Workshop & Lecture Series in Law & Economics

The Workshop & Lecture Series in Law & Economics has been held every year since 2003. Former guests were:

Spring 2023:

• Adriana Robertson, University of Chicago: "Noisy Factors in Law" and "ESG Mutual Funds: How Should Regulators Respond?"
• Adam Bonica, Stanford University: "Old Money: Campaign Finance and Gerontocracy in the United States" and "The Judicial Tug of War"
• Yoan Hermstrüwer, University of Zurich: "Designing Fair Matching Markets: A Behavioral Approach"
• Alexander Stremitzer, ETH Zurich: "Having Your Day In Robot Court"
• Yehonatan Givati, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "Juristocracy and Confidence in Courts" and "The Effect of Social Sanctions on Judicial Efficiency: Avoidance and Evasion"
• Jann Spiess, Stanford University: "Unpacking the Black Box: Regulating Algorithmic Decisions" and "Using Machine Learning for Policy Targeting with Noisy Data"
• Holger Spamann, Harvard University: "Shareholder Rights and the Bargaining Structure in Control Transactions" and "Common vs. Civil Law"
• Roseanna Sommers, University of Michigan: "Virtuous Victims and Adjacent Consent" and "Experimental Jurisprudence Research On Consent"

Spring 2022:

• Sarath Sanga, Northwestern University: "The Origins of the Market for Corporate Law" and "A Statistical Test for Legal Interpretation: Theory and Applications"
• Netta Barak-Corren, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "Examining the Effects of Antidiscrimination Laws on Child Welfare: Law on the Books" and "Towards Empirical Constitutional Law"
• John Donohue, Stanford University: "Will the Supreme Court Avoid Further Self-Inflicted Second Amendment Wounds?" and "Exploring the Links between Right-to-Carry Laws and Increased Violent Crime: An Empirical, Methodological, and Theoretical Inquiry Using City-Level Panel Data"
• Daniel Markovits, Yale University: "Democratizing Behavioral Economics" and "Enough! The Good Life after the End of Growth"
• Talia Gillis, Columbia University: "On the Fairness of Machine-Assisted Human Decisions" and "Challenges in Regulating AI"
• Adam Chilton, University of Chicago: "Political Ideology and Judicial Administration: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic" and "Improving the Signal Quality of Grades"
  

Spring 2021:

• Paul Novosad, Dartmouth College: "In-Group Bias in the Indian Judiciary: Evidence from 8 Million Criminal Cases
• Angela Zhang, University of Hong Kong: "Decentralizing Platform Governance: Lawlessness, Fraud and Innovation"
• Maya Sen, Harvard University: "The “Odd Party Out” Theory of Certiorari"
• Markus Kneer, University of Zurich: "Reasonableness on the Clapham Omnibus: Exploring the Outcome-Sensitive Folk Concept Ofreasonable"
• Max Kasy, University of Oxford: "The social Impact of Algorithmic Decision Making: Economic Perspectives"
• Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago: "AI as Scientific Discovery Engine: An Example from Criminal Justice"
• Dhanya Sridhar, Columbia University: "Beyond Prediction: NLP for Causal Inference"
• Bernard S. Black, Northwestern University School: "A COVID-19 Risk Calculator: Mortality Rates and Loss of Life Expectancy"
• Benjamin Chen, University of Hong Kong: "Making Regulators Reason: Do Procedural Rationality Requirements Cure Cognitive Biases?
• Megan T. Stevenson, University of Virginia: "Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans"
  
• Elissa Philip Gentry, Florida State University: "When Patients are Assailants: Attitudes toward Healthcare Occupational Risks"
• Richard Holden, University of New South Wales: "Network Externalities and Market Dominance"
• Murat C. Mungan, George Mason University: "Laws and Norms with (Un)Observable Actions"
  
• Daniel E. Ho, Stanford Law School: "Mandatory Retirement and Age, Race, and Gender Diversity of University Faculties"

Spring 2020

• Julia Cagé, Science Po Paris: "Media Competition and News Diets"
• Jacob Goldin, Stanford Law School: "Health Insurance and Mortality: Experimental Evidence from Taxpayer"
• Alexander Stremitzer, ETH Zurich: "Medical AI"
• I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School: "Informed Consent and Medical Artificial Intelligence: What to Tell the Patient?" and "Gene editing, Mitochondrial Replacement Techniques, and Associated Technologies"
• Stefan Bechtold, ETH Zurich: "The Death of Property?"
  
