thesis on law and economics

The University of Chicago The Law School

The future of law and economics: essays by ten law school scholars, douglas g. baird.

Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law

When I was invited to join the faculty in 1980, I came as soon as I could. I feared that all the interesting work in law and economics might be done before I got to Chicago. Among other things, this showed how little I understood law and economics. It concerns itself with how changes in the law change the way people behave. As long as legal scholars have to worry about the consequences that a new law brings, we shall call upon the tools of law and economics. This is not to say, however, that law and economics remains the same.

Three decades ago, law and economics was a rough-and tumble discipline. People were still feeling their way. All presented their arguments with intense passion. Everyone fought for your soul.

Occasionally, you would go to a workshop and see the conventional wisdom in an entire area of the law overturned. But as often, you would see someone swinging for the fences and crash spectacularly. Sometimes an economist would start with an assumption that had the basic legal principle exactly backwards, or someone trained in law would get the economics completely wrong. Only five minutes into the 90-minute seminar, the error would be plain to everyone. Then an awkward silence. At this point, one of my colleagues would take a copy of the draft under discussion, throw it into the air, and say loudly, “Next paper, please!”

Work today is done with greater rigor, and seminars tend to be more civilized affairs. When revolutions succeed, they cease to be revolutions. The days when you could shoot from the hip and sometimes do great work (and more often fail) are gone. Law and economics today requires more discipline and better training.

But opportunities to do great work abound. The future of law and economics turns crucially on whether the next generation can take advantage of the resources available only now.

At its foundation, law and economics is an empirical discipline and always has been. As abstract as the paper might seem, Ronald Coase ’s “Nature of the Firm” paper began as an empirical study. Coase saw himself as laying out the conclusions he reached after spending a year visiting the major production plants throughout the United States.

For a long time, however, the empirical tools in law and economics lagged far behind. It was commonly said that there were only two different types of empirical questions—those you could answer and those worth answering. The future of law and economics is bright in large part because this piece of conventional wisdom is no longer true.

Information is accessible in a way that it has never been before. The PACER system allows us to access every document filed in every federal case from our desktops. Google’s digitization project has put nearly everything ever printed at our fingertips. The Social Science Research Network provides everyone with access to everyone else’s work long before it is published.

Moreover, tools exist today to analyze data that simply have not existed before. Multivariate regressions that required weeks or months of computer programming can be done on every laptop in a few minutes. Statistical techniques are available now that can tease out a few kernels of wheat from an enormous amount of chaff.

Such tools can be abused. Data, if tortured long enough, can be made to say anything. But the biggest danger may lie not so much in getting the wrong answers, but in asking the wrong questions.

Law and economics faces the same challenge that the prospect of a comfortable middle age poses for the most successful. After an exuberant and rebellious youth, it is very easy to fall into a complacent middle age. It is too easy to think it enough to say something new and correct. You also have to worry that you are boring, mechanical, and tendentious.

To avoid this danger, the current generation of law and economics scholars needs to be careful not to rest on technical proficiency. It requires retaining the radical and unconventional spirit that has long been part of law and economics at Chicago. The bright future of law and economics lies in the bold questions that still have not been asked.

Omri Ben-Shahar

Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg, Professor of Law and the Kearney Director of the University of Chicago Institute for Law and Economics

The most prevailing view among those who predict the future of law and economics is that it will become more technical, more rigorous, and more mathematical. Just like its mother discipline, economics.

It is also a misguided view. It predicts, in other words, that law and economics will become less accessible to its core audience, lawyers and policy makers, and will probably lose its relevance to legal practice (and to most of legal academia).

Because so many people believe that this high-tech trend is the inevitable direction of law and economics, let’s briefly understand the logic and the evidence supporting this prediction. The logic is the law of decreasing marginal returns. Having exhausted the pool of basic legal issues that law and economics can illuminate, scholars in the field now need fancy machinery to reach the higher-hanging fruit. Simple intuition will no longer suffice to harvest new discoveries; state-of-the-art social science is necessary.

There is some evidence consistent with the high-tech trend. For a while, law and economics did become more technical and methodologically sophisticated. More people with PhDs in economics were hired to teach in law schools, and some of the leading journals have gravitated towards scholarship written in math, not in English. The economics discipline has become more rigorous and technical, and as the engine of law and economics, it has been pulling the field to the dizzying heights of advanced math and statistics.

While the high-tech trend has been part of the story, I think the future of law and economics lies in increasing its audiences, not its rigor. The field’s meteoric success since its early days in Chicago is a result of the broad appeal it had among those not formally trained in economics. True, sophisticated economists reinforced the foundations of the field by combing through the earlier discoveries and separating the wheat from the chaff. This growing corps of social scientists will continue to refine and make more credible our body of incrementally growing knowledge.

But the future of law and economics is in taking its mature discipline and stock of ideas and exporting them to new frontiers.

The most important new frontier and the greatest challenge to American law and economics is the crossing of international boundaries. Outside the United States, law and economics is a curious esotery, mostly shunned with distaste by the legal community.Major legal transformations and reforms are occurring in many regions around the world, largely lacking the realism and analytics that good old law and economics would fashion. Seasoned scholars and lawyers view law and economics with anachronistic resentment. Young legal minds are intrigued, but are only minimally exposed to the organized tools of the field. Law and economics is beginning to unfold the map of the world, and it is finding vast opportunities for intellectual arbitrage. Chicago—“the headquarter in this area,” as a Chinese colleague echoed the popular image around the world—is already at the forefront of this imperialistic enterprise.

The other big challenge that law and economics has to conquer is to descend from the sterile academic debate and be more successful in informing actual lawmaking and lawyering—in connecting with audiences that have so far remained outside its scope of influence. It is beginning to expand to areas of law that have largely resisted it. I am thinking, for example, of immigration law, education law, local government, and even areas of international and human rights law. Many areas of recent legal reform—health law, food regulation, consumer law, privacy—have major pockets of laws and rules that are ripe for more informed attention from law and economics.

Not that sophisticated tools are unnecessary. On the contrary, more methods and better methods are likely to emerge.We are witnessing a rise of experimental law and economics, of sophisticated behavioral analysis, and of course of a mature empirical methodology examining a plethora of legal topics. But law and economics—Chicago law-and-economics in particular—has maintained a stronghold on American legal academia for over 30 years by being relevant, accessible, and relentless in luring new audiences.

Anu Bradford

Assistant Professor of Law

Over the last two decades, rational choice methods have advanced our understanding on many key international legal issues, including why states make international law and what type of legal instruments they choose to use. Scholars have also been able to explain when and why states comply, or fail to comply, with international law, as well as the tensions inherent in the establishment of international institutions and their ability to constrain state behavior in a world of increasing integration and mutual reliance.

However, the shifting geopolitical landscape is changing how we think about and model these interactions. The most direct implication this will have for international law and economics scholarship is the change in the number and the identity of countries whose preferences matter in interactions. The geopolitical structure of the world has until recently lent itself to simple models that focus on strategic interactions involving a handful of few key actors—the United States, Europe, and, at times, the former Soviet Union or Japan—while generally ignoring the preferences of the rest of the “developing” economies.

Today’s international sphere features a greater multiplicity of relevant actors. Emerging powers such as China and the other BRIC countries are able to advance, increasingly successfully, a much broader and diverse set of preferences in international interactions. This emergence of these new players with standing in the debate forces us to revisit the basic assumptions about countries’ utility functions that underlie all economic analysis of law.

Our understanding of what is meant by “welfare” becomes more elusive. For example, how does China define its fundamental interests in the international order? How does it trade off pursuit of greater wealth and security with a uniquely Chinese desire for social stability, political control, population management, and certain redistributive policies? The utility functions of many emerging actors are less straightforward than those of traditional liberal market-based democracies, and incorporating these into models of interaction requires more complex analytical frameworks.

This is also true for any public choice analysis. We may continue to assume that all governments seek to maximize their political welfare, but what this entails requires a careful examination of each relevant player’s political system. Thus, the two-level games that capture negotiations taking place simultaneously at the domestic and international levels will call for a more nuanced understanding of what kind of internal pressures different countries with vastly different constitutional systems face.

The heterogeneity characterizing the international system also entails that the pursuit of “grand theories” that can be generalized across countries and issue areas will yield less satisfying insights in the future. To capture the diversity of the strategic interactions, analytical frameworks will be tailored to specific countries and issues involved.

Further, the time and discounting in utility functions of international actors is becoming more difficult to manage. Governments have always struggled to balance their short- and long-term policy objectives, acknowledging the need to temper growth policies with measures that price in the long-term costs and externalities. This intertemporal tension is becoming more acute in issues ranging from aging workforces in both China and the West to energy policy and climate change everywhere. Incorporating these tensions into countries’ preference functions will be vital to understanding optimal legal frameworks.

The increasingly divergent interests among key actors will also raise new questions on how to accomplish mutually beneficial cooperation. Transfer payments will need to evolve to overcome complex collective action problems crucial to global welfare and security. Threats to global order will be more diverse and unpredictable. Economic protectionism will become more subtle and harder to detect under existing WTO frameworks. Multilateral cooperation will become increasingly difficult to achieve as Pareto efficiency will often be unobtainable and much of the bargaining will take place in the second-best world. All of these issues will lead scholars to address more intricate questions on how to design international institutions that can facilitate cooperation in situations where mutual gains may not exist and traditional transfer payment options have been exhausted.

These changes also make the limits of law and economics more pronounced. We are learning that good analytics cannot tell us how states should trade off various goals, but should be used to understand how to optimize across various legal strategies and instruments under various alternative definitions of what welfare maximization entails. Most valuable research will generate and evaluate alternative outcomes based on different possible combinations of preferences, strategic choices, and constraints, exposing the costs and benefits underlying each of these outcomes.

At the heart of these shifts lies the fundamental modeling challenge of balancing complexity and simplicity. The complexity of reality requires a more nuanced understanding of how states form preferences and what drives their behavior. This provides an avenue for richer and deeper, albeit inevitably less certain, insights. At the same time, generating meaningful insights out of the messy reality requires simplicity. Unearthing the very essential of the strategic situation is more important than ever to advance our understanding of the most multifaceted problems of international cooperation. Embracing this tension in a fast-changing global landscape will make international law and economics scholarship an increasingly challenging and, consequently, exciting field for scholars to be working on in the future.

Eric A. Posner

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar

The most distinctive and also troubling trend is the division of law and economics into two subdisciplines—an “economics law and economics” and a “law law and economics.” ELE (as I will call it) will be mathematical and descriptive in orientation. LLE will be verbal and normative in orientation. ELE will be practiced by economists and law professors with economics PhDs; LLE will be practiced by law professors without PhDs. ELE will mainly take place in economics departments. The law professors who engage in ELE will find themselves drawn to economics departments, where workshops and other academic institutions will be more congenial. LLE will take place only in law schools.

Law and economics started out as a collaboration between law professors, who supplied the legal knowledge, and economists, who supplied the economic concepts and the mathematical apparatus. Since then, economic ideas have spread through the law schools (some law professors have PhDs or other training), and economists interested in the law now have easier access to legal materials and a law and economics literature to draw on. Because the two groups depend less on each other for each other’s distinctive expertise, they have less reason to collaborate. Isolated in their subcommunities, their methods, jargons, and orientations will drift apart. Those doing ELE in economics departments will find themselves drawn to the questions and methods that economists in other fields use, while those doing LLE in law schools will find themselves drawn to the questions and methods that other law professors use. And so ELE will become increasingly mathematical and empirical, while LLE will become increasingly normative and doctrinal.

This divergence is already evident.To take one of many examples, economists who study contracts are doing something different from law professors who study contract law. Economists take contract law as a given and analyze how rational agents would design optimal contracts. Lawyers focus on how to design optimal contract law, not contracts. The two groups are aware of each other, but they exert less and less influence over each other.

The divergence is also apparent in certain institutional developments. Law and economics seminars are well established in the top law schools, but in recent years some law professors at those schools have peeled off, forming seminars devoted to more mathematical (ELE) law and economics scholarship. The American Law and Economics Association has become increasingly divided between ELE and LLE factions.There is no real hostility between the factions, to be sure, but LLE types have begun dropping out of the annual meeting as ELE types, who enjoy an advantage in numbers, increasingly take over.

This sort of specialization is inevitable in academic scholarship. It is troubling because both fields will suffer. But it may also portend a reintegration of law and economics (that is, LLE) with other fields in legal scholarship, notably public law, where until recently law and economics has made limited inroads. Today, economic thinking dominates contract, commercial, bankruptcy, antitrust, corporate, and securities law and related fields. It is also influential if not dominant in tort, criminal, and property law and civil procedure. It has made less progress in the major fields of public law, including constitutional, immigration, administrative, and international law. These areas of law are less closely connected with commercial behavior than most of the others, and so the off-the-shelf economic models do not as clearly apply to them. Economists have produced a large political economy literature, but the models in this literature are more controversial and less usable than models of commercial behavior. The main problem is that the models are pitched at the wrong scale—analyzing, for example, the differences between democracy and dictatorship, or parliamentary democracy and presidential democracy, but not the costs and benefits of the legislative veto or the preemption doctrine.

But this is changing. In the last few years, a new generation of law and economics (mostly LLE) scholarship has focused on these fields. Scholars see international law as the product of interaction among self-interested states. They analyze administrative law on the basis of agency models that emphasize the divergence of interest between the principal (such as the president) and the agent (such as the bureaucracy). Constitutional law can also be understood using agency models where the “people” are the principal and the government is the agent. Immigration law can be understood using screening models from the economic literature on labor markets.

In the short to medium term, there will be increasing methodological divergence even as the use of economic ideas spreads to the farthest reaches of the law. How these forces will play themselves out in the long term is beyond the ken of my crystal ball.

Saul Levmore

William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law

Twenty-five years ago, as an inexperienced faculty member, I was astounded to hear the leading law and economics scholar at Harvard assert that within a generation the entire faculty of every major law school would hold PhDs in economics. The prediction seemed (and was) outrageous, self-centered, and misguided. Movements in legal education and scholarship produce countervailing forces. More economics begets more philosophy; more interdisciplinary offerings generate practical legal clinics; more clinical education generates more theory; and more theory brings about more courses in business skills. The driving forces behind these developments include the rewards in the academy for novel, or “cutting-edge,” work, reactions from the bar and donors, and the very nature of academic work.

Similar forces operate within law and economics. The current explosion in empirical work, which is hard to overstate, will bring about its own reduction and renewed interest in modeling or in positive theorizing. (I note that these approaches are hardly dormant. A recent symposium on liquidated damages, for instance, was dominated by work that tried to “explain” cases with economic insights. This kind of work has been the bread and butter of law and economics since its inception.) In the course of the next two decades empiricists will surely expand their domain, favoring other empiricists in the hiring process for example, but eventually the forces already mentioned will take hold. There are other reasons to believe that empirical work will not completely dominate. It is more removed than other forms of law and economics from the practice of law; it creates a large divide—as great as that once observed with regard to critical legal studies—between what faculty members wish to write about and what needs to be taught; and, perhaps most important, there are signs that the judges who have been most interested in citing empirical work are being replaced with, or bolstered by, like-minded judges of similar influence.

