Government regulations typically have a disproportionately large impact on very small businesses. Studies using various methodologies have found that unit costs of complying with regulations are consistently higher for businesses with fewer than 20 employees than for businesses with over 500 employees that use similar compliance measures. Very little is known about size differences below 20 employees or other aspects of very small businesses that may influence the size and nature of regulatory impacts.
Home-based businesses, which make up roughly half of all U.S. businesses, are of particular interest because of their potential as a wellspring of economic activity. Homes are, in effect, do-it-yourself business incubators, which collectively provide start-ups with an entry point into the business world. Home-based businesses as a group have been characterized, but little more has been done in the way of analysis. A general goal of this study is to advance the understanding of regulatory burdens on home-based businesses, as opposed to non-home-based very small businesses.
Congratulations on your purchase of the Nokia N91. Your device combines stereo sound, storage capacity for up to 3000 songs, over-the-air music downloads, access to your music collection and smartphone functionality with Wi-Fi and 2Mpix camera. Your device is equipped with a 4 Gb hard drive providing high capacity storage room for different types of files. Sensors in the device will stop the hard drive if the operating temperature is too low or too high, if the device is dropped, or if the back cover of the device is removed. Hard drives are fragile components that must be handled with care. All impacts caused by shock, vibration, bumping, and dropping or other mishandling of the device, as well as extreme temperatures, humidity and liquids, may cause the hard drive to malfunction and data to be lost or corrupted.
There is a long standing debate in the finance, economics and law literatures about the need for insider trading regulation. Its critics argue that insider trading is an efficient form of compensating insiders. Moreover, it allowsprivate information to be quickly incorporated into stock prices, thereby
leading to more informationally efficient stock prices (Carlton and Fischel (1983), Dye (1984)). Proponents of insider trading regulation contend that insider trading subjects uninformed outsiders to an adverse selection problem, discourages investment, and damages corporate value (Manove (1989), Ausubel (1990), Fischer (1992)). Moreover, allowing insiders to trade at the expense of uninformed outsiders diminishes investor confidence and hurts the integrity of capital markets (Brudney (1979), Easterbrook (1985), Glosten (1989), Maug (1995, 1999)).
