Episodes
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In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Kevin Davis (New York University) discusses his study "Did the Global South Have Their Say on EU Supply Chain Regulation?" with Luca Baltensperger (ETH Zurich).Prof. Davis' study (joint with Roy Germano and Lauren E. May from NYU) uses data from the EU’s ‘Have Your Say’ platform to examine how actors from the Global South responded to the European Commission’s formal consultation process on the proposed Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Actors from the Global South who participated in the consultation overwhelmingly supported the proposed due diligence framework. The CSDDD is supposed to establish a corporate due diligence standard on sustainability issues, such as environmental concerns, climate change, and human rights, for businesses operating in the EU. However, the findings of Prof. Davis' study call into question the strength of the EU’s commitment to including affected actors from the Global South in regulatory processes. They are consistent with the hypotheses that actors from the South have limited capabilities to participate in formal consultation processes or believe that they lack the power to influence outcomes through those processes.In this vlog episode, Prof. Davis talks about the background of the study, the findings, and its implications.Paper References:Kevin Davis – New York UniversityRoy Germano – New York UniversityLauren E. May – New York UniversityDid the Global South Have Their Say on EU Supply Chain Regulation? NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 24-13 https://ssrn.com/abstract=4735442Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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In this episode of the CLE Vlog & Podcast series, Amit Zac (University of Amsterdam) and Filippo Lancieri (ETH Zurich) discuss Prof. Zac’s study "The Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPR", which is an empirical analysis of the mobile applications’ response to the famous European Court of Justice ’Schrems II’ decision in the EU. In July 2020, the European Court of Justice invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield with immediate effect. As a result, many personal data transfers from the European Union to the United States became illegal overnight. Prof. Zac and his co-authors present a unique dataset allowing them not only to observe what firms say about their behavior in privacy policies, but also how firms actually behave. Using machine-learning tools, they analyze the privacy policies of over 7,500 apps on the Spanish Google Play Store and find limited compliance with the Schrems II decision. In this vlog episode, Prof. Zac discusses his study with Dr. Lancieri (ETH Zurich). Paper References: Amit Zac – University of AmsterdamPablo Wey – ETH ZurichStefan Bechtold – ETH ZurichDavid Rodriguez – Polytechnic University of MadridJose M. Del Alamo – Polytechnic University of MadridThe Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPRhttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4709913Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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Missing episodes?
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In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Christoph Engel (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn) and Prof. Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) discuss Engel's recent study on the German Constitutional Court. The latter has powers that are no weaker than the powers of the US Supreme Court. Justices are openly selected by the political parties. Nonetheless, public and professional perception are strikingly different. Justices at the German court are not believed to be guided by the policy preferences of the nominating party. In his paper, Prof. Engel uses the complete publicly available data to investigate whether this perception is well-founded. It exploits three independent sources of quasi-random variation to generate causal evidence. There is no smoking gun of ideological influence. Some specifications show, however, that justices nominated by the left-wing parties (SPD and the Greens) are more activist, even in domains where activism likely runs counter the ideological preferences of these parties. Paper References:Christoph Engel – Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods BonnThe German Constitutional Court – Political, but not Partisan?(Work in Progress)Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Christopher S. Yoo (University of Pennsylvania) and Christophe Gösken (ETH Zurich) talk about Prof. Yoo's study "An Economic Analysis of the Right to be Forgotten". The so-called “right to be forgotten” has gained prominence under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regulatory frameworks have recently been introduced in US state privacy statutes.
