We study the effects of mortgage forbearance on local economies and individuals. During the Great Depression, twenty-five states adopted foreclosure moratoria that temporarily prevented lenders from seizing farms. By interrupting foreclosures during systemic crises, forbearance policies can avert fire sales, stabilize bank balance sheets, and dampen credit contractions. At the same time, they can raise the cost of capital and entrench land in the hands of less productive operators. We empirically evaluate these trade-offs using county-level agricultural data and linked full-count census records. We show that the moratoria preserved at least 250,000 farms nationwide and that counties most exposed to mortgages—and thus foreclosure risk—experienced a persistent 15% increase in the number of farms. Farmers protected by the policy, and their children, were significantly more likely to remain in agriculture and less likely to transition into manufacturing even two decades later. The moratoria shifted agricultural production toward smaller, more labor-intensive farms operating on more marginal land with lower capital intensity. The resulting delay in consolidation depressed farm revenues and asset values. At the same time, the policies raised local borrowing costs by roughly 10% during a period of substantial interest-rate convergence. We also find suggestive evidence that highly exposed counties developed weaker manufacturing sectors in the long run, consistent with slower labor reallocation out of agriculture. Taken together, our results show that well-intentioned policies that temporarily suspend creditor remedies can have significant long-run costs.

Electricity rates in the United States have risen sharply over the past decade, outpacing inflation and imposing significant costs on households and businesses. While many forces contribute to higher bills, including infrastructure investment, wildfire liability, and rising demand, one underappreciated driver is persistent overcompensation of investor-owned utilities. Under traditional cost-of-service regulation, state commissions administratively determine utilities' allowed return on equity (ROE) using contested financial models. Decades of empirical evidence indicate that these methods systematically authorize returns above utilities' true cost of equity, generating billions of dollars annually in excess profits. Because every basis point of authorized ROE applies to billions in rate base, even small overestimates translate into substantial wealth transfers from captive ratepayers to shareholders.

This Article proposes a market-based solution to this problem: Competitive Direct Equity (CDE). Under CDE, utilities would raise new equity capital through standardized auctions in which investors bid the return they are willing to accept. The auction-clearing return becomes the allowed ROE for that tranche of equity, directly revealing the market cost of capital rather than inferring it from disputed models. CDE eliminates capital bias by aligning the return on equity with its opportunity cost over time.

Finally, we show that CDE is lawful under existing doctrine. Supreme Court precedent requires that rates be sufficient to attract capital but not confiscatory; it does not mandate any particular ratemaking methodology. Because CDE relies on competitive market evidence to establish a commensurate return, it meets the constitutional standard by demonstrating that rates are high enough to attract capital.

Private equity firms have acquired life insurers and loaded their balance sheets with private credit assets that are illiquid, opaque, and difficult for regulators to value. Between 2017 and 2024, the share of "privately placed" assets on PE-owned insurer balance sheets rose from 6 percent to 14 percent. PE-owned insurers now hold nearly 40 percent of the industry's private credit holdings despite controlling only 14 percent of general-account assets. This Article shows that the state guaranty fund system, which requires solvent insurers to cover the policyholder claims of a failed competitor, creates a hidden subsidy that PE-owned insurers exploit in three ways.

First, PE-owned insurers hold riskier portfolios than their reported capital suggests because NAIC risk-based capital charges rely on classifications and marks that the sponsor or its affiliate controls. Second, the PE sponsor's affiliated asset-management platform collects advisory, structuring, and monitoring fees from the insurer while retaining discretion over which assets to place on its balance sheet. This creates incentives to move underperforming or hard-to-sell assets onto the insurer's balance sheet while keeping high-performing assets for sophisticated limited partners. Third, the guaranty fund assessment formula charges surviving insurers based on premium volume rather than risk contribution, so conservatively managed insurers subsidize aggressive ones in equilibrium. These costs, at least partially, are borne by taxpayers because, in most states, guaranty fund assessments are offset against premium taxes, which reduces state revenue.

Current scholarly and policy debate has focused on the promise and peril of retail exposure to private credit through 401(k) plans. This Article contributes to that debate by identifying a channel that has largely been overlooked: millions of Americans already hold private credit risk through life insurance policies and annuities backed by PE-owned insurers. Unlike a 401(k) participant choosing to invest in an alternative asset fund, the typical policyholder has no idea that such exposure exists. We propose structural reforms to the solvency and guaranty-fund regimes, including independent valuation of private credit assets, mandatory disclosure of affiliate transactions, and a risk-based assessment regime that captures opacity, illiquidity, and affiliate exposure.

