Why subscribe?

Subscribe (free) to Hot Blocks for periodic posts on firms, cities & transportation.

Who am I?

I’m a law professor at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law who teaches and writes about cities (especially transportation) and corporate and securities law. You can find my scholarship here and I’m on Bluesky here. I also co-host a podcast called Densely Speaking: Conversations about Cities, Economics & Law with Jeff Lin, an economist at the Philadelphia Fed. I have also done some popular writing, for example at The Atlantic.

What’s this about?

The fields of corporate law and local government law, which is where many transportation policy questions are decided, share important tradeoffs: efficiency vs. voice, individual vs. shared welfare, the promises and perils of scale, the allocation of control and duties among different internal and external stakeholders, the proper role of regulation, federalism, and so on. Economic analysis is also helpful to each. The two areas also share a heritage, which reflects the design of incorporation to manage shared undertakings.

What is the painting on the welcome page?

A 1910 work by E.S. Yates titled “Twentieth Century Transportation,” now in the public domain. A close look suggests the range and scale of technological and economic changes that have powered the past 100+ years. I like it as an avatar for this newsletter.

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