Commentators have largely defined the right to be forgotten as a clash between the privacy interests of data subjects and the free speech rights of data controllers. However, framing the issues as a clash of individual rights ignores how giving data subjects the ability to render certain information unobservable can give rise to systemic effects that can harm society as a whole. Prof. Yoo's analysis fills this gap by exploring the implications that adverse selection, moral hazard, and the emerging policy intervention know as “ban the box” have on the right to be forgotten. In this vlog episode, Prof. Yoo discusses his study with Christophe Gösken (ETH Zurich). Paper References:Christopher S. Yoo – University of Pennsylvania An Economic Analysis of the Right to Be Forgottenhttps://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4124596Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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For a long time, scholars have been classifying most legal systems around the world as falling within one of two inherently different categories: common or civil law systems. While the former (common law), rooted in England and practiced also in the US, involves precedent or deference to previously published judicial opinion; the latter (civil law), practiced in continental Europe and elsewhere in the world, does not – or so many still think. In this episode of the CLE vlog series, Prof. Holger Spamann (Harvard Law School) examines the myths and the reality of common and civil law with Alessandro Tacconelli (ETH Zurich). After a brief explanation of the alleged differences between the two systems and the history of such distinction, Prof. Spamann explains the findings of some of his work on the topic. In his paper ‘Judges in the Lab,’ he and his co-authors recruited 299 real judges from seven major jurisdictions to judge an international criminal appeals case and to determine the appropriate prison sentence, to show that: (i) document use and written reasons did not differ between common and civil law judges, and (ii) ‘precedent effect’ was barely detectable. Similarly, in his paper ‘The Reasons Highest Courts Give,’ Prof. Spamann and co-authors quantitatively analysed 80 representative opinions of English and German apex courts in the late 19th century and early 21st century, to find that, even in 1880s, opinions of English and German courts differed in degree rather than kind and that, by the 2000s, the Germans cited precedent as frequently as the English.Paper References:Judges in the Lab: No Precedent Effects, No Common/Civil Law Differences Holger Spamann, Lars Klöhn, Christophe Jamin, Vikramaditya Khanna, John Zhuang Liu, Pavan Mamidi, Alexander Morell, Ivan Reidel Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2021, Pages 110–126https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaa008The Reasons Highest Courts Give: England vs. Germany, 1880-1889 vs. 2007-2016 Jasper Kunstreich, Markus Lieberknecht, Heinrich Nemeczek, Holger Spamann, Stefan VogenauerWorking PaperAudio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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For years, academic experts have championed the widespread adoption of the “Fama-French” factors in legal settings. Factor models are commonly used to perform valuations, performance evaluation and event studies across a wide variety of contexts, many of which rely on data provided by Professor Kenneth French. Yet these data are beset by a problem that the experts themselves did not understand: Widespread retroactive changes which can materially affect a broad range of estimates. In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Adriana Robertson (University of Chicago) discusses the background and findings of the study "Noisy Factors in Law" with Alessandro Tacconnelli (ETH Zurich). In their study, she and her co-authors Mikhail Simutin and Pat Akey (both University of Toronto) show how these retroactive changes, heretofore overlooked by experts, can have enormous impacts in precisely the settings in which experts have pressed for their use. They provide examples of valuations, performance analysis, and event studies in which the retroactive changes have a large—and even dispositive—effect on an expert’s conclusions. Their analysis demonstrates how even the most well accepted expert approaches can be fraught with hidden peril.Paper References:Adriana Robertson - University of ChicagoMikhail Simutin - University of Toronto Pat Akey - University of Toronto Noisy Factors in Law (Please contact the authors for the latest version)Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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Disinformation is proliferating on the internet, and platforms are responding by attaching warnings to content. There is little evidence, however, that these warnings help users identify or avoid disinformation. In this episode of the Center for Law & Economics' vlog & podcast series, Prof. Jonathan Mayer (Princeton) discusses the study "Adapting Security Warnings to Counter Online Disinformation" with Amit Zac (ETH Zurich). In their work, Jonathan Mayer (Princeton) and his co-authors Ben Kaiser, Jerry Wei, Eli Lucherini, Kevin Lee (Princeton), and J. Nathan Matias (Cornell University) adapt methods and results from the information security warning literature in order to design and evaluate effective disinformation warnings. They show a path forward for designing effective warnings, and contribute repeatable methods for evaluating behavioral effects. They also surface a possible dilemma: disinformation warnings might be able to inform users and guide behavior, but the behavioral effects might result from user experience friction, not informed decision making.In this podcast with Amit Zac (ETH Zurich), Jonathan Mayer provides insights into the background of the study and its results.Paper References:Ben Kaiser, Jerry Wei, Eli Lucherini, and Kevin Lee - Princeton UniversityJ. Nathan Matias - Cornell UniversityJonathan Mayer - Princeton UniversityAdapting Security Warnings to Counter Online DisinformationUsenix Security (2021)https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity21/presentation/kaiser
Audio Credits for Trailer:AllttA by AllttA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZawLOcbQZ2w&t=0s
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In this episode of the CLE's vlog & podcast series, Prof. Henry E. Smith (Harvard) discusses his essays "Putting the Equity Back into Intellectual Property Remedies" and "Equity as Meta-Law" with Christophe Gösken (ETH Zurich). In his articles, Henry Smith argues that equity and related parts of the law solve complex and uncertain problems — including interdependent behavior and misuses of legal rules by opportunists — and do so in a characteristic fashion: as meta-law.