Empirical work is likely less valuable in law than in medicine or other disciplines. Results are sensitive to context, and empirical findings in one year are often unlikely to hold true in later years. Contexts change because of new laws, demographic changes, education, and a host of other factors. An optimist would say that this explains why volumes of empirical work about important legal subjects do not seem to change hearts and minds. I am referring here to work on gun control and to work on the deterrent effect of long criminal sentences, as well as the death penalty. (There are counterexamples; important empirical work changed minds in corporate law’s race-to-the-bottom debate.) In contrast, though I concede that it is difficult to know what would make for a fair comparison, empirical work in public health regarding tobacco consumption has had a profound effect on beliefs, laws, and everyday behavior—so it is not as if strongly held views cannot be changed by data.

I turn next to two affirmative predictions about the future of law and economics; one pertains to scholarship and the other focuses on legal education. As we globalize, law and economics will turn with enthusiasm to comparative law. Economists are as mesmerized by the rise of China as anyone. They will turn their attention to the reality of remarkable economic growth in the presence of an unfamiliar conception of eminent domain, a near absence of fee simple ownership of real property, and a very different view of the so-called rule of law. Superficially, modern China is a puzzle to conventional law and economics, but economists love puzzles.

Meanwhile, in our law schools, and especially in the elite schools, law and economics will continue to grow in importance, despite the observations about countervailing forces with which I began. This is because we now have a generation of teachers and students familiar with the toolkit of this interdisciplinary field. Law and economics is now mainstream. When there are ten or more faculty members who think, teach, and write in law and economics terms, as there are now at Chicago, Yale, Harvard, NYU, Penn, and other schools, students cannot avoid learning such basic things as present value, cost-benefit analysis, moral hazards, and simple game theory. In turn, these concepts come into play in most classes in the curriculum, rather than in the occasional antitrust or other class where law and economics seems “natural” and might once have seemed properly isolated. Law and economics is now ubiquitous, and every faculty member learns to incorporate its central concepts by virtue of his or her own education, attendance at faculty workshops, and—at Chicago—immersion in roundtable lunches. (At Chicago, unsurprisingly, every faculty member recognizes the basic law and economics moves, and everyone can ask terrific questions at law and economics workshops, for example. That is not true elsewhere.) The same is true for our students; their facility with the language and ideas of economics has grown considerably over the last decade or two.

Law and economics once seemed rebellious. In the leading law schools, that is certainly no longer the case. In the coming twenty years, we will learn whether the movement and methodology is dominated by empirical work, in which case its primary audience may be regulators, or whether it becomes yet more relevant to judges and to practicing lawyers.

Anup Malani

Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law

The future of law and economics is no different than the future of other applied microeconomics fields such as labor, health, and public economics: better identified empirical work with a solid connection to economic theory.

The questions law and economics asks are of course different than other fields. Our focus is on how and how much legal rules and process (whether imposed by courts or legislatures) affect welfare. Do legal rules affect welfare by controlling transactions costs (think optimal default rules)? Or do they do so simply by eliminating uncertainty and facilitating Coasian trade? Do they produce public goods such as information or take advantage of economies of scale such as with the substitution of police protection for self-protection of property? Or do they do so by redistributing income to those with higher marginal utilities?(1) But the theory we employ to model this behavior has much in common with other applied microeconomics fields.

The theoretical challenge going forward is twofold. First, the field must keep pace with advances in modeling from other fields. This includes advances in game theory (including contract theory and mechanism design), general equilibrium models, and assorted other smaller moves from fields such as industrial organization and finance. Second, theoretical work must be better connected to empirical work. Much of the law and economics scholarship in the first few decades (1965–1995) of the field was theoretical. That can be explained by the lack of technology (computers, storage) with which to conveniently conduct empirical research. In the last decade or so, we have seen an explosion of empirical work in law and economics. Unfortunately it is often unconnected to, or only loosely motivated by, theory. Going forward, theory must focus on generating practically testable predictions, and theory must test these predictions to estimate structural parameters from well-defined theoretical models. This process will ensure that the field stays disciplined and keeps making progress.

On the empirical side, law and economics suffers two problems. First, it is narrow. Too often the focus is merely showing that a legal rule affects some outcome, e.g., a three strikes law affects felonies; personal bankruptcy exemptions affect interest rates; tort reforms increase physician labor supply. Insufficient attention is paid to translating that outcome to welfare. What are the costs of enforcing a three strikes law? Do exemptions have some insurance benefits to be balanced against their effect on interest rates? Does equilibrium physician supply even affect consumer or producer surplus? This can partly be remedied by better connecting empirical work to theory.

Second, empirical law and economics lags behind (as do other fields) labor economics in the skill with which it demonstrates causal connections between legal rules and outcomes. The big problem here is that legal rules are not randomly assigned to populations. They are endogenous, e.g., high crime states tend to pass stricter criminal penalties, states that value insurance generally pass high exemptions, and states faced with physician flight pass tort reforms.

This means that simple correlations between a specific law and outcomes do not imply either that the law caused those outcomes in jurisdictions that already have the law or that the law would similarly cause such outcomes if other jurisdictions adopted that law.

The usual solutions to nonrandom assignment are either to model selection of laws and demonstrate that causal relationship can still be identified or to find instrumental variables (IVs) that causes changes in the law but are otherwise unrelated to the outcome in question. Although we have seen few papers that model both adoption of laws and the effects of those laws, we have seen some neat examples of IVs in use.(2) Hornbeck (2010) uses a technological advance—the invention of barbed wire—to test for the effects of enforceability of property rights on investment and development. Libecap and Lueck (2011) use the allocation of parts of Virginia to Ohio during the US Civil War to study the effects of different methods of drawing property lines (rectangular versus metes and bounds) on economic development.(3)

Even when a legal change is orthogonal to the outcome being studied, other problems frequently arise. One is that the legal change was itself caused by some other legal or non-legal change that is truly responsible for the observed change in outcome, e.g., a state may see a decline in crime after adoption of a truth-in-sentencing law, but the real cause of the change in crime is a move to a more law-and-order political culture that led to both the specific law studied and a more aggressive prosecutorial office. Another problem is that laws are frequently anticipated, especially in open, democratic societies that debate laws before adoption. In this case, a simple comparison of outcomes just before and just after a law is passed may underestimate the effect of the law, e.g., doctors may decide to retire at a lower rate in a state that is likely to adopt a damages cap in future years. Malani and Reif (2011) extend some techniques from macroeconometrics and empirical finance to show how the anticipation problem can be tackled with panel data.

It is essential that law and economics continue to make advances on the theoretical and empirical fronts I have laid out. They are necessary for the field to attract the brightest and talented new researchers and to remain normatively relevant. I am confident, however, that the faculty in residence at the University of Chicago—including the founding generation of Gary Becker , Bill Landes , and Richard Posner , current leaders of the field such as Saul Levmore and Eric Posner , and a new generation that includes Tom Miles and William Hubbard —and the faculty from other schools who have either trained or developed here (a list that includes such stars as Alan Sykes, Richard Craswell, Richard Brooks, Mark Ramseyer, and Stephen Choi) is equal to the task.

References Hornbeck, Richard. 2010. “Barbed Wire: Property Rights and Agricultural Development.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(2):767–810.

Levitt, Steven D. 1996. “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111(2):319–51

Libecap, Gary, and Dean Lueck. 2011. “The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Property Institutions.” Journal of Political Economy, 119(3):426–67.

Malani, Anup, and Julian Reif. 2011. “Accounting for Anticipation Effects: An Application to Medical Malpractice Tort Reform.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 16593.

1. It is questionable whether the last two questions belong to the domain of law and economics. Certainly scholars working in law and economics have tackled these questions, but an argument can be made that law and economics should focus either on reduction of uncertainty and transactions costs or on any value from procedure. The creation of public goods or capturing economies of scale belong to either generic applied microeconomics or defined fields such as public economics.

2. By this I mean instruments for legal change, not legal changes as instruments for nonlegal changes. A great example of the latter is Levitt’s use of prison overcrowding litigation as an instrument for the reduction of prison size.

3. There is also some scope for use of regression discontinuity designs at the borders of jurisdictions with different legal rules. Although communities across the border are exposed to different legal rules, the effect of any one rule can sometimes be identified by looking before and after a change in one particular rule on one side of the border.

Thomas J. Miles

Professor of Law and an editor of the Journal of Legal Studies

The University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate George Stigler famously said that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.(1) In the “marketplace” of legal scholarship, law and economics has expanded vigorously and continuously since its emergence as a scholarly field in the 1970s. If this growth continues, Stigler’s aphorism suggests that in the future “labor” in law and economics will become more divided. That is, scholarship in law and economics will become more specialized.

But, will law and economics continue to grow? Or, has it reached a mature phase of stability and perhaps retreat? Both the supply and demand sides of the academic market portend continued growth of law and economics. On the supply side, law itself continues to expand its reach and complexity,  presenting new questions requiring scholarly analysis. Many legal changes, such as the new financial regulations, seem naturally suited to economic analysis because they involve markets. Other subjects not involving explicit markets appear at first blush to be ill matched to economic analysis, but precisely because an economic perspective is novel, there are opportunities to make intellectual contributions.

On the demand side, a steady flow of new legal scholars is eager to employ the tools of economic analysis. Some of these scholars are PhD-trained economists who see law schools as an intellectual home because many economics departments have increasingly turned toward abstract theory and away from a nuanced study of institutions. A new cadre of political science PhDs is applying rational choice analysis (which is the essence of the economic approach) to topics in public law that until now have largely escaped the attention of law and economics scholars. For some young professors with more standard backgrounds in law (a JD, then clerkship and a stint in practice), economics is a preferred mode of analysis, and for others, many economic concepts are now a standard part of the legal academic’s analytical toolkit.

As law and economics continues to grow, it will become more specialized, according to the Stiglerian view. When a market is small, a producer must be a jack-of-all-trades, but when it is large, a narrow focus can earn high returns. Also, the acquisition of knowledge incurs a fixed cost, and once acquired, it is efficient to utilize the knowledge as much as possible. This implies that future scholars of law and economics are less likely to be generalists who hopscotch across legal fields applying economics with a broad brush. Instead, they are likely to focus on a limited number of related legal fields, say corporate and securities, and to use economics to understand their legal and institutional intricacies.

The methodological specialization occurring in economics departments reinforces this trend.With few exceptions, graduate students choose relatively early to become theorists (who write formal mathematical models of economic behavior) or empiricists (who test economic predictions against data). Just as PhDs in economics departments specialize in one of these methodologies, so too PhD/JDs in law and economics increasingly devote themselves to a single methodology.

The first decades of law and economics illustrate this pattern. Theoretical contributions dominated the first generation of law and economics.(2) Early theoretical models typically showed how under full information, rational decision making subject to resource constraints could yield efficient outcomes. The next wave of scholarship demonstrated how the introduction of a friction or market failure could qualify this conclusion. With these foundations in place, today’s theorists face a harder challenge. To make a contribution, they must explore the interaction of multiple frictions, increasing the complexity and sophistication of their mathematical models. Expertise has become a necessity.

In the past decade, empirical scholarship in law and economics has surged.With a saturation of theory, evidence confirming or refuting the theoretical predictions was needed. A technological shock also spurred empiricism. Innovations in computing and the rise of the Internet have dramatically lowered the cost of assembling large datasets and conducting statistical analyses. By its nature, empirical work is already relatively specialized, and it is likely to compose a greater share of law and economics scholarship in the future.

For many of us connected to the University of Chicago Law School, the prospect of scholarship becoming ever narrower and deeper is troubling. A great feature of the Law School has historically been its peripatetic intellectualism. More so than in other schools, our faculty teach and write in multiple legal fields, and this has been especially true of our law and economics faculty. The trend toward specialization seemingly presents a risk that single-minded hedgehogs burrowed in their own specialties will replace the nimble and wide-ranging foxes of our faculty. Is the narrowing of law and economics scholarship unstoppable?

Perhaps not. Two other University of Chicago economists, Gary S. Becker (also a Nobel laureate) and Kevin M.Murphy , identified in a 1992 article an important counterweight to specialization: coordination costs.(3) Coordination, the task of combining specialized knowledge, becomes more costly (which is to say, more valuable) as the number of specialties rises. Professors Becker and Murphy presciently noted in 1992, “Economists and lawyers working on the relation between law and economics can coordinate their research, but coordination costs are reduced when economists also become lawyers or lawyers also become economists, as with the increasing number of persons who take advanced degrees in both law and economics.”(4) The increase in PhD-JDs that professors Becker and Murphy predicted has occurred, and Chicago itself has produced a fair number of these new academics.

But, as the richness of law and economics scholarship grows, even a person possessing a PhD and a JD may lack the expertise needed to make a contribution. In Professors Becker and Murphy’s words, “limited human capacities tend to make it harder to pack more knowledge into a person without running into diminishing returns.”(5) A solution is to collaborate with another scholar. In a recent study, my colleague Professor Tom Ginsburg and I found that articles containing technical models or empirical studies have in the past twenty years come to compose nearly all of the articles appearing in The Journal of Legal Studies—a marquee journal in law and economics that the Law School has published since 1972 and a bellwether of scholarship in the field.We also found that these articles were far more likely to be coauthored rather than single-authored.(6) These trends suggest that the need for collaboration will prevent law and economics scholars, including those at Chicago, from laboring in isolation in their particular bailiwicks and will prompt them to immerse themselves in the ideas and work of their colleagues. More growth, more specialization, and more collaboration will mark the future of law and economics at Chicago.

1 George Stigler, The Division of Labor Is Limited by the Extent of the Market, 59 J. Pol.Econ. 185 (1951) (drawing on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations [1776]).

2 A rare exception is Chicago’s Professor William M. Landes, who in addition to many theoretical contributions produced several early and influential empirical works.

3 Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy, The Division of Labor, Coordination Costs, and Knowledge, 107 Q.J.Econ. 1137 (1992).

4 Becker and Murphy, at 1143.

5 Becker and Murphy, at 1150.

6 Tom Ginsburg and Thomas J. Miles, Empiricism and the Rising Incidence of Co-authorship in Law, 2011 U.Ill.L.Rev . 101 (forthcoming).

David A. Weisbach

Walter J. Blum Professor of Law and Senior Fellow, the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

It is perilous to predict the future. Twenty years from now, perhaps at my retirement party, we can pull out this essay and laugh at how ridiculous my predictions were. Worse, the person who gets it right will be celebrated as visionary even if their predictions were right purely by chance. I might as well buy a lottery ticket—if I lose, well, most predictions are wrong anyway, and if I win, I’ll claim it was vision and not luck.

