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This Article discusses the problem of veterinary lien laws that treat companion animals as inanimate objects, in a modern society that often views pets as members of the family. Historically, pets, like automobiles, were subject to possessory liens. If an automobile owner couldn't pay the repair bill, the mechanic could keep possession of the car or sell the car to recoup costs. Veterinary lien laws treat companion animals in a similar fashion. If the owner cannot not pay the veterinary bill in full, the veterinarian is often permitted to keep possession of the companion animal until the bill is paid. Typically, after some designated time-limit expires, the companion animal is deemed abandoned and the veterinarian may sell or euthanize the animal. This Article highlights the hypocrisy of the veterinary industry that benefits from owners treating pets like family while simultaneously treating pets as mere property by using veterinary lien laws to assert liens against these owners. Pilot's owner brings his dog to a nearby veterinarian, and the veterinarian's service and treatment save the dog's life. As a result, Pilot should have a normal life. It turns out that the care for Pilot ended up being more expensive than Pilot's owner could afford. An extra $500 meant that the owner couldn't pay the bill in full. As a result, the veterinarian refused to return Pilot to his owner. In addition, the veterinarian told Pilot's owner that unless the bill was paid in full within ten days, plus the additional charges incurred for food and lodging for Pilot, he would send Pilot to the pound where he may be euthanized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides the first empirical examination of the effect of share prices and the arrival of limited liability in California. Absence of evidence of share price changes associated with the change in the liability regime; Overview of the change in California from 1927–1931; Effect of the regime change on share prices; Companies listed on New York Stock Exchange; Economic structure of corporate law.

The past few years have seen the development of a market for original issue high-yield bonds, the so-called Junk Bond Market, which has developed as an alternative to private placements. The demand side of the Junk Bond Market is the subject of this paper. This paper examines the behavior of low-grade corporate bonds over the period of 1962-74 to address three related issues. Do low-grade bonds actually deliver realized returns in excess of those on high-grade bonds? If differences exist, do they represent abnormal returns, or simply compensation for risk bearing? How is inference about low-grade bonds affected by sample default experience?

Economists have documented pervasive correlations between legal origins, modern regulation, and economic outcomes around the world. Where legal origin is exogenous, however, it is almost perfectly correlated with another set of potentially relevant background variables: the colonial policies of the European powers that spread the “origin” legal systems through the world. We attempt to disentangle these factors by exploiting the imperfect overlap of colonizer and legal origin, and looking at possible channels, such as the structure of the legal system, through which these factors might influence contemporary economic outcomes. We find strong evidence in favor of on-legal colonial explanations for economic growth. For other dependent variables, the results are mixed.