These problems are rife in intellectual property settings. An attention to meta-law can focus on potential two-sided opportunism in scenarios of possible injunctions, and a more traditional equitable framework can help frame when presumptions for injunctions are appropriate and when they should be overcome. As a result, equity as meta-law could avoid flattening the law of intellectual property remedies.
Paper References:
Henry E. Smith - Harvard University
Putting the Equity Back into Intellectual Property Remedies
Notre Dame Law Review, 96(4), 1603–1622 (2021)
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol96/iss4/12Henry E. Smith - Harvard University
Equity as Meta-Law
The Yale Law Journal, 130(5), 1050–1287 (2021)
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/equity-as-meta-lawAudio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the CLE's vlog series, Luca Baltensperger (ETH Zurich) discusses the study "Environmental Preferences and Technological Choices: Is Market Competition Clean or Dirty?" with Prof. Ralf Martin (Imperial College London).
In their study, Ralf Martin and his co-authors Prof. Philippe Aghion (College de France), Prof. Roland Bénabou (Princeton), and Prof. Alexandra Roulet (INSEAD) investigate the joint effect of consumers' environmental concerns and product-market competition on firms' decisions whether to innovate “clean” or “dirty”. They develop a step-by-step innovation model to capture the basic intuition that socially responsible consumers induce firms to escape competition by pursuing greener innovations. To test and quantify the theory, the authors bring together patent data from the automobile industry, survey data on environmental values, and competition measures. Results suggest that the combination of historically realistic increases in prosocial attitudes and product market competition can have the same effect on green innovation as major increase in fuel prices.
Paper References:
Philippe Aghion - College de France
Roland Bénabou - Princeton University
Ralf Martin - Imperial College London
Alexandra Roulet - INSEADEnvironmental Preferences and Technological Choices: Is Market Competition Clean or Dirty?
https://www.nber.org/papers/w26921Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the CLE's vlog & podcast series, Prof. Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) talks to Prof. Saul Levmore (Chicago) about "SPACs, PIPEs, and Common Investors", a recent study by Levmore and Prof. Frank Fagan (South Texas). Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, have come to play a large role in bringing together small and large investors in the acquisition and expansion of private companies. A pessimistic version of this relatively recent alternative to conventional initial public offerings (IPOs), and other methods of investing in companies ready to expand, is that clever sharks take advantage of overly optimistic and ill-informed small investors. In their study "SPACs, PIPEs, and Common Investors", Levmore and Fagan offer a very different view. They show that common investors need someone to locate good investment opportunities, and then they often benefit if another well-informed party can credibly vouch for the entity that claims to have found a good target. Fagan's and Levmore's article also suggests the development of other means of vouching for parties that claim to have found worthy targets for investment.