Looking back 20 years, law and economics looked much as it does today. Today we have more economics PhDs, particularly scholars with joint degrees. The field is more empirical and the empirics are more sophisticated. It covers more areas of legal scholarship. But someone time traveling from 20 years ago into a law school today would not notice a lot of difference in the type of work being done.

The easiest prediction, then, is that the trends will continue. We will see more integration with economics departments, more professionalization of the field, better econometric techniques, and expansion into new areas and new legal problems. But things will pretty much continue as they are.

That is my safe bet, and it would not be a bad future. Let me venture out onto a limb, or more likely a twig, and say where I would like things to go and, perhaps being optimistic, where things will go. Law and economics developed as the study of the traditional first-year law school issues of torts, contracts, property, criminal law, and procedure. These are the first-year law school courses because they are the building blocks of other areas of law. It was a smart place to start.

The central problems facing society today, however, go well beyond these building blocks. They are highly complex, structural problems, and knowledge of the building blocks will not be sufficient for addressing them. If we were to list some of the central problems or areas of law facing us today, we would list areas like banking and finance, poverty and inequality, development, education, health care, and energy and the environment.

Studying these fields requires a somewhat different set of tools than most law and economics scholars are currently equipped with. Scholars need a deep understanding of the building blocks, but they also need to understand the institutional, economic, statutory, and political structures of these problems. Because of their complexity, the techniques we use to study them might be different. We will far more likely to have to work with experts in these fields. Coauthorship with people from other parts of campus may need to become the norm. Models will have to be more complex. Data requirements will be greater. The problems involve less law, in the sense of what courts do, and more policy, in the sense that statutes and legislatures will be central. There are, of course, people currently working in these areas equipped with all of these tools, but their numbers are limited. If law schools want to contribute to the great problems of the day, scholarship will have to move in this direction.

Let me illustrate with current a project of mine that maybe indicates this trend. (Perhaps this indicates that I can’t see beyond the tip of my nose, because this is my current work. What I’m working on is, of course, indicative of future trends . . . ) The question I wished to address involves climate change: there is strong international pressure for developed countries to start reducing emissions prior to any commitment from developing countries. Developed countries worry, however, that doing so will simply cause energy-intensive production to move abroad. We want to know the parameters of this issue—does it make sense for the developed countries to act alone, and what sort of legal rules might limit the bad side effects?

This problem cannot be understood with conventional techniques. Hard thinking and analytic models can give a sense of the direction but not the size or scope of the problem. Standard econometric techniques are not helpful because the predictions involve situations far from our experience. The solution we (my coauthors and I) turned to was large-scale computation. We simulate the problem with a computational model that allows us to run experiments with different policies to see their effects. It is necessarily interdisciplinary; I have coauthors from a variety of university departments.We are using computers at Argonne National Laboratories to run the model.

There are many criticisms and problems. Computation is not common in economics, not to speak of law and economics. Computational models are hard to understand. The data are uncertain. Results can depend on the model structure, which is driven in part by the modeler’s choices rather than empirics. Subtle and nonobvious changes to the model, such as particular solution algorithms, can change outcomes. There are also solutions. To avoid creating a black box, we use an analytic model to develop economic intuitions that are then tested in the big computer model. The code is open source so that anyone may run it; we also are making simplified versions of the model and code available to help users understand the modeling approach.We use the model to replicate prior studies so that differences in our results and other studies can be understood. To address uncertainty, we engage in a variety of robustness checks, including but not limited to studies of the sensitivity of the results to parameter and model-structure variation.

It is a very different view of legal analysis—it views problems as engineering problems that we model and test. It is empirical, practical, and solution-driven. The role of the legal scholar is to help frame problems, to think about how institutional structures affect the framing, to suggest solutions, and to help interpret and evaluate results.

I don’t think computation will become mainstream, although I hope it becomes more common. But interdisciplinary scholarship of this sort, where law and economics scholars work with experts in related fields to think about and devise solutions for the most important problems we face, is one possible future, and one I hope we move toward. It would require a huge shift in the type of things legal scholars do and are able to do. But to address big, structural problems, there is no choice. So there is my lottery ticket, although I would still take the safe bet.

Gary S. Becker & Richard A. Posner, The Future of Law and Economics

POSNER: The future of an evolving academic field belongs to the young. They know what their elders know, and their careers depend on their being able to build on existing knowledge in creative ways. The old are likely to be in a defensive crouch, fearing that the young will build their careers in part on rejecting, or at best superseding, the work of their elders. So, in reading what follows: caveat emptor.

The modern field of “law and economics” (that is, of economic analysis of law) dates from the 1960s. Until then, Jeremy Bentham’s economic analysis of criminal law having been forgotten, economics was thought relevant to only a few fields of law, all commercial—antitrust law, public utility and common carrier regulation, and tax law. By the end of the 1960s, as a result of articles (and the occasional book) by William Baxter, Gary Becker, Guido Calabresi, Ronald Coase, Harold Demsetz,William Landes, Henry Manne, and others, economics was understood to be relevant to the entire domain of the law—relevant both to understanding the law (positive analysis) and to reforming it (normative analysis).

That was half a century ago. In the intervening period the evolution of law and economics has been shaped by a number of forces: the increased mathematization of economics (including advances in techniques of statistical analysis); the increased availability of statistical data usable in empirical analyses utilizing the latest statistical techniques, as a result of the computer revolution; the broadening of the scope of economics both conceptually (as in the rise of game theory and the advent of behavioral economics—the invasion of economics by psychology) and in the areas of human activity that are studied by economists (marriage and divorce, for example); the increased size and “academification” of the legal professoriat; and, related to a number of these developments, increased specialization of academic law.

The early contributors to the field of law and economics were economists and lawyers—not lawyer-economists—and they tended to write across legal domains. So Becker, for example, studied both racial discrimination and criminal law enforcement, and Coase both tort law and communications regulation, and Baxter both patent law and environmental law. Very little of the work of this early period was either mathematical or statistical (or empirical at all). But beginning in the 1970s economists such as Steven Shavell built increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of legal phenomena. It began to be felt that legal training alone would not enable a lawyer to do sophisticated economic analysis of law, and so economic analysis of law increasingly became the province of law professors who had a PhD in economics, as well as of economists specializing in the application of economics to law who did not have a law degree.

During the 1970s, economic analysis of law began to permeate legal teaching as well as scholarship, and economic consultants and expert witnesses became fixtures of commercial litigation in a variety of fields—in part because lawyers were learning in law school how economics could be used in legal analysis. Most of these consultants and witnesses were not and are not economic analysts of law, but rather analysts of business practices challenged in litigation.

The trend toward increased economic sophistication in the 1970s, which has continued ever since, has had a side effect of increasing the separation between academic economic analysis of law and the practice of law. The two-degree scholars generally don’t have time to engage in law practice to any significant extent (often no more than a one-year clerkship with a judge) before beginning their academic careers. The increased formalization of economics makes it difficult for lawyers who do not have training in economics to collaborate with economists or lawyer-economists. Increasingly, economic analysts of law write for each other, in specialized journals, rather than for the larger profession. Increasingly, indeed, they write  not for economic analysts of law as a whole but for economic analysts of the writer’s subspecialty. The expansion of a field leads to the multiplication of its subspecialties.

These developments have increased, and will continue to increase, the rigor of economic analysis of law. The search for new worlds to conquer that is a hallmark of a progressive research program has already paid off. One example is increased attention to the economics of foreign and international law and, concomitantly, increased exploitation of the opportunities that cross-country comparison provides for empirical study. Another example is the empirical study of judicial behavior, where insights from labor economics and the economics of organizations are being used to interpret the large quantities of statistical data that are available (or readily obtainable) concerning the activities of courts and judges.

But the gap between academic law and economics and the law as it is practiced and administered and created and applied is troublesome. Economic analysis of law has intrinsic intellectual interest (like jurisprudence) and is an invaluable component of a modern legal education, but one would also like to see it contribute to the solution of legal problems and the reform of our costly and cumbersome legal institutions. And for that the economic analyst needs to understand law from the inside, which no one, however bright, can do without legal experience (though it might be acquired, on the side as it were, after one had begun an academic career) as well as legal training, for law is like a foreign language. And to avoid the amateurishness of underspecialization, there is a pressing need for greater collaboration between law professors with real legal experience and economists or lawyer-economists who have the analytic tools but not the insider’s understanding of the law in action and in its manifold institutional forms.

There is also need for economic analysts of law, whether they are lawyers or economists or lawyer-economists, to interact with, and sometimes collaborate with, economists in economic departments and business schools who may be interested in law and may have special economic skills to bring to its study, an example being Andrei Shleifer of the Harvard economics department.

The limited amount of such interaction and collaboration is reflected in the slow reaction of economic analysts of law to the financial crash of September 2008 and the ensuing downward spiral of the economy. The legal profession was deeply involved in the creation of the complex financial instruments that crashed and, of course, in the creation, un-creation, and administration of the regulatory laws and institutions governing finance. Yet about these instruments and practices and regulations—the Federal Reserve Act, for example, or the debt ceiling, or the eurozone—economic analysts of law have been largely silent (though not entirely—think of Lucian Bebchuk at Harvard Law School and the finance group at Columbia Law School), even though the economic crisis is about to enter its fourth year (fifth, if we count from December 2007, when GDP first began to dip).

Predictions of the future are almost always just extrapolations. I will conclude in that vein. I expect economic analysis of law to grow in rigor, expand in scope, and becoming increasingly empirical as statistical databases become ever easier to create and analyze. Up to now the ratio of theoretical to empirical economic analysis of law has been very high, in part because theoretical papers can be produced much more quickly than empirical studies, and (unfortunately) number of papers published is given undue weight in hiring and tenure decisions. That is a concern and another (which is related however to reluctance to undertake empirical studies) is that economic analysis of law may lose influence by becoming too esoteric, too narrow, too hermetic, too out of touch with the practices and institutions that it studies. BECKER: Posner gives an excellent discussion of the evolution of the field of law and economics, with the glaring omission of his own monumental contributions that fundamentally helped define the approaches, techniques, and scope of this field. I will go over some of the same ground as he does on its evolution and likely future, and I will also  add brief comments on the emerging and exciting subfield of macro law and economics.

The first stage of research on law and economics was mainly theoretical. Economists and lawyers used and adapted concepts and analysis from economics to show that legal rules and doctrines often had a clear economic rationale, and to show how these concepts  illuminated how laws and legal systems affect behavior and the efficiency of economic outcomes. These early studies had an enormous influence on how some lawyers and economists began to think about property, contracts, negotiations, trials and settlements, torts, antitrust, corporations and securities, crime, racial and gender discrimination, and other areas of the law. Yet it took a while for these ideas to spread into law schools since academic and other lawyers initially had little exposure to the economic way of thinking. Partly for this reason, considerable opposition developed to many of the ideas espoused by the economists and other pioneers in law and economics. Gradually, however, opposition weakened (although it has not disappeared) as newer generations of lawyers became better qualified to appreciate and evaluate the contributions of this new field.

At the same time, the gain from mainly arbitraging theoretical ideas from economics into the field of law began to lose steam. This was in good part because the early contributions were mainly theoretical, with only occasional support from legal cases, and with still less frequent support from quantitative analysis. Theory alone cannot keep a field vibrant, although it can substantially shift the approaches to different issues.

No field that deals with human behavior has ever remained exciting and innovative by relying on theoretical ideas alone, no matter how valuable these ideas are. A vibrant and creative field requires a continual dialogue between theory and evidence from the real world that not only helps test existing theories, but also suggests new theories that can then also be tested and extended, or rejected.

Fortunately, as the first theoretical stage was slowing down, perhaps because opportunities to arbitrage economic ideas into law were shrinking, a second stage began that collected and analyzed quantitative data. This quantitative approach uses statistical techniques also drawn mainly from economics to analyze antitrust cases, contracts, litigation, intellectual property, divorce, crime, discrimination, and many other areas of the law. Quantitative analysis has become one of the most exciting frontiers in law and economics, since extensive legal data exists, often in rudimentary forms. These data can test, discard, or help in the reformulation of the theories on the effects of laws and legal rulings on behavior.

Most participants in any field, including law and economics, specialize. Some are mainly theorists, while others are mainly empiricists. For a field to remain relevant, however, many researchers must be both, relating theories to real world data. Otherwise, theories become sterile as theorists mainly discuss what other theorists said, and empiricists become mainly number crunchers, with little effort to interpret the data in other than ad hoc ways.

This is why I believe an exciting further development in law and economics will involve extensive interactions between theory and empirical analysis. Some lawyers will cooperate with economists, but even then it would be valuable for the lawyers to acquire not only the rudiments of economic theory, but also basic econometric and other techniques for analyzing data. Economists involved in this research should also acquire some knowledge of legal opinions and how legal systems operate. Indeed, a growing number of individuals with both a law degree and a PhD in economics are beginning to bridge this gap.

The great majority of research in law and economics has been at the “micro” level in the sense of considering the behavior of parties to contracts, torts, crime, and other individual and business behavior. This research has been fundamental, but a newer and also important research focus considers the interactions between legal systems and the macro economy. This research, pioneered by economists Acemoglu and Andrei Shleifer, among others, analyzes the connections between legal systems and long-term rates of growth, the degree of economic inequality, aggregate investments, and other macroeconomic variables. To a lesser extent, this burgeoning literature also analyzes how macroeconomic developments affect the evolution of legal systems.

Scarcity of data often limits how much can be achieved empirically in understanding the macro interactions between laws and economics, although the creation of long time series for many countries on relevant legal and economic variables is widening the database. I expect the macro interaction between law and economics to become another major frontier as the discipline of law and economics pushes its boundaries and insights into uncharted territories.

