Investigator:
Chris Thomale

Abstract:
Competition between national and supra-national regulators, as a political and economic fact, is a well-recognized phenomenon. The competition rules of the market for corporate forms and the markets for capital markets, however, oftentimes are implicit only bordering to nonexistent, such as, notably, basic freedoms of capital and establishment in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union or the full faith and credit clause in the US Constitution, as well as the numerous mutual recognition clauses contained in International Treaties. Even less clear than the regulatory framework are the beneficial effects of these types of regulatory competition, i.e., whether they actually work. Notably, no in-depth analysis exists as to how this competition affects tech industry.

In my project, I am collecting updated data on regulatory competition in the fields of corporate and capital markets law, focusing on the US and the EU. Based on this updated account, I would like to identify and more fully analyze the existing de iure and de facto constraints on that regulatory competition, including but not limited to questions of conflict of corporate laws. Likewise, welfare failures and successes of regulatory competition, at least on a qualitative and exemplary level, should be addressed. This will set the stage for formulating regulatory goals for corporate and capital markets law with specific regard to the special needs of tech companies. In order to back up that research with empirical data, I am inter alia conducting surveys at Silicon Valley with corporate leaders, corporate advocacy as well as corporate accounting and consulting in order to get a fuller picture of how and why tech companies choose certain corporate forms and capital markets over others.