• Zachary Liscow, Yale Law School: "Why Is So Much Redistribution In-Kind and Not in Cash? Evidence from Survey
  Experiments"
• Jann Spiess, Stanford Graduate School of Business: "Fairness and Explainability in Machine Learning Underwriting"
• Elliott Ash, ETH Zurich: "A Machine Learning Approach to Analyzing Corruption in Local Public Finances"
  
• Alice Guerra, Copenhagen Business School: "Social Norms Toward Corruption: A Bribery Experiment"
• Florian Ederer, Yale School of Management: "Killer acquisitions"
• Himabindu Lakkaraju, Harvard Business School: "Understanding the Perils of Black Box Explanations"
  

Spring 2019

• Jill Horwitz, University of California: "Regulation of Opioids in the U.S. and Canada"
  
• Ted Parson, University of California: "Could Artificial Intelligence run the economy better than markets? How would that work? Would it be communism? Would it be good?"
  
• Alex Imas, Carnegie Mellon: "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence" and "Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors"
  
• Mila Versteeg, Virginia: "Popular Support for Constitutional Rights Violations: Evidence from Survey Experiments in Turkey and the U.S."
  
• Tore Ellingsen, Stockholm School of Economics: "A Theory of Decency" and "Law and Location: A Theory of Country Competitiveness"
• Martin Kocher, University of Vienna: "Understanding dishonest behavior. Implications for economics and management science" and "Cooperation in a company. A large-scale experiment"
• Nicolas Jacquemet, Paris School of Economics: "Learning, Spillovers and Persistence: Institutions and the Dynamics of Cooperation"
• Keren Weinshall, Hebrew University: "Plaintiff - Defendant Asymmetries? The Case of Pro-Plaintiff Cost-Shifting in Israeli Trial Courts"
• Richard Brooks, NYU Law: "The Efficiency of Good Faith in Contractual Exchange" and "Loyalty and What Law Requires: Self Interest, Sole Interest and Best Interest"
  

Spring 2018

• William Hubbard, Chicago: "War is Not in the Error Term: Costly Litigation and Conflict under Complete Information" and "Does the Priest and Klein Model Travel? Testing Litigation Selection Hypotheses with Foreign Court Data"
• Gary Charness, UC Santa Barbara: "Promises and Partnership and Biases over Biased Information Structures"
• Yun-Chien Chang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan: "Redrawing the Legal Familty Tree: An Empirical Comparative Study of 108 Property Doctrines in 154 Jurisdictions" and "Rethinking Good-faith Purchase Rules: A New Economic and Comparative Framework"
• Robert Daines, Stanford: "Can Staggered Boards Improve Value? Evidence from the Massachusetts Natural Experiment" and "Right on Schedule: CEO Option Grants and Opportunism"
• Eric Talley, Columbia: "Is the Future of Law a Driverless Car?: Assessing How the Data-Analytics Revolution will Transform Legal Practice" and "Informed Trading and Cybersecurity Breaches"
  

Spring 2017

• Anu Bradford, Columbia: "Is EU Merger Control Used for Protectionism? An Empirical Analysis & Are Antitrust Laws" and "Trade Liberalization Substitutes or Complements?"
• Sharad Goel, Stanford: "Law, Order & Algorithms: A Computational Approach to Criminal Justice" and "Algorithmic Decision Making and the Cost of Fairness"
• Justin McCrary, Berkeley: "Are U.S. Cities Underpoliced? Theory and Evidence" and "How Rigged Are Stock Markets? Evidence from Microsecond Timestamps"
• Randal Picker, Chicago: "Computing's Arc: In the Beginning There Was ..." and "Computing's Arc: Early Computer Commons and Platforms"
• Merritt B. Fox, Columbia: "The New Stock Market: Sense and Nonsense" and "Informed Trading and Its Regulation"
• Wolfgang Pesendorfer, Princeton: "Random Evolving Lotteries and Intrinsic Preference for Information" and "Updating Ambiguous Beliefs"

