information to the level of individual agents. An underappreciated difference is the Bloomington emphasis on the moral psychology of agents and its relation to covenant. Covenant refers to a habit, a sense of obligation to consider the interests of the other in decision making, and a commitment to do so that is not easily or unilaterally broken. This chapter seeks to elaborate the lineage of covenant in constituting political order and its implications for the moral psychology of agents and artisanship. This exploration raises issues of metaphysical foundations as they relate to values and to the Hobbesian–Aristotelian divide in starting points. An application to the environmental crisis, with particular reference to vested interests promoting disinformation, obfuscation, and doubt about anthropogenic climate change, suggests value in emphasizing covenant.

This chapter examines the effect of creditors’ monitoring role on the profitability of firm acquisitions. We use the shares retained by the lead arranger of a syndicated loan as a proxy for monitoring level. We find that acquirer announcement returns are positively related to the shares retained by the lead arranger. The effect of the lead arranger’s shares on the acquirer’s return becomes pronounced in cash acquisition deals, and when there exist financial covenants. Our results suggest that lead arrangers are important not only for monitoring loans but also for successful acquisitions by borrowers. An important policy implication of the main findings of this chapter on bank monitoring is that policy makers should design financial covenants to improve the efficiency of monitoring activities by lead arranging banks in syndicated bank loan deals.

This chapter examines the conundrum of juvenile immigration law and policy and argues that it is a present-day manifestation of “child-saving” in rhetoric, disposition, and human capital harm. In support of this thesis, the chapter reviews the pertinent human rights, law, and social science evidence, and it concludes that the maintenance of the nation’s existing immigration policy only makes sense within the context of the intentions of the 19th century child-saving movement. To substantiate this view, the political-economic drivers of contemporary US immigration policy (i.e., its child-saving dynamics) are explored. The chapter concludes by speculatively addressing the character (i.e., the form and quality) of modern-day juvenile immigration policy as child-saving informed by the philosophy and criticism of Psychological Jurisprudence (PJ).

Indigenous peoples are often alienated from their lands and culture. This has arguably resulted in Indigenous peoples figuring disproportionately in the social and economic statistics. The right of self-determination is often touted as a panacea to these statistics. The focus of this paper is to rethink the notion of self-determination and examine whether the process afforded by the United Nations Decolonization Committee can assist or whether the sway of State politics and State power impedes this right for Indigenous peoples.