1. Becker thanks William Landes and William Hubbard for helpful comments; Posner thanks Landes for helpful comments.

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

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Economics Department Dissertations Collection

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Dissertations from 2023 2023

THREE ESSAYS ON MACROECONOMICS AND DEVELOPMENT , Economics

Dissertations from 2022 2022

THREE ESSAYS on GROWTH and DISTRIBUTION in DUAL ECONOMIES , Adam Aboobaker, Economics

WORK, WORKERS, AND REPRODUCING SOCIAL CONTROL: RACIAL POST-FORDISM AND ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS , Hannah Rebecca Archambault, Economics

Employer Power: Consequences for Wages, Inequality and Spillovers , Ihsaan Bassier, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES: HEALTH, GENDER, AND POLICING , Travis B. Campbell, Economics

CREATION OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND COMPETITION THROUGH GREEN-INDUSTRIAL POLICIES , Camilo A. Gallego, Economics

Essays on Unpaid Care and Gender Inequality in India , Leila Gautham, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, THE STATE, AND EMPLOYMENT , Baris Guven, Economics

CONSTRAINTS AND ACCOMMODATED PREFERENCE: ESSAYS ON GENDER AND SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN PAKISTAN , Sana Khalil, Economics

Essays on Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement and Sex-Based Discrimination in U.S. Labor Markets , Carly McCann, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE CFA FRANC , Francis Perez, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND CREATIVE LABOR , Luke Pretz, Economics

FOUR ESSAYS ON PEACE CONSOLIDATION AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION IN POSTWAR SRI LANKA , Narayani Sritharan, Economics

The Political Economy of Consumer Credit Expansion and Real Exchange Rate Policy in Dual Economies , Esra Nur Ugurlu, Economics

Dissertations from 2021 2021

Three Essays on Learning and Conflict Applied to Developing Countries , Amal Ahmad, Economics

The Political Economy of the Cost of Foreign Exchange Intervention , Devika Dutt, Economics

CARE WORK IN CHILE’S SEGREGATED CITIES , Manuel Garcia, Economics

ESSAYS ON EXCHANGE RATE SHOCKS AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LOCAL FISCAL POLICY IN BRAZIL , Raphael Rocha Gouvea, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GLOBAL INACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE , Tyler A. Hansen, Economics

Three Essays on Socio-Institutional Ecosystems & Labor Structures , Jonathan Donald Jenner, Economics

CONSTRUCTING A MARXIAN INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL CONSIDERING THE TURNOVER OF CAPITAL AND REVISITING THE FALLING-RATE-OF-PROFIT HYPOTHESIS , Junshang Liang, Economics

Three Essays on Structural Change and Labor Market Adjustment in Developing Countries , Karmen Naidoo, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON EMPLOYMENT IMPACTS OF LABOR MARKET POLICIES , Simon Dominik Sturn, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON LABOR AND MARRIAGE MARKETS: FARM CRISIS AND RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1920-1940 , Jennifer Withrow, Economics

Dissertations from 2020 2020

THREE ESSAYS ON GENDER-SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES OF MACROECONOMIC POLICIES , SELIN SECIL AKIN, Economics

A New Economic History of Deindustrialization: Class Conflict and Race in the Motor City , Jackson Allison, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON MICROECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: EXPLOITATION, TECHNICAL CHANGE, AND MULTISECTORAL ANALYSIS , Weikai Chen, Economics

Essays on Food Security, Gender and Agriculture , Berna Dogan, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE , Kuochih Huang, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT: SPACE, CLASS AND STATE IN PAKISTAN , Danish Khan, Economics

ESSAYS ON WOMEN AND WORK IN INDIA AND ON OTHER-REGARDING PREFERENCES , Sai Madhurika Mamunuru, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS IN INDIAN AGRICULTURE , Kartik Misra, Economics

Neoliberal Capitalism and the Evolution of the U.S. Healthcare System , Samantha Sterba, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF SOCIALISM , Mihnea Tudoreanu, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE “SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE” , Anastasia C. Wilson, Economics

Endogenous Money, Corporate Liquidity Preferences and the Transformation of the U.S. Financial System , Yeo Hyub Yoon, Economics

Dissertations from 2019 2019

The Historical and Legal Creation of a Fissured Workplace: The Case of Franchising , Brian Callaci, Economics

Essays on the Minimum Wage, Immigration, and Privatization , Doruk Cengiz, Economics

Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, and Climate Change Impacts , Rohini Kamal, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE ENVIRONMENT , An Li, Economics

REVISITING THE EAST ASIAN MIRACLE: LABOR REGIMES, PROFITABILITY AND ACCUMULATION , Zhongjin Li, Economics

Dimensions of US Global Financial Power: Essays on Financial Sanctions, Global Imbalances, and Sovereign Default , Mariam Majd, Economics

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ACCUMULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: Resource Extraction, Financialization, and Capital Flight as Barriers to Investment and Employment Growth , Seeraj Mohamed, Economics

STATE-LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING, MACROECONOMIC FISCAL POLICY, AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE , Amanda Page-Hoongrajok, Economics

Essays on Monetary Policy in Developing Countries: Income Distribution, Housing and Unemployment , Zhandos Ybrayev, Economics

Resource Rents, Public Investment and Economic Development: The Case of Bolivia , Raul Zelada Aprili, Economics

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Three Essays on Governments and Financial Crises in Developing Economies, 1870-1913 , Peter H. Bent, Economics

Constraining Labor's “Double Freedom”: Revisiting the Impact of Wrongful Discharge Laws on Labor Markets, 1979-2014 , Eric Hoyt, Economics

SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF ACCUMULATION IN TURKEY (1963 – 2015) , Osman C. Icoz, Economics

Stumbling Toward the Up Escalator: How Trends in International Trade, Investment, and Finance Have Complicated Latin America’s Quest for Sustainable, Diversified Economic Development , Mary Eliza Rebecca Ray, Economics

Forms of Naturalism in Seminal Neoclassical Texts: An Analysis and Comparison of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons , Mark Silverman, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON CHILD WELFARE IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE , Didier Wayoro, Economics

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Currency Mismatch and Balance Sheet Effects of Exchange Rate in Turkish Non-Financial Corporations , Serkan Demirkilic, Economics

The Impacts of Foreign Labor Migration of Men on Women's Empowerment in Nepal , Pratistha Joshi Rajkarnikar, Economics

Real and Nominal Effects of Exchange Rate Regimes , Emiliano Libman, Economics

Three Essays on International Economics and Finance , Juan Antonio Montecino, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON “DOING CARE”, GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE WORK DAY, AND WOMEN’S CARE WORK IN THE HOUSEHOLD , Avanti Mukherjee, Economics

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Colonial and Post-Colonial Origins of Agrarian Development: The Case of Two Punjabs , Shahram Azhar, Economics

Three Essays on the Social Determinants of Early Childhood Health and Development , Andrew Barenberg, Economics

ELITE CAPTURE, FREE RIDING, AND PROJECT DESIGN: A CASE STUDY OF A COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN CEARÁ, BRAZIL , Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Economics

Three Essays on Sustainable Development in China: Social, Economic and Environmental Aspects , Ying Chen, Economics

Three Essays on Women's Land Rights in Rural Peru , Rosa L. Duran, Economics

Three Essays on Economic Stages and Transition , Ricardo R. Fuentes-Ramírez, Economics

Three Essays on U.S. Household Debt and the Sources of Systemic Financial Fragility , Thomas Herndon, Economics

Essays on Household Health Expenditures, National Health Insurance and Universal Access to Health Care in Ghana , EVELYN KWAKYE, Economics

Microfinance, Household Indebtedness and Gender Inequality , Theresa Mannah-Blankson, Economics

Three Essays on Labor Market Friction and the Business Cycle , Jong-seok Oh, Economics

Three Essays on Sustainability , Mark V. Paul, Economics

The Political Economy of Smallholder Incorporation and Land Acquisition , Alfredo R. Rosete, Economics

Employment and Family Leave Mandates: Three Essays on Labor Supply and Demand, Nontraditional Families, and Family Policy , Samantha Schenck, Economics

Endogenous Capacity, Multiple Equilibria and Thirlwall's Law: Theory and an Empirical Application to Mexico: 1950 - 2012. , Juan Alberto Vázquez Muñoz, Economics

Three Essays on the Macroeconomic Impacts of Rent Seeking , Kurt von Seekamm, Economics

Dissertations from 2015 2015

Essays on Growth Complementarity Between Agriculture and Industry in Developing Countries , Joao Paulo de Souza, Economics

Structural Transformation, Culture, and Women’s Labor Force Participation in Turkey , yasemin dildar, Economics

Essays on Information, Income, and the Sharing Economy , Anders F. Fremstad, Economics

Essays on Inequality, Credit Constraints, and Growth in Contemporary Mexico , Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez, Economics

Three Essays on Macroeconomic Implications of Contemporary Financial Intermediation , Hyun Woong Park, Economics

The Labor Share Question in China , Hao Qi, Economics

Three essays on economic inequality and environmental degradation , Klara Zwickl, Economics

Dissertations from 2014 2014

Common Pool Resources and Rural Livelihoods in Stung Treng Province of Cambodia , Pitchaya Boonsrirat, Economics

The financialization of the nonfinancial corporation in the post-1970 U.S. economy , Leila Emami Davis, Economics

The Financial Underpinnings of the EU Crisis: Financial Deregulation, Privatization, and Asymmetric State Power , Nina Q. Eichacker, Economics

THE FINANCIAL SECTOR AND INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: ESSAYS ON ACCESS TO FINANCE FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN SOUTH SUDAN AND KENYA , James A. Garang, Economics

OUTPUT FLUCTUATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN LATIN AMERICA IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE GREAT RECESSION , Gonzalo Hernandez Jimenez, Economics

TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT AND EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN SOUTH KOREA , Hyeon-Kyeong Kim, Economics

Three Essays in Macroeconomic History , Joshua W. Mason, Economics

Essays on the Evolution of Inequality , Cem Oyvat, Economics

FINANCIALIZATION OF THE COMMODITIES FUTURES MARKETS AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRICES , Manisha Pradhananga, Economics

Productive Stagnation and Unproductive Accumulation in the United States, 1947-2011. , Tomas N. Rotta, Economics

Advertising and the Creation of Exchange Value , Zoe Sherman, Economics

Understanding Income Inequality in the United States , Mark J. Stelzner, Economics

CARE TIME IN THE U.S.: MEASURES, DETERMINANTS, AND IMPLICATIONS , Joo Yeoun Suh, Economics

Essays on the minimum wage , Ben Zipperer, Economics

Dissertations from 2013 2013

Credit Chains, Credit Bubles, and Financial Fragility: Explaining The U.S. Financial Crisis of 2007-09 , Thomas L Bernardin, Economics

A Knife Hidden in Roses: Development and Gender Violence in the Dominican Republic , Cruz Caridad Bueno, Economics

Sustaining Rural Livelihoods in Upper Svaneti, Republic of Georgia , Robin J Kemkes, Economics

Contract as Contested Terrain: An Economic History of Law and the Rise of American Capitalism , Daniel P MacDonald, Economics

Essays on the Rising Demand for Convenience in Meal Provisioning in the United States , Tamara Ohler, Economics

Social Emulation, the Evolution of Gender Norms, and Intergenerational Transfers: Three Essays on the Economics of Social Interactions , Seung-Yun Oh, Economics

Decollectivization and Rural Poverty in Post-Mao China: A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom , Zhaochang Peng, Economics

Capitalist Crisis and Capitalist Reaction: The Profit Squeeze, the Business Roundtable, and the Capitalist Class Mobilization of the 1970s , Alejandro Reuss, Economics

The Economics of Same-Sex Couple Households: Essays on Work, Wages, and Poverty , Alyssa Schneebaum, Economics

The Political Economy of Cultural Production: Essays on Music and Class , Ian J. Seda Irizarry, Economics

Essays Of Human Capital Formation , Owen Thompson, Economics

Dissertations from 2012 2012

Knowledge, Gender, and Production Relations in India's Informal Economy , Amit Basole, Economics

Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Determinants of Informal Employment: The Case of Clothing Traders in Johannesburg, South Africa , Jennifer E Cohen, Economics

The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration and Crime in the Neoliberal Period in the United States , Geert Leo Dhondt, Economics

Fair Trade, Agrarian Cooperatives, and Rural Livelihoods in Peru , Noah Enelow, Economics

Organic Farming and Rural Transformations in the European Union: A Political Economy approach , Charalampos Konstantinidis, Economics

The Sources of Financial Profit: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of the Transformation of Banking in the US , Iren G. Levina, Economics

A Minskian Approach to Financial Crises with a Behavioural Twist: A Reappraisal of the 2000-2001 Financial Crisis in Turkey , Mathieu Perron-Dufour, Economics

Essays on Urban Sprawl, Race, and Ethnicity , Jared M. Ragusett, Economics

Agriculture and Class: Contradictions of Midwestern Family Farms Across the Twentieth Century , Elizabeth Ann Ramey, Economics

Women In Conflict, Peacebuilding And Reconstruction: Insights From The Aftermath Of Nepal's Maoist Insurgency , Smita Ramnarain, Economics

Money, Reality, and Value: Non-Commodity Money in Marxian Political Economy , Joseph Thomas Rebello, Economics

Three essays on oil scarcity, global warming and energy prices , Matthew Riddle, Economics

The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in the People's Republic of China , Zhun Xu, Economics

Dissertations from 2011 2011

State Hegemony and Sustainable Development: A Political Economy Analysis of Two Local Experiences in Turkey , Bengi Akbulut, Economics

Financial evolution and the declining effectiveness of US monetary policy since the 1980s , Hasan Comert

Why China Grew: Understanding the Financial Structure of Late Development , Adam S. Hersh, Economics

Solving the "Coffee Paradox": Understanding Ethiopia's Coffee Cooperatives Through Elinor Ostrom's Theory of the Commons , Susan Ruth Holmberg, Economics

Migration, Remittances And Intra-Household Allocation In Northern Ghana: Does Gender Matter? , Lynda Joyce Pickbourn, Economics

Youth and Economic Development: A Case Study of Out-of-School Time Programs for Low-Income Youth in New York State , Kristen Maeve Powlick, Economics

The Real Exchange Rate And Economic Development , Martin Rapetti, Economics

Essays on International Reserve Accumulation and Cooperation in Latin America , Luis Daniel Rosero, Economics

Three Essays on Racial Disparities in Infant Health and Air Pollution Exposure , Helen Scharber, Economics

Dissertations from 2010 2010

Capitalism in Post-Colonial India: Primative Accumulation Under Dirigiste and Laissez Faire Regimes , Rajesh Bhattacharya, Economics

Uneven Development and the Terms of Trade: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis , Bilge Erten, Economics

Gendered Vulnerabilities After Genocide: Three Essays on Post-Conflict Rwanda , Catherine Ruth Finnoff, Economics

The Employment Impacts of Economy-wide Investments in Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency , Heidi Garrett-Peltier, Economics

Household Employer Payroll Tax Evasion: An Exploration Based on IRS Data and on Interviews with Employers and Domestic Workers , Catherine B. Haskins, Economics

Racial Inequality and Affirmative Action in Malaysia and South Africa , Hwok-Aun Lee, Economics

Essays on Behavioral Labor Economics , Philip Pablo Mellizo, Economics

Three Essays on the Political Economy of Live Stock Sector in Turkey , Hasan Tekguc, Economics

The Impact Of Public Employment On Health , Wei Zhang, Economics

Dissertations from 2009 2009

Effort, work hours, and income inequality: Three essays on the behavioral effects of wage inequality , Michael Carr

Essays On Investment, Real Exchange Rate, And Central Bank In A Financially Liberalized Turkey , Deger Eryar, Economics

Essays on investment, real exchange rate, and central bank in a financially liberalized Turkey , Deger Eryar

Labor Turnover in the Child-Care Industry: Voice and Exit , Lynn A. Hatch, Economics

Three Essays on Conflict and Cooperation , Sungha Hwang, Economics

Economic Reforms in East African Countries: The Impact on Government Revenue and Public Investment , Adam Beni Swebe Mwakalobo, Economics

Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives , Ceren Ozselcuk, Economics