Spring 2016

• Alan Miller, Haifa: "Obscenity and the Aggregation Hypothesis" and "Patent Challenge Clauses: A New Antitrust Offense"
• Roland Benabou, Princeton: "Law and Norms" and "Image Versus Information: Changing Societal Normas and Optimal Privacy"
• Alexander Stremitzer, UCLA: "Premises and Expectations" and "Promises, Reliance and Psychological Lock-in"
• Omri Ben-Shahar, Chicago: "More than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure" and "Personalizing Negligence Law"
• Scott Barrett, Columbia: "International Cooperation" and "Tipping Versus Cooperating to Supply a Public Good"
• Mila Versteeg, Virginia: "Do Constitutional Rights Make A Difference?" and "The Contours of Constitutional Approval"

Spring 2015

• Stephanie Wang, Pittsburgh: "The Biases of Others: Anticipating Informational Projection in an Agency Setting" and "Image Concerns in Social Dilemmas"
• Daniel Klerman, University of Southern California: "The Selection of Disputes for Litigation" and "Forum Selling"
• Pablo Spiller, UC Berkeley: "Empirical Evidence on Public Contracting"
• Richard Revesz, New York University: "Rethinking Health-based Environmental Standards"
• Simone Sepe, University of Arizona: "The Value of Board's Sovereignty" and "The Value of Corporate Law"
• Orley Ashenfelter, Princeton: "Evaluating the Price Effects of Mergers in the U.S.: a Survey and Interpretation" and "Evaluating the Economic Effects of Prohibition in the United States"
  

Spring 2014

• David Chan, Stanford: "Teamwork and Moral Hazard: Evidence from the Emergency Department" and "Clocking Out: Shift Work in the Emergency Department"
• Ingela Alger, Toulouse: "Evolutionarily stable family ties; Max Weber meets Charles Darwin" and "The evolutionary stability of homo moralis"
• Jörgen Weibull, Stockholm: "Introduction to evolutionary stability" and "Generalizations and implications"
• Kathryn Spier, Harvard: "Irreconcilable Differences" and "Trial and Settlement"
  
• Suresh Naidu, Columbia: "Worker Mobility in A Global Labor Market: Evidence from the United Arab Emirates" and "Politics in Economics: A Natural Language Processing Approach"
  
• Asaf Zussman, Hebrew University: "Rockets: The Housing Market Effects of a Credible Terrorist Threat" and "Does Ethnic Bias Persist? Evidence from the Courts"
• Joel Sobel, UC San Diego: "Do Markets Make People Look Selfish" and "Leaks"
• Louis Kaplow, Harvard: "Optimal Regulation with Exemptions and Corrective Taxation" and "Market Definition, Market Power, and Competition Policy"
  

Spring 2013

• Anup Malani, Chicago: "Advertisements Impact the Physiological Efficacy of a Branded Drug" and "Judicial Learning and the Quality of Legal Rules"
• James Greiner, Harvard: "Causal Inference in the Law: Randomized Trials and Observational Studies" and "How Effective are Limitied Legal Assistance Programs? A Randomized Experiment in a Massachusetts Housing Court"
• Ezra Friedman, Northwestern: "Chilling, Settlement and the Accuracy of the Legal Process" and "A Safety Valve Model of Equity as Anti-Opportunism"
• Alan Schwartz, Yale: "A Law and Economics View of Contract Interpretation"
• Jonathan Levav, Stanford: "Order in Product Customization Decisions: Evidence from Field Experiments"
• Oren Bar-Gill, NYU: "Product Use Information and the Limits of Voluntary Disclosure" and "Exchange Efficiency with Weak Property Rights"
• Jennifer Arlen, NYU: "The Endowment Effect: Voluntary Deviating through Agents and Markets" and "Economic Analysis of Corporate Criminal Enforcement"

Spring 2012

• Joanna Shepherd Bailey, Emory: "Partisan Differences: How and Why Democratic and Republican Judges Differ in Party Loyalty" and "Product Liability Reform and Businesses in High-Risk Industries: Establishments, Employment and Economic Activity"
• Tom Ginsburg, Chicago: "The Empirical Analysis of Constitutions" and "Temporary Law"
• Patrick Bolton, Columbia: "Sovereign Debt Challenges" and "Should Derivatives be Privileged in Bankruptcy?"
• Ernst Fehr, Zurich: "The Economics and Psychology of Decision Rights"
• David Laibson, Harvard: "How to Write a Contract with Myself"
• Daniel Ho, Stanford: "Beyond Supreme Court Judgments" and "Regulatory Fudge: The Promise of Targeted Transparency and the Practice of Restaurant Grading"
• Henry Hansmann, Yale: "Virtual Ownership and Managerial Distance: The Governance of Industrial Foundations"
• Reinier Kraakman, Harvard: "The Efficiency of Market Pricing"