Paper References:
Frank Fagan - South Texas College of Law Houston
Saul Levmore - University of ChicagoSPACs, PIPEs, and Common Investors
University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper 954
https://ssrn.com/abstract=4036767Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
When machine-learning algorithms are deployed in high-stakes decisions, we want to ensure that it leads to fair and equitable outcomes. However, many machine predictions are deployed to assist in decisions where a human decision-maker retains the ultimate decision authority. In this episode of the CLE's podcast series, Prof. Talia Gillis (Columbia) and Prof. Alexander Stremitzer (ETH Zurich) discuss Gillis' study "On the Fairness of Machine-Assisted Human Decisions" - joint with Bryce McLaughlin (Stanford) and Jann Spiess (Stanford) - on how properties of machine predictions affect the resulting human decisions.
In their study, Gillis, McLaughlin and Spiess show in a formal model that the inclusion of a biased human decision-maker can revert common relationships between the structure of the algorithm and the qualities of resulting decisions. Specifically, they document that excluding information about protected groups from the prediction may fail to reduce disparities. Their results demonstrate more broadly that any study of critical properties of complex decision systems, such as the fairness of machine-assisted human decisions, should go beyond focusing on the underlying algorithmic predictions in isolation.
Paper References:
Talia Gillis - Columbia University
Bryce McLaughlin - Stanford University
Jann Spiess - Stanford UniversityOn the Fairness of Machine-Assisted Human Decisions
https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15310Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
Behavioral economics — arising from the insight that people make recognizable, systematic mistakes — has revolutionized policymaking. For example, in governments around the world, including the US, teams of experts have recently arisen to harness these insights, promising to do things like increase retirement savings. But there is a problem: Economic experts do not look or think like the rest of the population. They are deeply unrepresentative demographically and have quite different policy views.
In this episode of the CLE's vlog & podcast series, Prof. Alexander Stremitzer (ETH Zurich) talks to Prof. Daniel Markovits (Yale) about a new approach to behavioral economics called "democratic law and economics", a concept developed by Markovits and Prof. Zachary D. Liscow (Yale). Rather than dictating what the right policy or action is, they suggest that behavioral economists instead inform representative samples of ordinary people about the evidence and let them decide for themselves. Those decisions, rather than experts’ opinions alone, should then inform policymakers.
Paper References:
Zachary D. Liscow - Yale Law School
Daniel Markovits - Yale Law SchoolDemocratizing Behavioral Economics
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4012996Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this podcast of the CLE's vlog & podcast series, Prof. John J. Donohue discusses the study "Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis" with Prof. Alexander Stremitzer (ETH Zurich).
In their study, John J. Donohue (Stanford), Abhay Aneja (Berkeley) and Kyle D. Weber (Columbia) use indepth state panel data and new statistical techniques to estimate the impact on violent crime when states adopt right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws. They find that RTC laws increase overall violent crime and that RTC laws are associated with 13–15 percent higher aggregate violent crime rates 10 years after adoption. Using a consensus estimate of the elasticity of crime with respect to incarceration of 0.15, the average RTC state would need to roughly double its prison population to offset the increase in violent crime caused by RTC adoption.
Paper References:
John J. Donohue - Stanford Law School
Abhay Aneja - Berkeley Law
Kyle D. Weber - Columbia UniversityRight-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Vol. 16(2), p. 198-247 (2019)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jels.12219Audio Credits for Trailer:
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https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the CLE's vlog & podcast series, Prof. Sarath Sanga (Northwestern) talks with Prof. Alexander Stremitzer (ETH Zurich) about his paper "The Origins of the Market for Corporate Law", a study of the market for corporate charters and the emergence of Delaware as the leader of this market.
In his paper, Prof. Sanga assembles new data on 19th and 20th-century corporations to evaluate two widely-held beliefs: (1) the U.S. Supreme Court is responsible for enabling a national market for corporate charters in the 19th century and (2) Delaware became the leader in this market only because New Jersey (the initial leader) repealed its extremely liberal corporate laws in 1913. In the discussion with Prof. Stremitzer he explains why he argues against both claims.
Paper Reference:
Sarath Sanga – Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law
The Origins of the Market for Corporate Law
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3503628Audio Credits for Trailer:
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https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the vlog & podcast series of ETH's Center for Law & Economics, Professor Erina Ytsma from Carnegie Mellon discusses her study “Effort and Selection Effects of Performance Pay in Knowledge Creation” with Dr. Amit Zac (Postdoc at ETH Zurich).