Essays on Financial Behavior and its Macroeconomic Causes and Implications , Soon Ryoo, Economics

Skill Mismatch and Wage Inequality in the U.S. , Fabian Slonimczyk, Economics

Linkages Between Inequality And Environmental Degradation: An Interregional Perspective , Marina S Vornovytskyy, Economics

Dissertations from 2008 2008

Migrant women and economic justice: A *class analysis of Anatolian -German women in homemaking and cleaning services , Esra Erdem

Emigrant or sojourner? The determinants of Mexican labor migration strategies to the United States , Florian K Kaufmann

Macrofinancial risk management in the U.S. economy: Regulation, derivatives, and liquidity preference , Marcelo Milan

Essays on behavioral economics , Wesley Jose Pech

The impact of land ownership inequality on rural factor markets , Fatma Gul Unal

Three essays on family care, time allocation, and economic well -being , Jayoung Yoon

Dissertations from 2007 2007

Capital flight and foreign direct investment in the Middle East and North Africa: Comparative development and institutional analysis , Abdullah Almounsor

Investment under financial liberalization: Channels of liquidity and uncertainty , Armagan Gezici

Three essays on social dilemmas with heterogeneous agents , Mark Howard

Between the market and the milpa: Market engagements, peasant livelihood strategies, and the on -farm conservation of crop genetic diversity in the Guatemalan highlands , S. Ryan Isakson

Late neoclassical economics: Restoration of theoretical humanism in contemporary mainstream economics , Yahya Mete Madra

Inequality and the Human Development Index , Elizabeth Anne Stanton

Dissertations from 2006 2006

Institutional settings and organizational forms: Three essays , Alper Duman

Labor market characteristics and the determinants of political support for social insurance , Anil Duman

State power, world trade, and the class structure of a nation: An overdeterminist class theory of national tariff policy , Erik E Guzik

Unions and the strategy of class transformation: The case of the Broadway musicians , Catherine P Mulder

Children's work and opportunities for education: Consequences of gender and household wealth , Sevinc Rende

The economics of immigration: Household and employment dynamics , Maliha Safri

Dissertations from 2005 2005

Capital flight from Southeast Asia: Case studies on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand , Edsel L. Beja

Rethinking municipal privatization: A Marxian class analysis of the privatization of New York City's Central Park , Oliver David Cooke

Financial liberalization and its distributional consequences: An empirical exploration , Arjun Jayadev

Three essays on gender, land rights, and collective action in Brazil's rural political economy , Merrilee Mardon

Land markets, female land rights and agricultural productivity in Paraguayan agriculture , Thomas Masterson

Workers' struggles and transformations of capitalism at industrial enterprises in Russia, 1985–2000 , Maxim V Maximov

Economy and society: Class relations and the process of economic growth , Erik K Olsen

Gender, liberalization and agrarian change in Telangana , Smriti Rao

The contradictory imperatives of New Deal banking reforms. , Ellen D. Russell, Economics

Equity in community -based sustainable development: A case study in western India , Priya Parvathy Sangameswaran

Mandated wage floors and the wage structure: Analyzing the ripple effects of minimum and prevailing wage laws , Jeannette Wicks-Lim

Public enterprises in mixed economies: Their impact on economic growth and social equity , Andong Zhu

Dissertations from 2004 2004

An economic analysis of prison labor in the United States , Asatar P Bair

Three essays on income, inequality and environmental degradation , Rachel A Bouvier

The implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations in a less developed market economy: Evidence from Uruguay , Marcelo F Caffera

Race, altruism and trust: Experimental evidence from South Africa , Justine Claire Keswell

Exchanging entailments: The contested meaning of commodity exchange , Philip M Kozel

Three essays on capital account liberalization and economic growth: New measures, new estimates and the experience of South Korea , Kang-Kook Lee

Enterprise hybrids and alternative growth dynamics , Kenneth M Levin

Social interaction and economic institution , Yongjin Park

Research and policy considerations in the valuation and the allocation of environmental and health commodities , Mihail Samnaliev

Immiserizing growth: Globalization and agrarian change in Telangana, South India between 1985 and 2000 , Vamsicharan Vakulabharanam

Social networks and labor market outcomes: Theoretical expansions and econometric analysis , Russell E Williams

Dissertations from 2003 2003

Three essays on the evolution of cooperation , Jung-Kyoo Choi

Economic size and long -term growth: An empirical analysis of the consequences of small economic size on investment, productivity and income growth , Pavel E Isa

Essays on categorical inequality, non-linear income dynamics and social mobility in South Africa , Malcolm M Keswell

The effectiveness of tax incentives in attracting investment: The case of Puerto Rico , Carlos F Liard-Muriente

A theoretical and statistical exploration into the effects of morals, personality and uncertainty on hypothetical bias in contingent valuation , Joseph D Ogrodowczyk

The role of the stock market in influencing firm investment in China , Feng Xiao

Dissertations from 2002 2002

Essays on the threat effects of foreign direct investment on labor markets , Minsik Choi

An international analysis of child welfare , Nasrin Dalirazar

Fiscal faux pas? An empirical analysis of the revenue and expenditure implications of trade liberalization , Barsha Khattry

Property from the sky: The creation of property rights in the radio spectrum in the United States , Elizabeth M Kruse

Three essays on China's state owned enterprises: Towards an alternative to privatization , Minqi Li

From welfare rights to welfare fights: Neo -liberalism and the retrenchment of social provision , John Arthur O'Connor

Political community and individual gain: Aristotle, Adam Smith and the problem of exchange , Kimberly Kaethe Sims

Rethinking prostitution: Analyzing an informal sector industry , Marjolein Katrien van der Veen

Dissertations from 2001 2001

Land and labor markets among paddy producers in the Nepalese Tarai , Ravi Bhandari

What drives equity values: fundamentals or net flows? An empircal analysis of the 1982--1999 United States stock market boom , Lawrence Lee Evans

Investment, labor demand, and political conflict in South Africa , James S Heintz

Education, Inequality and Economic Mobility in South Africa , Thomas Nathaniel Hertz

Employer work -family programs: Essays on policy implementation, employee preferences, and parental childcare choices , Sally Jane Kiser

Valuing environmental health risks: A comparison of stated preference techniques applied to groundwater contamination , Tammy Barlow McDonald

Endogenous quality and intra-industry trade , Edward Allan McPhail

Perceptions of Massachusetts family and consumer sciences education professionals regarding the importance and use of the National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education in Massachusetts , Jo Ann Pullen

From feudal serfs to independent contractors: Class and African American women's paid domestic labor, 1863–1980 , Cecilia M Rio

A home of one's own: Overcoming gender and familial status barriers to homeownership , Judith K Robinson

Springfield Armory as industrial policy: Interchangeable parts and the precision corridor , Bruce K Tull

Dissertations from 2000 2000

Intergroup inequality, social identity and economic outcomes , Katherine E Baird

Engendering Globalization: Household Structures, Female Labor Supply and Economic Growth , Elissa Braunstein

Capital, conditionality, and free markets: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the effects of the neoliberal transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean , Andres Carbacho-Burgos

Rural institutions, poverty and cooperation: Learning from experiments and conjoint analysis in the field , Juan-Camilo Cardenas

Understanding the equal split as a bargaining convention and the role of residual claimancy in team production: Three essays in behavioral and experimental economics , Jeffrey Paul Carpenter

Enforcing market -based environmental policies , Carlos A Chavez Rebolledo

A comparative analysis of three economic theories focusing upon the international trade of hazardous waste (the case of electric arc furnace dust) , Amy Silverstein Cramer

The political economy of transformation in Hungary , Anita Dancs

Cross -media transfers of pollution and risk , Janine Marie Dombrowski

Essays on endogenous preferences and public generosity , Christina Margareta Fong

Con nuestro trabajo y sudor: Indigenous women and the construction of colonial society in 16th and 17th century Peru , Karen B Graubart

Banks, insider lending and industries of the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts, 1813–1860 , Paul Andre Lockard

Existence value: A reappraisal and cross -cultural comparison , Billy Manoka

Quality management systems and the estimation of market power exertion , Corinna Michaela Noelke

The power of personality: Labor market rewards and the transmission of earnings , Melissa Anne Osborne

Accumulation and European unemployment , Engelbert Richard Stockhammer

Modeling Superfund: A hazardous waste bargaining model with rational threats , Mary Anderson Taft

Welfare, inequality, and resource depletion: A reassessment of Brazilian economic growth, 1965–1993 , Mariano Torras

Dissertations from 1999 1999

Steadying the husband, uplifting the race: The Pittsburgh Urban League's promotion of black female domesticity during the Great Black Migration , Nina Elizabeth Banks

The origins of parallel segmented labor and product markets: A reciprocity-based agency model with an application to motor freight , Stephen V Burks

R&D, advertising, and profits: Economic theory, empirical evidence, and consequences for transfer pricing policy , David W DeRamus

Rethinking demand: A critique and reformulation of Marxian theories of price , David Leo Kristjanson

Wealth, the power to set terms, and the financing and control of firms , Paul N Malherbe

Intra -family transfers and the household division of labor: A case study of migration and remittance behavior in South Africa , Dorrit Ruth Posel

Transportation network policy modeling for congestion and pollution control: A variational inequality approach , Padma Ramanujam

The political economy of organized baseball: Analysis of a unique industry , Ross David Weiner

Dissertations from 1998 1998

The internationalization of production and its effects on the domestic behavior of United States manufacturing multinational firms , James Michael Burke

Neoliberal and neostructuralist theories of competitiveness and flexible labor: The case of Chile's manufactured exports, 1973-1996 , Fernando Ignacio Leiva

An econometric study of the export sector of Somalia , Mohamed A Osman

Financial liberalization, multinational banks and investment: Three essays on the cases of Hungary and Poland , Christian Erik Weller

Dissertations from 1997 1997

Structuralism and individualism in economic analysis: The "contractionary devaluation debate" in development economics , S Charusheela

Financial liberalization in Mexico, 1989-1993 , Colin Danby

CEO pay, agency, and the theory of the firm , Frederick Dexter Guy

Food quality regulation under trade agreements: Effects on the supply of food safety and competitiveness , Neal Hilton Hooker

Agency problems in the capital markets and the employment relationship: The possibility of efficiency-enhancing institutional innovation: An empirical case-study , Pierre Laliberte

New directions in the political economy of consumption , Allan Henry MacNeill

Capabilities and processes of industrial growth: The case of Argentina and the Argentine auto industry , Marcela Monica Miozzo

Manufacturers' responses to new nutrition labeling regulations , Eliza Maria Mojduszka

Rethinking rural development: Making peasant organizations work. The case of Paraguay , Jose R Molinas Vega

Property regimes, technology, and environmental degradation in Cuban agriculture , Hector R Saez

International multi-sector, multi-instrument financial modeling and computation: Statics and dynamics , Stavros Siokos

Three essays on government decision-making to implement and enforce environmental policies , Kristin Ellen Skrabis

Dissertations from 1996 1996

An economic critique of urban planning and the 'postmodern' city: Los Angeles , Enid Arvidson

Dissertations from 1995 1995

Trade liberalization and income distribution: Three essays with reference to the case of Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , Mehrene E Larudee

Dissertations from 1994 1994

Subjectivism and the limits of F. A. Hayek's political economy , Theodore A Burczak

International currencies and endogenous enforcement , Roohi Prem

Three essays on key currencies and currency blocs , Ellen Tierney

Dissertations from 1993 1993

Capitalist regulation and unequal integration: The case of Puerto Rico , Jaime Eduardo Benson

Production and reproduction: Family policy and gender inequality in East and West Germany , Lynn Susan Duggan

Dissertations from 1992 1992

Capital controls and long-term economic growth , Jessica G Nembhard

Dissertations from 1990 1990

Concentration and product diversity in culture-based industries: A case study of the music recording industry , Peter James Alexander

Dissertations from 1987 1987

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE ECONOMIC POLICIES OF STATES IN THE THIRD WORLD: THE AGRARIAN POLICIES OF THE ETHIOPIAN STATE, 1941-1974 , HENOCK KIFLE

Dissertations from 1986 1986

The Political-Economy of Nuclear Power 1946-1982 , Steven Mark Cohn, Economics

Dissertations from 1985 1985

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT ON RACIAL INEQUALITY: 1950 TO 1984 (BLACK, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, GOVERNMENT, UNEMPLOYMENT, LABOR) , PETER GEORGE BOHMER

THE GROWTH OF NONMARRIAGE AMONG U.S. WOMEN, 1954-1983 (MARRIAGE, FAMILY, HOUSEHOLDS, UNITED STATES) , ELAINE DENISE MCCRATE

Dissertations from 1983 1983

TAXATION AND PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM IN CONNECTICUT , MICHAEL ROBERT FEDEROW

Dissertations from 1982 1982

Evolution of a Hospital Labor System: Technology, Coercion, and Conflict , Jean E. Fisher, Economics

Dissertations from 1981 1981

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET ECONOMY IN COLONIAL MASSACHUSETTS , RONA STEPHANIE WEISS

Dissertations from 1980 1980

Justice and economic theory. , Barry Stewart Clark, Economics

Dissertations from 1976 1976

EVALUATION OF NEOCLASSICAL THEORY OF PRICE, PRODUCTION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. , MANUCHER DARESHURI

Dissertations from 1970 1970

COST PROBLEMS OF THE RUTLAND RAILROAD AND ITS SUCCESSORS FROM--1937 TO 1968 , ROBERT DAVID SMITH

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134 Economics Thesis Topics: Ideas for Outstanding Writing

Writing a thesis is not an easy task. For most of the students, it can be even intimidating, especially when you do not know where to start your research.

Here, we have provided an economics thesis topics list. After all, everyone knows that choosing the right idea is crucial when writing an academic paper. In economics, it can combine history, math, social studies, politics, and numerous other subjects. You should also have solid foundations and a sound factual basis for a thesis. Without these elements, you won’t be able to master your research paper.

The issue is:

It is not always clear what could be seen as an excellent economics thesis topic. Our experts can assist you with this challenge. This list contains some outstanding examples to get you started.

• ⭐ Thesis in Economics
• 🔥 Supreme Thesis Topics
• 👍 Bachelor’s Thesis
• 😲 Master’s Thesis

📊 Microeconomics

📈 macroeconomics.

• 🤔 Developmental
• 👨‍💼 Behavioral
• 💼 Financial
• 🌱 Agricultural
• 🤝‍ Sociology
• 📚 Ph.D. Topics
• 📝 How to Pick a Topic

⭐ What Does a Thesis in Economics Look Like?

A good thesis in economics is a blend between an empirical paper and a theoretical one. One of the essential steps in choosing a topic in economics is to decide which one you will write.

You may write, research, analyze statistical data and other information. Or build and study a specific economic model.

Or why not both!

Here are some questions you can ask when deciding what topic to choose:

• What has already been written on this topic?
• What economic variables will my paper study?
• Where should I look for the data?
• What econometrics techniques should I use?
• What type of model will I study?