Spring 2011

• Yuval Feldman, Bar-Ilan: "Are All Contractual Obligations Created Equal?"
• Urs Schweizer, Bonn: "Damages for Breach of Duty in Corporate Disclosure" and "Vicarious Liability and the Intensity Principle"
• John List, Chicago: "Using Field Experiments in Labor Economics" and "Employee Theft: Evidence from a Field Experiment"
• Mitchell Polinsky, Stanford: "The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law" and "The Economics of Product LIability and Product Warranties"
• Kai Konrad, Max Planck Institute Munich: "Fighting Multiple Tax Havens" and "Brother in Arms: An Experiment on the Alliance Puzzle"
• Fernando Gomez, Pompeu Fabra: "Limited Assets and Liability"
• Maribel Saez, Autonomous University Madrid: "What Role for Independents? Gatekeepers v. Fundmanagers"
• Lewis Kornhauser, NYU: "Understanding Collegial Courts" and "The Effects of Judicially Imposed Restriction of Settlements to Compensatory Damages"

Spring 2010

• Yochai Benkler, Harvard: "Towards Cooperative Human Systems Design" and "Beyond the Bad Man and the Knave: Law and the Interdependence of Motivational Vectors"
• Abraham Wickelgren, Texas: "Litigation, Settlements, and Negative Expected Value Suits" and "Robust Exclusion through Loyalty Discounts"
• Kuo-Chang Huang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan: "Labor Disputes Resolution in Taiwan: An Empirical Perspective" and "The Effect of Rules Shifting Supreme Court Jurisdiction from Mandatory to Discretionary: An Empirical Lesson from Taiwan"
• Avishalom Tor, Haifa: "Plea Bargaining and the Psychology of Innocence" and "Behavioral Antitrust: The Rule of Reason after Leegin"
• Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, NYU: "Myths and Realities of Online Contracting" and "Does Anyone Read the Fine Print? Testing a Law and Economics Approach to Standard Form Contracts"
• Dirk Niepelt, Gerzensee/Berne: "Ageing, Government Budgets, Retirement, and Growth"
• James Choi, Yale: "Why Do Defaults Work, and How Should We Choose Them?" and "Religious Identity and Economic Behavior"

Spring 2009

• René Stulz, Ohio: "Credit Crsis and Governance" and "Why do Foreign Firms Leave the U.S.?"
• Ulrike Malmendier, Berkeley: "Macro-Economic Experiences and Risk-Taking" and "Entrepreneurship Triggers"
• Roberto Galbiati, Paris X: "The Detterent Effects of Prison" and "How Laws Affect Behavior"
• Ehud Guttel, Duke: "Tort Liability" and "Negligence and Insufficient Activity"
• Stefan Voigt, Marburg: "Economic Effects of Federalism and Decentralization"

Spring 2008

• Reinier Kraakman, Harvard: "Law and the Rise of the Firm" and "CEO Tenure, Performance and Turnover in S&P 500 Companies"
• Richard McAdams, Chicago: "The Expressive Power of Law" and "Vicious Circles" of Discrimination: The Just World Belief and Hate Crime Statutes"
• Geoffrey Miller, NYU: "Legal-Economic Analysis of Selected Biblical Texts" and "Competition for Contracts"
• Anke Hoeffler, Oxford: "Democracy in Resource-Rich Societies" and "Military Spending and the Risk of Coups d'Etat"
• John J. Donohue, Yale: "The Death Penalty" and "Econometrics, Law and Policy"

Fall 2007

• William Landes, Chicago: "Art Law and Economics" and "Ideology and the Supreme Court"
• Kathryn Zeiler, Georgetown: "Medical Malpractice Liability" and "Empirical Health Law"
• Jan Pieter Krahnen, Frankfurt: "Bank Pools and Corporate Distress" and "Financial Stability and Credit Securitization"
• Dominique Demougin, European Business School: "Standards and Burden of Proof" and "Institutional Competition"
• Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Cornell: "How Judges Decide Cases" and "Unconscious Bias in Trial Judges"

