Fall 2025 Workshop

Sept. 22, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 - 6:10 PM

Roberta Romano

Sterling Professor of Law
Co-Director, Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law
Yale Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge (JGH 701)

The Crisis-Driven Politics of the Iron Law of Financial Regulation

Can significant differences in the regulatory impact between important crisis- and noncrisis-driven financial legislation be explained, at least in part, by differences in the characteristics of their enacting Congresses and the deliberative process by which they are enacted? This paper investigates that question and finds that important crisis-driven banking statutes are enacted in a distinctive political environment compared to important noncrisis-driven ones that is conducive to the enactment of policies resulting in large increases in regulation.
First, heightened media salience of banking matters and congressional activity in the runup to crisis-driven statutes’ enactment when compared to noncrisis ones incentivize legislators to enact legislation with a large regulatory impact. Second, crisis-driven laws tend to be enacted in Congresses with more liberal legislators than noncrisis ones, and with House majorities having a greater capacity to implement major policy change without requiring bipartisan support, given the majority’s size and cohesiveness as a voting block. Third, crisis-driven laws are often enacted under conditions less favorable to an open deliberative process than noncrisis-driven ones. Large and cohesive House majorities enact important crisis-driven statutes, often on party unity votes, under restrictive rules which can enable majority party leadership to block voting on amendments that might be approved on the floor, reducing or even precluding minority input into policymaking. By contrast, important noncrisis statutes are typically brought to the floor in the House under open rules or by unanimous agreement. In addition, bills enacted as crisis-driven laws are often not subject to a legislative hearing, increasing the likelihood of less vetted, hence less well crafted, legislation, which ought to be a matter of concern, given their far greater regulatory impact than noncrisisdriven laws.
Finally, the numerous findings of specific differences between crisis- and noncrisis-driven statutes are summed up in a principal components analysis. Combining the media and congressional variables, along with statutes’ regulatory content and impact, the analysis provides a proof of concept that the politics of important financial crisis- and noncrisis-driven statutes are distinct.

Sept. 29, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Gerd Muehlheusser

Professor of Economics, Microeconomics, and Industrial Organization
University of Hamburg

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

Platform Liability, Product Safety, and Optimal Pricing

Should platforms be held legally responsible for harm caused by products or services offered by third-party sellers? We address this question in a novel setting where product safety (the likelihood of accidents) is determined by a third-party seller, while the consumer price is set by a monopolistic platform that pays the seller a commission. Ride-hailing platforms serve as a relevant example. When an accident occurs, the resulting harm is divided between the platform and the seller according to a liability rule (strict partial liability) set ex ante by a welfare-maximizing policymaker. In addition to the liability regime, the seller’s incentive to provide high product safety is influenced by overall demand, which is determined by the platform’s pricing. The platform’s optimal pricing balances maximizing consumer revenue and minimizing expected liability costs, with the latter depending on the seller’s chosen safety level. Consequently, the platform may set a price below the monopoly level to boost demand, thereby encouraging the seller to improve product safety. We show that the optimal liability rule is dichotomous: it either exempts the platform from liability or assigns it the maximum share possible while still incentivizing the seller to provide high product safety. In an extension we consider platform externalities, where consumers’ valuation for the platform good depends on the number of active sellers, thereby also allowing for an endogenous number of active sellers. Our results are qualitatively very similar to the baseline model.

Oct. 13, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Mark J. Roe

David Berg Professor of Law
Harvard Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Political Economy Justification

Oct. 20, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Luigi Zingales

Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

How To Implement Shareholder Democracy

We propose a novel way to give mutual fund investors a voice, an alternative to the pass-through voting that large mutual fund companies are starting to implement. Based on the experience of citizen assemblies in the political sphere, we propose allocating the power to decide how to cast mutual funds’ votes in corporate ballots on environmental, social, and political issues to a randomly drawn assembly of their investors. We analyze the advantages and limitations of such an approach and discuss various implementation issues.

Nov. 3, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

Kelly Shue

Amman Mineral Professor of Finance
Yale School of Management

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

TBD

Nov. 10, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 – 6:10 PM

David Hoffman

William A. Schnader Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

TBD

Nov. 24, 2025 (Mon)

4:20 - 6:10 PM

Adriana Z. Robertson

Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Business Law
University of Chicago Law School

Presentation (in-person only) will be in Case Lounge, JGH 701.

TBD