The best way to understand what type of research you have to do is to write a thesis proposal. You will most probably be required to submit it anyway. Your thesis supervisor will examine your ideas, methods, list of secondary and primary sources. At some universities, the proposal will be graded.

After you get the initial feedback, you will have a clear idea of what to adjust before writing your thesis. Only then, you’ll be able to start.

🔥 Supreme Economics Thesis Topics List

• Fast fashion in India.
• The UK housing prices.
• Brexit and European trade.
• Behavioral economics.
• Healthcare macroeconomics.
• COVID-19’s economic impact.
• Global gender wage gap.
• Commodity dependence in Africa.
• International trade – developing countries.
• Climate change and business development.

👍 Economics Bachelor’s Thesis Topics

At the U.S. Universities, an undergraduate thesis is very uncommon. However, it depends on the Department Policy.

The biggest challenge with the Bachelor’s Thesis in economics concerns its originality. Even though you are not required to conduct entirely unique research, you have to lack redundant ideas.

You can easily avoid making this mistake by simply choosing one of these topics. Also, consider visiting IvyPanda essays database. It’s a perfect palce to conduct a brainstorming session and come up with fresh ideas for a paper, as well as get tons of inspiration.

• The impact of the oil industry on the economic development of Nigeria. The oil industry is vital for the economic development of Nigeria. In this thesis, students can discuss the notion of the resource curse. Analyze the reasons why general people are not benefiting from the oil industry. Why did it produce very little change in the social and economic growth of the country?
• Sports Marketing and Advertising: the impact it has on the consumers.
• Economic opportunities and challenges of investing in Kenya .
• Economic Development in the Tourism Industry in Africa. Since the early 1990s, tourism significantly contributed to the economic growth of African countries. In this thesis, students can talk about the characteristics of the tourist sector in Africa. Or elaborate on specific countries and how their national development plans look like.
• Globalization and its significance to business worldwide .
• Economic risks connected to investing in Turkey .
• The decline in employment rates as the biggest American economy challenge .
• The economics of alcohol abuse problems. In this thesis, students can develop several essential issues. First, they can examine how poverty is connected to alcohol abuse. Second, they can see the link between alcohol consumption and productivity. To sum up, students can elaborate on the economic costs of alcohol abuse.
• Causes and solutions for unemployment in Great Britain.
• Parallel perspective on Global Economic Order: China and America. This thesis can bring a comparative analysis of the economies to a new level. China and The US are the world’s two largest economies. These two countries have a significant impact on the global economic order. So, looking at the set of institutions, policies, rules can be constructive.
• The new international economic order after COVID-19
• Financial stability of the banking sector in China.
• New Electronic Payment Services in Russia.
• The influence of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors.
• The impact of natural cultural practices on entrepreneurial activity.
• The relationships between national culture and individual behavior.
• The main reasons for salary inequalities in different parts of the U.S.

😲 Economics Master’s Thesis Topics

Student life can be fascinating, but it comes with its challenges. One of which is selecting your Master’s thesis topic.

Here is a list of topics for a Master’s thesis in economics. Are you pursuing MPhil in Economics and writing a thesis? Use the following ideas as an inspiration for that. They can also be helpful if you are working on a Master’s thesis in financial economics.

• The impact of visual aid in teaching home economics.
• The effect of income changes in consumer behaviors in America.
• Forces behind socio-economic inequalities in the United States. This thesis can explore three critical factors for socio-economic differences in the United States. In the past 30 years, social disparities increased in the United States. Some of the main reasons are technology, trade, and institutions.
• The relationships between economic growth and international development.
• Technological innovations and their influence on green and environmental products.
• The economics of non-solar renewable energy .

• The economic consequences of terrorism . Terrorism not only takes away lives and destroys property but also widely affects the economy. It creates uncertainty in the market, increases insurance claims, slows down investment projects, and tourism. This thesis can address all of the ways in which terrorism can affect economies.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) implementation in the Oil and Gas Industry in Africa.
• Use of incentives in behavioral economics.
• Economic opportunities and challenges of sustainable communities .
• Economics of nuclear power plants.
• Aid and financial help for emerging markets. This topic is very versatile. Students can look at both the positive and the adverse effects that funding has on the development. There are plenty of excellent examples. Besides, some theories call international help a form of neocolonialism.
• Multinational firms impact on economic growth in America .
• The effect of natural disasters on economic development in Asia.
• The influence of globalization on emerging markets and economic development.

📑 More Economics Thesis Topics: Theme

For some students, it makes more sense to center their search around a certain subject. Sometimes you have an econ area that interests you. You may have an idea about what you want to write, but you did not decide what it will be.

If that’s the case with you, then these economics thesis topics ideas are for you.

• An analysis of the energy market in Russia.
• The impact of game theory on economic development.
• The connection between minimum wage and market equilibrium.
• Gender differences in the labor market in the United States. This topic can shed light on gender differences in the labor market in the United States. In the past years, the overall inequality in labor in the markets decreased. However, there is still a lot of work that can be done.
• Economic reasons that influence the prices of oil .
• Relationship between the Lorenz curve and the Gini coefficient.
• Challenges of small businesses in the market economy.
• The changes in oil prices: causes and solutions . Universal economic principles do not always apply to the sale and purchase of the oil. The same happens with its cost. In the thesis, talk about what affects the prices. What are the solutions that can be implemented?
• The economic analysis of the impact of immigration on the American economy.

• Economic inequality as a result of globalization . Economic inequality becomes even more apparent on the global level. There is a common belief that globalization is the cause of that. Discuss what can be the solutions to these problems. This topic is vital to minimize the gap between the rich and the poor.
• The economic explanation of political dishonesty .
• Effect of Increasing Interest rates costs in Africa .
• The connection between game theory and microeconomics.
• Marketing uses in microeconomics.
• Financial liability in human-made environmental disasters.
• Banks and their role in the economy. Banks are crucial elements of any economy, and this topic covers why. You can explain how banks allow the goods and services to be exchanged. Talk about why banks are so essential for economic growth and stability.
• Inflation in the US and ways to reduce its impact.
• The connection between politics and economics.
• Income Dynamics and demographic economics.
• US Market Liquidity and macroeconomics.
• Macroeconomics and self-correction of the economy .
• The American economy, monetary policy, and monopolies .
• The importance of control in macroeconomics. One of the central topics in macroeconomics is grouped around the issue of control. It is quite reasonable that control over money and resources should become a topic of discussion.
• Analysis of Africa’s macroeconomics and its performance.
• Economics of education in developing markets.
• Problems and possible solutions for Japan macroeconomics .
• Comparative analysis of British macroeconomics concerning the US .
• Public policies and socio-economic disparities.
• The world problems through macroeconomic analysis. Indeed, macroeconomics is very complicated. There are many influences, details, and intricacies in it. However, it allows economists to use this complex set of tools to examine the world’s leading problems today.

• The connection between employment interest and money.

🤔 Development Economics

• Economics of development . This topic is very rich in content. First, explain what it is. Then pay particular attention to domestic and international policies that affect development, income distribution, and economic growth.
• The relation between development and incentive for migration.
• The impact of natural disasters on the economy and political stability of emerging markets.
• The economic consequences of population growth in developing countries.
• The role of industrialization in developing countries . The industrialization has been connected with the development. It promotes capital formation and catalyzes economic growth in emerging markets. In this thesis, you can talk about this correlation.
• Latin American economic development.
• Gender inequality and socio-economic development .
• Problems of tax and taxation in connection with economic growth.
• The economic impact of terrorism on developing markets.
• Religious decline as a key to economic development. Not everyone knows, but a lot of research has been done in the past years on the topic. It argues that decreased religious activity is connected with increased economic growth. This topic is quite controversial. Students who decide to write about it should be extra careful and polite.

👨‍💼 Behavioral Economics

• Risk Preferences in Rural South Africa.
• Behavioral Economics and Finance .
• Applied behavioral economics in marketing strategies. If you want to focus your attention on marketing, this topic is for you. Behavioral economics provides a peculiar lens to look at marketing strategies. It allows marketers to identify common behaviors and adapt their marketing strategies.
• The impact of behavioral finance on investment decisions.
• Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs in North Texas.
• Guidelines for Behavioral Economics in Healthcare Sector.
• Cognitive and behavioral theories in economics .
• Cross-cultural consumer behavior and marketing communication. Consumers are not only affected by personal characteristics, but also by the culture they are living in. This topic focuses on the extent it should determine marketing strategy and communication.
• Behavior implications of wealth and inequality.

• Optimism and pessimism for future behavior.

💼 Financial Economics

• Financial Economics for Infrastructure and Fiscal Policy .
• The use of the economic concept of human capital. Students can focus on the dichotomy between human and nonhuman capital. Many economists believe that human capital is the most crucial of all. Some approach this issue differently. Therefore, students should do their research and find where they stand on this issue.
• The analysis of the global financial crisis of 2020s. Share your thoughts, predictions, ideas. Analyze the economic situation that affects almost everyone in the world. This thesis topic will be fresh and original. It can help to start a good and fruitful conversation.
• The big data economic challenges for Volvo car.
• The connection between finance, economics, and accounting.
• Financial economics: Banks competition in the UK .
• Risk-Taking by mutual funds as a response to incentives.
• Managerial economics and financial accounting as a basis for business decisions.
• Stock market overreaction.

🌱 Agricultural Economics

• Agricultural economics and agribusiness.
• The vulnerability of agricultural business in African countries.
• Agricultural economics and environmental considerations of biofuels .
• Farmer’s contribution to agricultural social capital.
• Agricultural and resource economics. Agricultural and resource economics plays a huge role in development. They are subdivided into four main characteristics which in this topic, students can talk about: – mineral and energy resources; – soil resources, water resources; – biological resources. One or even all of them can be a focus of the thesis.
• Water as an economic good in irrigated agriculture.
• Agriculture in the economic development of Iran.
• The US Agricultural Food Policy and Production .
• Pesticides usage on agricultural products in California.

• An analysis of economic efficiency in agriculture. A lot of research has been done on the question of economic efficiency in agriculture. However, it does not mean there is no place for your study. You have to read a lot of secondary sources to see where your arguments can fit.

🤝‍Economic Sociology

• Theory, approach, and method in economics sociology.
• Economic sociology of capitalism. While economists believe in the positive effect capitalism has on the economy, the social effect is quite different. The “economic” part of the issue has been studied a lot. However, the sociology of it has been not. This thesis can be very intriguing to read.
• Political Economy and Economic Sociology.
• Gender and economic sociology .
• Progress, sociology, and economics.
• Data analysis in economics, sociology, environment .
• Economic sociology as a way to understand the human mind.
• Economic sociology of money.
• Economics, sociology, and psychology of security.
• Major principles of economic sociology. In the past decade, economic sociology became an increasingly popular field. Mainly due to it giving a new view on economics, human mind, and behavior. Besides, it explores relationships between politics, law, culture, and gender.

📚 The List of Ph.D. Topics in Economics

If you decide to go to grad school to do your Masters, you will likely end up getting a Ph.D. as well. So, with this plan in mind, think about a field that interests you enough during your Masters. Working with the same topic for both graduate degrees is easier and more effective.

This list of Ph.D. Topics in Economics can help you identify the areas you can work on.

• Occupational injuries in Pakistan and its effect on the economy. Injuries are the leading cause of the global burden of disability. Globally, Pakistan was ranked 9th populated country with a large number of unskilled workers. In this dissertation, consider the link between occupational injuries and their effects on the economy.
• The study of the Philippines’ economic development.

• Financial derivatives and climate change .
• Econometric Analysis of Financial Markets.
• Islamic Banking and Financial Markets .
• Health economics and policy in the UK.
• Health insurance: rationale and economic justification. In this dissertation, students can find different ways to explain and justify health insurance. Starting to philosophical to purely economic grounds. In the past years, there was a lot of discussion regarding the healthcare system for all. What are some of the economic benefits of that?
• Colombian economy, economic growth, and inequality.
• Benefits of mergers and acquisitions in agribusiness.
• Methods to measure financial risks when investing in Africa.
• The significance of financial economics in understanding the relationship between a country’s GDP and NDP.
• Network effects in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are not new anymore. However, it is still an original subject for a dissertation. Students can decide to choose several crypto coins and evaluate the importance of the network effect. This effect is particularly significant for Bitcoin. Explain why.
• The comparison of the Chinese growth model with the American growth model.
• An economic justification versus political expediency.
• Pollution Externalities Role in Management Economics .

📝 How to Select an Economics Thesis Topic

As your academic journey is coming to an end, it’s time to pick the right topic for your thesis. The whole academic life you were preparing to undertake this challenge.

Here is the list of six points that will help you to select an economics thesis topic:

• Make sure it is something you are genuinely interested in. It is incredibly challenging to write something engaging if you are not interested in the topic. So, choose wisely and chose what excites you.
• Draw inspiration from the previous student’s projects. A great place to start is by looking at what the previous students wrote. You can find some fresh ideas and a general direction.
• Ask your thesis advisor for his feedback. Most probably, your thesis advisor supervised many students before. They can be a great help too because they know how to assess papers. Before meeting with your professor, do some basic research, and understand what topic is about.
• Be original, but not too much. You do not want to spend your time writing about a project that many people wrote about. Your readers will not be interested in reading it, but your professors as well. However, make sure you do not pick anything too obscure. It will leave you with no secondary sources.
• Choose a narrow and specific topic. Not only will it allow you to be more original, but also to master a topic. When the issue is too broad, there is just too much information to cover in one thesis.
• Go interdisciplinary. If you find yourself interested in history, philosophy, or any other related topic, it can help you write an exceptional thesis in economics. Most of your peers may work on pure economics. Then, the interdisciplinary approach can help you to stand out among them.

Thank you for reading the article to the end! We hope this list of economics thesis topics ideas could help you to gather your thoughts and get inspired. Share it with those who may find it useful. Let us know what you think about it in the comment section below.

🔗 References

• Economics Thesis Topics List: Seminars Only
• How To Pick A Topic For Your Economics Research Project Or Master’s Thesis: INOMICS, The Site for Economists
• What Do Theses and Dissertations Look Like: KU Writing Center, the University of Kansas
• Writing Economics: Robert Neugeboren with Mireille Jacobson, University of Harvard
• Economics Ph.D. Theses: Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School, IDEAS_RePEc
• World Economic Situation and Prospects 2018: United Nations
• Undergraduate Honors Theses: Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley
• Economics Department Dissertations Collection: Economics Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Topics for Master Theses: Department of Economics, NHH, Norwegian School of Economics
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A very well written, clear and easy-to-read article. It was highly helpful. Thank you!

Thanks for your kind words! We look forward to seeing you again!

For research

Excellent research

These are very helpful and concise research topics which I have spent days surfing the internet to get all this while. Thanks for making research life experience easier for me. Keep this good work up.

Glad to hear that! Thank you for your feedback, Idris!

Thank you, Idris!