Proponents of the "Abundance Agenda" claim that opposition to zoning reform stems from narrow local constituencies, especially homeowners protecting property values. Since local politics is uniquely susceptible to capture by incumbents who benefit from housing scarcity, the prescribed policy solution is state or federal preemption of local land-use authority. This Article challenges that claim using a nationally representative survey of 60,000 voters in the 2024 election. This unusually large and rich dataset allows us to measure individual-level determinants of support for zoning reform while holding constant demographics, ideology, and neighborhood characteristics. We find limited support for several canonical NIMBY theories of restrictive zoning. Homeowners are indeed less supportive than renters, but the gap is modest. White respondents are less supportive than Black respondents, and racial resentment is strongly predictive of opposition to zoning reform, suggesting that racial exclusion remains a relevant explanation. Income, however, exhibits little independent relationship with zoning attitudes. Contrary to popular belief, liberals and voters concerned about the environment are more, not less, likely to support reform. We also identify two factors the literature has largely ignored: women are substantially less supportive than men (by a margin larger than the homeownership gap), and trust in state government strongly predicts support for zoning liberalization. These patterns suggest that many voters evaluate zoning reform primarily through its expected effects on school capacity, traffic, and public safety rather than through ideological or financial self-interest. Our findings cast doubt on the view that state or federal preemption alone can resolve political resistance to zoning reform. Shifting authority to state or federal governments may bypass local veto points, but it cannot eliminate the democratic constraints that drive opposition. We conclude that while bypassing local exclusionary tendencies through top-down governance is important, durable reform requires bottom-up coalition-building that addresses voter concerns about service quality and institutional competence.

This Article describes the emergence of "too-liable-to-regulate" fossil fuel companies: firms whose environmental liabilities are so large that they effectively become judgment-proof, enabling them to evade remediation and decommissioning obligations. Although liability is typically thought to reduce production and deter corporate misconduct, large cleanup liabilities can insulate companies from regulatory enforcement, since regulators may hesitate to pursue enforcement that would push distressed firms into liquidation.

To understand how the judgment-proof problem is affecting fossil fuel asset remediation, we compile every domestic coal mine reclamation (cleanup) and onshore gas plug and abandonment (P&A) law and calculate cleanup obligations for two companies: Diversified Energy, the largest oil and gas well owner in the United States, and Indemnity National, the country's largest insurer of coal mine reclamation obligations. Our estimates show that both firms' continued operation depends on predictable underenforcement of cleanup and decommissioning laws.

Our analysis of Diversified and Indemnity supports four theoretical points. First, judgment-proof fossil fuel companies are making it difficult for environmental regulators to manage the decline of extractive industries. Second, significant cleanup liability may, counterintuitively, encourage continued production and lead to worse environmental outcomes as firms with poor environmental records operate at a loss rather than paying for cleanup. Third, the judgment-proof problem creates regulatory challenges not just for individual firms, but across entire industries, since well-capitalized firms avoid cleanup by transferring burdensome assets to judgment proof companies. Fourth, the decline of coal mining has created an adverse selection problem in the market for reclamation-bond insurance. As solvent insurers have exited, one severely undercapitalized company—Indemnity National—now underwrites up to seventy percent of reclamation bonds in Appalachia. We conclude by proposing reforms that would improve environmental outcomes in markets that have already seen significant liability partitioning, and also describe best financial assurance practices to ensure that decommissioning funds are available in markets that have yet to encounter the emergence of too-liable-to-fail firms.

Make-whole provisions appear in over ninety percent of corporate bond issuances. They are a mechanism to compensate bondholders when issuers prepay by imposing a penalty equivalent to the present value of remaining payments discounted at Treasury yields plus a modest spread. Outside of bankruptcy, these provisions generate little controversy, but inside bankruptcy, they have produced significant litigation over three questions: whether acceleration extinguishes the premium, whether the Bankruptcy Code's prohibition on unmatured interest disallows such penalties, and whether solvent debtors must pay it anyway.

This Note makes three arguments. First, despite apparent doctrinal divergence across the Second, Third, and Fifth Circuits, courts are converging on a common approach that turns on contractual clarity and, in limited cases, debtor solvency. The key decisions in AMR, Momentive, Energy Future Holdings, Ultra Petroleum, and Hertz reach different results because they interpret materially different contract language, not because they apply conflicting legal principles. Second, the solvent-debtor exception is best understood not as a historical artifact but as a mechanism for enforcing absolute priority. When a solvent debtor distributes value to equityholders while using Section 502(b)(2) to deny creditors postpetition interest, the statutory disallowance operates as a backdoor priority violation. Third, make-whole premiums triggered by bankruptcy function as distress-contingent, equity-like claims. The standard formula does not adjust for deteriorating credit quality, which produces a payoff that grows as the issuer's financial health weakens.

This asymmetric structure resembles a call option on the debtor's credit spread and delivers its greatest value precisely when the estate has the least capacity to satisfy other creditors. Rather than disallowing these claims under Section 502(b)(2) or enforcing them at parity, this Note proposes that courts subordinate bankruptcy-triggered make-whole premiums under Section 510(c). Subordination preserves make-whole provisions' legitimate deterrent function through three safe harbors for prepetition acceleration, voluntary redemption, and market-rate discounting, while preventing the distress-amplified windfalls that distort bankruptcy's distributional scheme.