Summer 2007

• Douglas Baird, Chicago: "Technology, Information and Bankruptcy" and "Debts Contracts and the Selection of Managers"
• Marco Becht, ULB Bruxelles: "Shareholder Activism" and "Where Do Firms Incorporate?"
• Dieter Grimm, Berlin: "The Constitution in the Process of Denationalization"
• Henry Hu, Texas: "Hedge Funds and the 'New Vote Buying'"
• Suzanne Scotchmer, Berkeley: "Political Economy of IP Treaties" and "Digital Rights Management and the Pricing of Digital Products"

Summer 2006

• Renée Adams, Stockholm: "Friendly Boards" and "Board Gender Diversity"
• Thomas Bernauer, ETH Zurich: "WTO Conflict Escalation"
• Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Amsterdam and George Mason: "IP and Rent Seeking" and "Risky Levels of Public Governance"
• Lars Feld, Marburg: "Unbundling the Independence of the Judiciary" and "Power over Prosecutors Corrupts Politicians: Cross Country Evidence Using a New Indicator"
• Thomas S. Ulen, Illinois: "Cognition, Rationality and the Law"

Winter 2005/2006

• Winand Emons, Bern: "Optimal Punishment for Repeat Offenders"
• Karl Hofstetter, Zurich: "The Corporate Governance of Controlled Companies"
• Colin Mayer, Oxford: "Ownership: Evolution and Regulation, Decline of Family Ownership in the UK"
• Eric Posner, Chicago: "The Limits of International Law" and "Responsibility under International Law"
• Alan Schwartz, Yale: "Contract Theory and the Limits of Contract Law" and "Law and Economics of Preliminary Agreements"
• Jonathan Wiener, Duke: "Comparing Risk and Regulation in the U.S. and Europe" and "Precaution Against Terrorism"

Summer 2005

• Philippe Bachetta, Gerzensee and Lausanne: "Financial Development, Market Regulation and Exchange Rates"
• Julian Franks, London Business School: "Do Bankruptcy Codes Matter?" and "Insolvency and Going Concern Bias"
• Viktor Vanberg, Freiburg i. Br.: "Market and State: The Perspective of Constitutional Economics" and "Rationality Postulate in Economics"
• Roger van den Bergh, Rotterdam: "Enforcement of EC and US Competition Law: A Comparative L & E Approach" and "Towards Efficient Self-Regulation in the Market for Liberal Professions"

Winter 2004/2005

• John Armour, Cambridge: "Insolvency" and "Proprietary Fondations of Corporate Law"
• Felix Oberholzer, Harvard: "Battling the Pirates: The Legal Protection of Information Goods in the Digital Age" and "Political Relationships and Firm Performance"
• Hans-Bernd Schäfer, Hamburg, Standards and Rules & Auditor Liability
• Andrei Shleifer, Harvard, Not the Whole Truth: the Economics of Persuasion

Summer 2004

• Iris Bohnet, Harvard: "Trust and Betrayal in the Arab and the Western World" and "Is Trust a Bad Investment?"
• Michael Faure, Maastricht: "Environmental Crimes" and "Compensating Victims of Catastrophes"
• Susan Rose-Ackerman, Yale: "Governance and Corruption" and "Corruption Issues"
• Daniel Rubinfeld, Berkeley: "IT and Network Issues" and "Exclusion or Efficient Pricing?"

Summer 2003

• Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss, NYU: "Biotechnology, Patents and Liability" and "Joint Inventorship and Joint Authorship"
• Robert Cooter, Berkeley: "Expressive Law: Framing or Equilibrium Selection?" and "The Problem of Character in Democracy and Corporations"
• Christoph Engel, MPI Bonn: "Organizing Co-Existence in Cyberspace" and "Institutions Make Behaviour Predictable"
• Ronald J. Gilson, Columbia & Stanford: "Venture Capital" and "Convenants not to Compete and Patent Scope"
• Henry Hansmann, Yale: "Exit and Trapped Capital in Non-Profit Organizations" and "Legal Entities, Asset Partitioning, and the Evolution of Organizations"
• Dennis C. Mueller, Vienna: "Citizenship and Rights in a World of Global Terrorism" and "Corporate Governance Structures and Returns on Investment"