I wants it for msc thesis

The dilemma I faced in getting Thesis proposal for my M Phil programme is taken away. Your article would be a useful guide to many more students.Thank you for your guidance.

Thanks for the feedback, John! Your opinion is very important for us!

2021 Theses Doctoral

Essays on Law and Economics

Zytnick, Jonathon Albert

This dissertation analyzes the interaction between individuals and institutions, with a particular focus on how individuals make economic decisions within legal frameworks. It uses quasi-natural experiments and descriptive analyses to provide direct empirical evidence on these decisions. Chapter 1 investigates the extent to which mutual funds represent individual investors. Although mutual funds have widely varying voting patterns and predictable ideological disagreements, little is known about whether their underlying investors have similar preferences or sort by ideology into funds. I provide the first systematic documentation comparing the voting preferences of individual investors in the United States to those of the mutual funds they invest in. I find that individual investors are highly ideological in their voting and that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) funds have an ideologically distinct shareholder base of individual investors whose preferences are reflected in the votes of the ESG funds. ESG funds are unique in this respect; although funds have distinct voting ideologies, as do individual investors, a mutual fund’s voting choices generally have little or no relationship with those of its underlying investors. Chapter 2 —joint work with Alon Brav and Matthew Cain— studies retail shareholder voting using a nearly comprehensive sample of U.S. ownership and voting records over the period 2015–2017. Analyzing turnout within a rational choice framework, we find that participation increases with ownership and expected benefits from winning and decreases with higher costs of participation. Even shareholders with negligible likelihood of affecting the outcome have non-zero turnout, consistent with consumption benefits from voting. Conditional on participation, retail shareholders punish the management of poorly performing firms and are more likely to exit the firm after voting against incumbent management. We show that retail voting decisions are impactful, altering proposal outcomes as frequently as those of the “Big Three” institutional investors. Overall, our evidence provides support for the idea that retail shareholders utilize their voting power as a means to monitor firms and communicate with incumbent boards and managements. Chapter 3 studies the effects of a selective tax on contract design and tax timing. Taxation affects income via both a compensation contract response and a worker response. I show that executive contracts adjust to a tax on severances, and executives shift their taxable income timing in response to the interaction of tax and contract. In particular, “golden parachute” severances tend to bunch at a threshold (tied to taxable income) where the tax rate discontinuously increases, and CEOs exercise stock options in bulk to raise their taxable income and boost their threshold. Identification comes from a bunching analysis exploiting a discontinuous change in exercise incentives over time and variation across CEOs in contract incentives and deal timing. The chapter demonstrates the role of contract structure in tax avoidance and additionally shows how contract structure affects worker behavior.

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• Decision making
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Essays in law and economics

The thesis consists of four chapters concerning different topics of Law and Economics.  The first chapter deals with economic issues in competition law. In order to distinguish predatory pricing from competition on the merits, the courts in the United States and in the European Union have established cost-based tests that also include an assessment of the market structure. The tests miss a causal connection between conduct and foreclosure. In contrast, Australia and New Zealand make use of a counterfactual analysis that establishes causality. However, the causal connection there relates to the market power and the conduct, and does not answer whether the conduct has only been done because of the foreclosure effects. A counterfactual test could be useful in predation cases if it establishes a causal link between the profitability of the conduct and the foreclosure effect.  The second chapter explores the effect of excluding tort law for workplace accidents. In countries with workers’ compensation schemes, employees receive compensation for injuries at work regardless of fault, while private law liability of employers is either limited or fully excluded. The degree of liability matters for workplace safety, and different legal arrangements influence incentives of employers and employees to take care. An empirical analysis of several jurisdictions reveals a consistent pattern. The combination of arrangements that increase private law liability and mitigate moral hazard seems to be important for safety at work. No-fault workers’ compensation with the benefit of effective compensation comes with a cost: more injuries of those, which it seeks to protect.  The third chapter assesses the effect of no-fault automobile insurances on safety incentives. In order to examine how no-fault motor vehicle insurance affects accident rates, insurance regimes in various countries are compared. A random effects model on fatality data of 29 countries reveals that some motor vehicle insurance systems increase moral hazard. The incentive to take care seems not to be negatively affected by no-fault rules, but by moral hazard due to limited experience rating. Restrictions on experience rating lower the level of care taken by motorists. A combination of no-fault insurance and flat-rate premiums, as found in New Zealand or the Northern Territory in Australia, has a detrimental effect on the safety of roads.  The fourth chapter primarily builds on the finding of the second chapter that the exclusion of tort law for workplace injuries results in higher accident rates. In this respect, the question arises whether health and safety regulation can counteract the detrimental effect by providing deterrence from criminal sanctions. This is particularly relevant for New Zealand where a tendency of the law towards a reliance on regulation and criminal law can be observed. In practice, however, criminal law cannot fully replace common law in establishing incentives to take care, and is not as effective as private law actions.

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The US has dodged a recession in 2023, but the economic luck could run out next year

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Robert Triest

The Boston Globe, November 2023

The United States has avoided a feared recession with the help of surprisingly strong spending by consumers and good luck in eluding potentially damaging economic hits, such as a protracted auto workers strike. But analysts said the risk of a downturn in the next year remains uncomfortably high because those trends can’t last forever.

Americans buffeted by still-elevated inflation are burning through their pandemic savings and feeling less confident about the economy. There also are new risks ahead, including a possible federal government shutdown this month and a war between Israel and Hamas that  could send oil prices skyrocketing if it escalates .

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday demonstrated the economic uncertainty by holding off, as expected, on another interest rate increase as it recalibrates its fight to lower inflation. But Fed chair Jerome Powell cautioned that the rate hikes, which have been a main driver of recession predictions, aren’t necessarily over.

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{{bckdata.locationheading}}, {{headerdata.hamburgerprimaryfeatureheading}}, {{tile.title}}, {{headerdata.hamburgersecondaryfeatureheading}}, economic crime and corporate transparency: new uk legislation receives royal assent.

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023, becoming the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 ( ECCTA ).  

ECCTA contains a range of measures to tackle economic crime and improve corporate transparency.  While parts of the Act deal with wider aspects of economic crime, including enforcement over cryptoassets, money laundering and failure to prevent fraud, much of ECCTA is concerned with the oversight and transparency of corporate structures in the UK.

Companies House reform

In what Companies House is itself describing as one of the most significant moments in its long history, the role of Companies House will change.  From being a largely passive recipient of information, it will become a more active gatekeeper over the creation of companies and the custodian of more reliable data.  It will have new powers to check, remove or decline information submitted to it, and more effective investigation and enforcement powers. 

Corporate transparency

Part 1 of ECCTA includes many changes to the Companies Act 2006 to increase transparency and reduce the risk of abuse.  These include:

• identity verification for all new and existing registered company directors, people with significant control and those who file on behalf of companies;
• a new requirement for companies to provide Companies House with an email contact address;
• a new requirement for a registered office address to be an "appropriate address", i.e. one at which, in the ordinary course, a document addressed and delivered to the company would be expected to come to the attention of someone acting for the company and where the delivery can be recorded by obtaining an acknowledgement of delivery;
• a prohibition on new directors acting where their appointment has not been notified to Companies House within 14 days of appointment and for so long as the notification remains outstanding;
• changes to the rules on company registers, including the abolition of the requirement for companies to keep their own registers of directors, directors' residential addresses, secretaries and people with significant control;
• new protections against the misuse of company and business names;
• new company incorporation requirements to include a statement by subscribers that the company is being formed for a lawful purpose;
• a new statement in the annual confirmation statement that the company's future activities will be lawful;
• a one-off requirement for existing companies to provide a snapshot of membership information;
• the streamlining of the filing framework for small and micro-entity companies; and
• enhanced protection of personal information provided to Companies House to protect individuals from fraud and other harms.

Part 2 of ECCTA deals specifically with limited partnerships ( LPs ), including Scottish LPs, amending the Limited Partnerships Act 1907 to modernise the regulatory regime for this type of partnership and tackle abuse.  Part 3 makes some changes to the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 which established a new Companies House register of overseas entities that own qualifying real estate in the UK.

When will these changes happen?

Most of the Act will be implemented through as yet unpublished secondary legislation.  Some of the changes will also require significant development and upgrades to Companies House systems and procedures. 

In a post published to coincide with ECCTA receiving Royal Assent, the Registrar of Companies has indicated that changes likely to be implemented in early 2024 include:

• the requirement for all companies to register an email address with Companies House;
• the new rules on registered office addresses;
• the lawful purpose confirmation requirements; and
• Companies House's enhanced powers to query and check information, to remove inaccurate information and to share data with other government departments and law enforcement agencies.

The new identity verification regime is not included in this list of early measures.

Additionally, Companies House has indicated that it will be increasing some of its fees from early 2024.  Companies House fees are set on a cost recovery basis which means that they must cover the cost of the services Companies House delivers.

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At Maastricht University, a PhD degree is not just a study but a serious research project that adds new knowledge to a given field. There are three ways to become a PhD candidate at UM, which are outlined below. As a PhD candidate, you’ll spend most of your time conducting original research and writing a dissertation.

  PhD defences at the Faculty of Law

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PhD thesis written by Vanessa Tünsmeyer. The thesis focusses on sacred cultural heritage that was taken from indigenous communities during colonialism and remains in museum collections both in Europe and abroad.

A broken tandem: understanding lack of witness cooperation in the interview room

PhD thesis written by Alejandra De la Fuente Vilar. Some witnesses of crime do not want to cooperate with the police during the police investigation, and their participation is not obligatory. This PhD research focuses on the promotion of cooperation during witness interviews.

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Pinto, Mattia (2022) Human rights as sources of penality. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Girard, Raphaël (2022) Populism, law and the courts: space and time in an age of "constitutional impatience". PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Matabudul, Rachna (2022) Tax treaty dispute resolution: lessons from the law of the sea. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Taggart, John (2022) Examining the role of the intermediary in the criminal justice system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Goh, Benjamin (2022) The literary unconscious: rereading authorship and copyright with Kant's ‘on the wrongfulness of reprinting’ (1785). PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gafni, Ilan (2022) Rethinking the negligence liability of public authorities in English law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Claeys, Irene (2021) The construction of a regulatory risk device: an examination of the historical emergence and performative effects of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s market risk framework. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sonin, Joanne F. (2021) The evolution of the shareholder: legal change, deflection, and constancy. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Damianos, Alexander (2021) Ratifying the Anthropocene: a study of the Anthropocene working group’s ongoing effort to formalize the Anthropocene as a unit of the geologic time scale. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Fisher, Jonathan Simon (2021) Mandatory self-reporting of criminal conduct by a company: corporate rights and engaging the privilege against self-incrimination. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gupta, Priya S. (2020) Leveraging the city: urban governance in financial capitalism. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Musto, Callum (2020) States’ regulatory powers and the turn to public law in international investment law and arbitration. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ahdash, Fatima (2020) Examining the interaction between family law and counter-terrorism in the UK in recent years. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Common, MacKenzie F. (2020) Rule of law and human rights issues in social media content moderation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Clark, Martin (2020) The 'international' and 'domestic' in British legal thought from Gentili to Lauterpacht. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mukherjee, Sroyon (2019) Context-driven choices: environmental valuation in the courtroom. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Teeder, Wendy Mary (2019) Judicial review and the vanishing trial. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Myslinska, Dagmar Rita (2019) Not quite white: the gap between EU rhetoric and the experience of Poles’ mobility to the UK. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zlatev, Zlatin Mitkov (2019) Approaches towards the concept of non-pecuniary losses deriving from breach of contract. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tundawala, Moiz (2018) In the shadow of swaraj: constituent power and the Indian political. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lima Sakr, Rafael (2018) Law and lawyers in the making of regional trade regimes: the rise and fall of legal doctrines on the international trade law and governance of South-North regionalism. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stones, Ryan R. (2018) EU competition law and the rule of law: justification and realisation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Trotter, Sarah Jane (2018) On coming to terms: how European human rights law imagines the human condition. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Vitale, David Anthony (2018) Political trust and the enforcement of constitutional social rights. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wu, Aaron (2018) Sustaining international law: history, nature, and the politics of global ordering. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sutton, Rebecca (2018) The international humanitarian actor as 'civilian plus': the circulation of the idea of distinction in international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Larsen, Signe (2018) The European Union as a federation: a constitutional analysis. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Bronsther, Jacob (2018) Long-term incarceration and the moral limits of punishment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Way, Sally-Anne (2018) Human rights from the Great Depression to the Great Recession: the United States, economic liberalism and the shaping of economic and social rights in international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Leader, Kathryn (2017) Fifteen stories: litigants in person in the civil justice sytem. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Oghenevo Ovie Akpomiemie, Michael (2017) The social context of business and the tax system in Nigeria: the persistence of corruption. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Witney, Simon (2017) The corporate governance of private equity-backed companies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Chauhan, Apurv (2016) Developing a social psychology of poverty: social objects and dialogical representations. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Tschorne Venegas, Samuel (2016) The theoretical turn in British public law scholarship. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wang, Chieh (2016) Sexuality, gender, justice and law: rethinking normative heterosexuality and sexual justice from the perspectives of queer humanist men and masculinities studies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

O’Loughlin, Ailbhe (2016) Balancing rights? Dangerous offenders with severe personality disorders, the public, and the promise of rehabilitation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Burton, Marie (2015) Calling for justice: comparing telephone and face-to-face advice in social welfare legal aid. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Burke, Jarleth (2015) A market and government failure critique of services of general economic interest: testing the centrality and strictness of article 106(2) TFEU. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Stern, Orly (2015) The principle of distinction and women in conflicts in Africa. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Chadwick, Anna (2015) Food commodity speculation, hunger, and the global food crisis: whither regulation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Saab, Anne (2015) A legal inquiry into hunger and climate change: climate-ready seeds in the neoliberal food regime. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zaccaria, Elena (2015) Proprietary rights in indirectly held securities: legal risks and future challenges. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Willcox, Susannah (2015) Climate change inundation and Atoll Island States: implications for human rights, self-determination and statehood. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

King, Saskia (2015) Agreements that restrict competition by object under Article 101(1) TFEU: past, present and future. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Zhang, Zhanwei (2015) Law, state and society in the PRC: a case study of family planning regulations implementation at grassroots level in rural China. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Agnew, Sinéad (2015) What we talk about when we talk about conscience: the meaning and function of conscience in commercial law doctrine. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yoshida, Keina (2015) The cinematic jurisprudence of gender crimes: the ICTY and film. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Knight, Dean (2014) Vigilance and restraint in the common law of judicial review: scope, grounds, intensity, context. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

McGaughey, Ewan (2014) Participation in corporate governance. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Xiao, Yin (2014) Analysing the enforcement dimension of regulatory competition: a cultural institutionalist approach. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Knox, Robert (2014) A Critical Examination of the Concept of Imperialism in Marxist and Third World Approaches to International Law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Meerovitch, Vladimir (2014) Investor protection and equity markets: an evaluation of private enforcement of related party transactions rules in Russia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pearson, Megan Rebecca (2014) Religious objections to equality laws: reconciling religious freedom with gay rights. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Roznai, Yaniv (2014) Unconstitutional constitutional amendments: a study of the nature and limits of constitutional amendment powers. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