It is well-documented that performance pay has positive effort and selection effects in routine tasks, while its effect in knowledge creation is much less understood. In her study, Ytsma analyses the effects of explicit and implicit career concerns incentives common in knowledge work in a multi-tasking model, and estimates the causal effort and selection effects of performance incentives in knowledge creation, using the introduction of performance pay in German academia as a natural experiment.
Paper Reference:
Erina Ytsma – Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of BusinessEffort and Selection Effects of Performance Pay in Knowledge Creation
https://gitlab.com/eytsma/research_papers/raw/master/Effort+Selection_Effects-KnowledgeCreation_ErinaYtsma_latest.pdf
Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the vlog & podcast series of ETH's Center for Law & Economics, Prof. Laura Pedraza-Fariña (Northwestern) discusses her paper "A Network Theory of Patentability" with PhD student Margaritha Windisch (ETH Zurich).
Patent law is built upon a fundamental premise: only significant inventions receive patent protection while minor improvements remain in the public domain. Despite its importance, the doctrine that performs this gate keeping role — non-obviousness — has long remained indeterminate and vague. In their article, Laura Pedraza-Fariña and her co-author Prof. Ryan Whalen (University of Hongkong) draw on network theory, a novel approach answering the questions what non-obvious inventions are and how to determine non-obviousness in specific cases.
Paper References:
Laura Pedraza-Fariña - Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Ryan Whalen - University of Hong Kong, Faculty of LawA Network Theory of Patentability
University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 87, No. 1, (2020)
https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/publication/network-theory-patentabilityAudio Credits:
Trailer music: AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of the vlog and podcast series of ETH's Center for Law & Economics, Professor Alessandro Acquisti (Carnegie Mellon) and Dr. Naman Goel (ETH Zurich) discuss Prof. Acquisti's study "Secrets and Likes: The Drive for Privacy and the Difficulty of Achieving it in the Digital Age".
Paper References
Alessandro Acquisti - Carnegie Mellon University
Laura Brandimarte - University of Arizona
George Loewenstein - Carnegie Mellon UniversitySecrets and Likes: The Drive for Privacy and the Difficulty of Achieving it in the Digital Age
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3688497Audio Credits
Trailer music: AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of ETH's Center for Law & Economics vlog and podcast series, Professor Melissa Wasserman (University of Texas) talks to Gabriel Gertsch (ETH Zurich) about her study "A Prescription for Rising Drug Prices: Patent Office Reform".
Paper References:
Michael Frakes - Duke University
Melissa Wasserman - University of Texas"A Prescription for Rising Drug Prices: Patent Office Reform"
https://www.law.umich.edu/centersandprograms/lawandeconomics/workshops/Documents/Paper10.Wasserman.Rising%20Drug%20Prices%20Reform%20(2).pdf
Audio Credits:Trailer music: AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w -
In this episode of ETH's Center for Law & Economics vlog and podcast series, Professor Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) talks with Professor Luis Aguiar (UZH) about his recent assessment of Spotify's market power by measuring the impact of its promotion decisions via platform-operated playlists.
Paper References
Luis Aguiar - University of Zurich
Joel Waldfogel - University of Minnesota and NBER
Platforms, Power, and Promotion: Evidence from Spotify Playlists
http://www.luis-aguiar.com/research
Audio Credits
Trailer music: AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w
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In this episode of ETH's Center for Law & Economics vlog and podcast series, Professor Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) talks with Professor Tobias Salz (MIT) about his recent study on the effects of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), using a novel dataset from an online travel intermediary.
Paper References
Guy Aridor - Columbia
Yeon-Koo Che - Columbia
Tobias Salz - MITThe Effect of Privacy Regulation on the Data Industry: Empirical Evidence from GDPR
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_events/1548288/privacycon-2020-guy_aridor.pdfAudio Credits
Trailer music: AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w - Show more
