Distortion Other than Price Distortion

Washington University Law Review, Vol. 93, pp. 425-451 (2015)

28 Pages Posted: 14 Sep 2016

See all articles by Urska Velikonja

Urska Velikonja

Georgetown University Law Center

Date Written: 2015

Abstract

Financial disclosure fraud is economically harmful not only because it hurts buyers and sellers of public company stock — though it certainly hurts some — but because it produces considerable economic consequences that are not fully captured by stock price movements. A significant portion of welfare losses caused by financial manipulation is the product of the distortion in capital allocation, and resulting changes in investment, employment, and output, all of which are used to detect, avoid, exploit, or cover up the misrepresentation. Fraud firms’ disclosures are used by other firms in their own investment decisions, spreading welfare losses beyond the fraud firm like fruit rot.

In light of these observations, the Article suggests that fraud-on-the-market litigation should not be understood primarily as a remedy for victimized shareholders, who can often eliminate the cost of fraud ex ante, but as a quasi qui tam cause of action available to purchasers and sellers of (usually equity) securities to police economically-harmful false disclosures by public companies. Even in cases where buyers and sellers of stock are not the class most significantly harmed by disclosure fraud, they nearly always suffer some identifiable losses, thus avoiding difficult evidentiary questions about standing. When viewed through this lens, many of the objections to securities litigation become moot and some of its virtues are revealed.

Keywords: Securities class action litigation, Halliburton

Suggested Citation

Velikonja, Urska, Distortion Other than Price Distortion (2015). Washington University Law Review, Vol. 93, pp. 425-451 (2015), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2838560

Urska Velikonja (Contact Author)

Georgetown University Law Center ( email )

600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
69
Abstract Views
987
Rank
596,270
PlumX Metrics