O'Regan, Karla Maureen (2014) Beyond illusion: a juridical genealogy of consent in criminal and medical law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Searl, Mark (2014) A normative theory of international law based on new natural law theory. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Coverdale, Helen (2013) Punishing with care: treating offenders as equal persons in criminal punishment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lamp, Nicolas (2013) Lawmaking in the multilateral trading system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Perrone, Nicolas (2013) The international investment regime and foreign investors' rights: another view of a popular story. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Wei Liang Wang, Daniel (2013) Can litigation promote fairness in healthcare? The judicial review of rationing decisions in Brazil and England. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Majinge, Charles Riziki (2013) The United Nations, the African Union and the rule of law in Southern Sudan. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gallo, Zelia (2013) The penality of politics, penality in contemporary Italy 1970-2000. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jacques, Johanna (2013) From nomos to Hegung: war captivity and international order. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Manea, Sabina (2013) Instrumentalising property: an analysis of rights in the EU emissions trading system. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yazdani, Shahid (2012) Emergency safeguard; WTO and the feasibility of emergency safeguard measures under the general agreement on trade in services. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lucey, Mary Catherine (2012) The interface between competition law and the restraint of trade doctrine for professionals: understanding the evolution of problems and proposing solutions for courts in England and Wales. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Grušić, Uglješa (2012) The international employment contract: ideal, reality and regulatory function of European private international law of employment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ali, Perveen (2012) States in crisis: sovereignty, humanitarianism, and refugee protection in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dille, Benjamin B. (2012) Ill fares the land: the legal consequences of land confiscations by the Sandinista government of Nicaragua 1979-1990. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ho, Chih-Hsing (2012) Socio-legal perspectives on biobanking: the case of Taiwan. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Viterbo, Hedi (2012) The legal construction of childhood in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

De Witte, Floris (2012) EU law and the question of justice. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Spangler, Timothy (2012) Overcoming the governance challenge in private investment funds through the enrolment of private monitoring solutions. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sasso, Lorenzo (2012) Capital structure and corporate governance: the role of hybrid financial instruments. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Boukli, Paraskevi (2012) Imaginary penalities: reconsidering anti-trafficking discourses and technologies. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Gandrud, Christopher (2012) Knowing the unknowns: financial policymaking in uncertainty. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Laidlaw, Emily (2012) Internet gatekeepers, human rights and corporate social responsibilities. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Meyers, Jeffrey B. (2011) Toward a Negri-inspired theory of c/Constitution: a contemporary Canadian case study. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Dias Soares, Claudia A. (2011) The design features of environmental taxes. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Correia, Miguel G (2010) Taxation of corporate groups under a corporation income tax: An interdisciplinary and comparative tax law analysis. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Pappas, Demetra M (2010) The politics of euthanasia and assisted suicide: A comparative case study of emerging criminal law and the criminal trials of Jack 'Dr. Death' Kevorkian. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Brilman, Marina C (2009) Georges Canguilhem: Norms and knowledge in the life sciences. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Minto, Indianna Deborah (2009) Incumbent response to telecommunications reform: The cases of Jamaica and Ireland, 1982-2007. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Roberts, Stephanie (2009) The decision making process of appeals against conviction in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division). PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Andreicheva, Natalia (2009) The role of legal capital rules in creditor protection: Contrasting the demands of western market economies with Ukraine's transitional economy. MPhil thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mundis, Daryl (2008) The law of naval exclusion zones. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Yong, Benjamin (2008) Becoming national: Contextualising the construction of the New Zealand nation-state. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Reynolds, Michael Paul (2008) Caseflow management: A rudimentary referee process, 1919-1970. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mettraux, Guenael (2008) Command responsibility in international law---the boundaries of criminal liability for military commanders and civilian leaders. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Shim, Jaejin (2008) Equality or the right to work? Explanation and justification of anti-discrimination rights in employment. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Webb, Charlie Edward James (2008) Property, unjust enrichment and restitution. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kulovesi, Kati (2008) The WTO dispute settlement system and the challenge of environment and legitimacy. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dinniss, Heather Harrison (2008) The status and use of computer network attacks in international humanitarian law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Fasan, Oluseto (2007) Compliance with WTO law in developing countries: A study of South Africa and Nigeria. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Khasawneh, Bisher Hani (2007) An appraisal of the right of return and compensation of Jordanian nationals of Palestinian refugee origin and Jordan's right, under international law, to bring claims relating thereto, on their behalf to and against Israel and to seek compensation as a host state in light of the conclusion of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of 1994. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Amodu, Tola (2007) The transformation of planning agreements as regulatory instruments in land-use planning in the twentieth century. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Panijpan, Kris (2006) Market dynamics in corporate governance: Lessons from recent developments in English law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Park, Jungwon (2006) Minority rights constraints on a state's power to regulate citizenship under international law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Kyprianou, Despina (2006) The role of the Cyprus attorney general's office in prosecutions: Rhetoric, ideology and practice. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Killick, Evan (2005) Living apart: separation and sociality amongst the Ashéninka of Peruvian Amazonia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Menuchin, Shay Nisan (2005) The dilemma of international tax arbitrage: A comparative analysis using the cases of hybrid financial instruments and cross-border leasing. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Le, Net (2004) Refusal to license: Abuse of dominant position and switching costs. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sideri, Katerina (2003) The European Commission and the construction of information society: Regulatory law from a processual perspective. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Boelaert-Suominen, Sonja Ann Jozef (1998) International environmental law and naval war: The effect of marine safety and pollution conventions during international armed conflict. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Mohamed, Mohamed Sameh Ahmed (1997) The role of the International Court of Justice as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Jurgielewicz, Lynne (1994) Global environmental change and international law: prospects for progress in the legal order. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Lyall, Andrew Bremner (1980) The social origins of property and contract: a study of East Africa before 1918. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Harlow, Carol (1979) Administrative liability: a comparative study of French and English Law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Reynolds, James Isaac (1974) The slum tenant and the common law: a comparative study. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Edwards, Adolph (1968) The development of criminal law in Jamaica up to 1900. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lasok, Dominik (1954) The Polish Constitutions of 1947 and 1952: a historical study in constitutional law. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Relationship between Law and Economics

January 26, 2016 | yalepress | Economics , Law

Guido Calabresi—

A century and a half ago John Stuart Mill said of English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham, in effect, that he approached the world as a stranger. And, if the world did not fit his theory, utilitarianism, he dismissed what the world did as nonsense. Mill then said that what Bentham did not realize was that often that nonsense reflected the unanalyzed experience of the human race. Sometimes, Mill implied, the theory was right. But sometimes it is the world that is more sophisticated than the theory.

Law and Economics, today, reflects a similar division. There are many Benthamites—Economic Analysts of Law—around. These scholars look at the legal world from the standpoint of existing economic theory. And if the world does not do what that theory seems to suggest it ought to do, they dismiss the world as irrational. But there are followers of Mill among Law and Economics scholars as well. These also start out by looking at the world from the standpoint of economic theory. If the theory and practice don’t mesh, however, they don’t simply dismiss the world. They instead examine whether it might be the theory that is inadequate. And, having done so, they try to make the theory more nuanced, while still theoretically sound. They then see if the amplified theory can explain why the legal world is what it is. And, if it proves out, they go on to use this more complex theory in analyzing areas of law often far removed from that which first led them to modify the theory.

The Benthamites have been immensely effective in the last fifty or so years in bringing about changes in many areas of law. But sometimes these reforms have not been beneficial, because they have been grounded in the assumption that the theory was necessarily correct and the world was inadequate, when the opposite was in fact the case. Making law the handmaiden of economic theory in this way, rather than using the analytical strengths of economics in conjunction with the empirical data about human wants and needs that the law furnishes, impoverishes both fields. It can also lead to bad policy results.

One can see this by looking at any number of real world arrangements that are not adequately explained by economic theory. Among these is the widespread existence of altruistic behavior—by individuals, in firms, and in government. Economic theory has long failed to explain adequately why there is so much beneficence around and why so many non-profit institutions exist. Self-interest, it is said, would be more effective in getting things done. Why then does so much altruism perdure? There is a good, simple, and important theoretical answer to this! Similarly, lawyer-economists often criticize our unwillingness to let certain goods, like education, health care, body parts (kidneys and blood) be allocated in the market. Why don’t we just let such so-called merit goods be the subject of individual purchases and sales? Prohibiting such transactions is often decried as unjustifiably paternalistic. But is it? I think not. If relatively few changes were made in economic theory changes that are quite consistent with the field—such real world behavior, like altruism and the treatment of merit goods, can be easily explained and justified. Moreover, that deeper and more nuanced economic theory can then be used to structure that behavior better and make the rules that accompany it more effective. Not only that, but that better theory will prove helpful in many, many other areas as well.

The future of Law and Economics lies in this sort of mutual relationship. It lies not in making law subservient to economics, but in using the analytical strength of economic theory in conjunction with the empirical insights into people s wishes that the legal system gives. So combined, both theory and practice will become better able to serve our wants and needs.

Guido Calabresi is a senior judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale Law School. He is the author of The Future of Law and Economics .

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The Retirement Security Rule – Strengthening Protections for Americans Saving for   Retirement

Today, the Biden Administration is announcing a new rule proposed by the Department of Labor to close loopholes and ensure that the financial advice that Americans get for retirement is in their best interest. The rule would expand the existing fiduciary standard that commonly covers advice over purchasing securities like mutual funds, to include new types of non-securities like fixed index annuities, advice to employers and plan fiduciaries, and one-time advice for transactions like 401(k) rollovers. The rule will cut junk fees in retirement products, potentially providing billions more in savings for those saving for retirement. This CEA blog explains why this proposed rule change is important for consumers by focusing on a specific, but substantial, market transaction: rolling over retirement savings into fixed index annuities.

As background: in 2022, Americans rolled over approximately $779 billion from defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, into IRAs. [1] The decision to roll over assets is a complex and personal one, and investors have many asset choices after deciding to roll over. Current securities laws provide many important protections to people saving for their retirement. Financial advisers for example must generally hew to a “fiduciary standard” when recommending the purchase of securities like stocks and mutual funds, meaning the adviser must put the client’s interests above their own commissions. You might think this is always the case in the investment industry, but at the moment, one-time financial advice over transactions like a 401(k) rollover is often not required to meet a fiduciary standard under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the federal law governing retirement plans. Moreover, securities laws and regulations do not broadly cover recommendations to purchase non -securities, such as real estate, certain kinds of annuities, or commodities like gold. They also don’t cover advice to plan sponsors about which investments to put on a 401(k) lineup. These blind spots in the current rules can increase costs and fees for consumers, taking a toll on their retirement savings.

One example of a non-security investment is a “fixed index annuity.” Fixed index annuities are financial products typically issued by insurance companies (and therefore governed by state law rather than federal securities law) with features that could be attractive to risk-averse investors. Their returns have both lower upside and downside risk, because they generally cap returns while also putting a floor on losses. This greater certainty however comes with additional costs and fees when compared to investments in comparable mutual funds, as well as extended lock-up periods where investors face fees if they withdraw their money.

The primary source of fixed index annuity costs to investors are the caps placed on returns that the annuity receives from the underlying index it is based upon. Under certain conditions, the cost of the upside cap on returns can outweigh the benefits of the downside protection, in which case the investor could, in principle, get a better deal without a lock-up period. Different financial products have different terms, but in the appendix, we provide an example of how, under the current system, a retirement saver could end up with lower returns than they would under the proposed rule.

There may also be strong incentives for brokers to encourage investment in fixed index annuities even if they are not in investors’ best interests. This is potentially evidenced by the large commissions paid to brokers. For example, the annuity mentioned in the appendix gives commissions ranging from 6.5% for sales to under-75-year-olds to 3.5% for sales to those over the age of 80. Many academic papers have examined the impact of conflicted investment advice on portfolio performance across markets. [2] These estimates show losses to returns that range from 95 to 170 basis points in the markets studied. Even taking the conservative estimate of 95 basis points from Egan (2019) — who studies the role of conflicted advice in the sale of convertible bonds — the losses appear substantial. As a rough estimate: the total assets held in fixed index annuities have grown rapidly, from $185 billion in 2010 to $559 billion at the end of 2021. [3] Even if this market doesn’t continue to grow, the amount paid by consumers in return caps could be as high as $7 billion annually and the amount lost to conflicted investment advice could be as high as $5 billion annually with respect to just this one category of investment.

Today’s proposed Retirement Security rule by the Biden Administration expands protections for retirement savers, ensures sounder financial advice, lowers investment junk fees, and gives every American saving for retirement greater peace of mind about their portfolios.

Appendix: Illustrating the Benefits and Costs of a Fixed Index Annuity

Fixed index annuities are complex products whose costs and benefits are not straightforward to quantify. At the time of investment, the combination of downside protection and loss of upside potential are equivalent to the investor receiving a put option and giving a call option to the insurance company. Therefore, one way to conceptualize the costs is to use the fair market value of these options.

Market prices change frequently, but purely as an illustrative example: the return cap on a major fixed index annuity, which is indexed to the S&P 500, was 6.75% as of August 2023. The estimated value of that 6.75% contract cap net of a 0% floor to the issuer during the first year of investment, based on the prices of options on the S&P 500 futures contract, is equal to 1.2% of the total amount invested in the annuity. [4] That suggests that the issuer could pay the intermediary up to $120 for every $10,000 invested by the consumer, and still expect to make a profit on average. This is the implicit cost to the investor before accounting for explicit sales charges or fees. Pricing these costs and benefits over the entire life of the annuity is even more complex since this particular issuer changes the rate caps on the contract each year.

Of course, this example ignores any transactions or operational costs that the issuer faces. Further, a risk-averse investor might be willing to pay above fair value to insure against the possibility of loss. In principle, an investor could construct the same portfolio as the fixed index annuity more cheaply using options, but this is in practice difficult for a retail investor. This exercise simply highlights the lopsided fair value of the contract at the outset; nevertheless, a fixed index annuity may still make sense for certain investors.

[1] Cerulli Associates, U.S. Retirement End-Investor 2023: Personalizing the 401(k) Investor Experience , p.145.

[2] Chalmers and Reuter (2014), Christoffersen et al. (2013), Del Guercio and Reuter (2014), Foerster et al. (2014), Egan (2019)

[3] According to the Cerulli report on US annuity markets 2022, page 46.

[4] The estimate is formed with August 1 2023 end-of-day prices, using the historic volatility of the S&P 500 price index on Bloomberg’s options pricing calculator. The put option’s strike price is at the current index price, and the call option’s strike price is 6.75% above the index’s price on August 1. The maturity of the option is 1 year (365 days).

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