Talking law and economics at ETH Zurich ETH Center for Law & Economics

In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Kevin Davis (New York University) discusses his study "Did the Global South Have Their Say on EU Supply Chain Regulation?" with Luca Baltensperger (ETH Zurich).

Prof. Davis' study (joint with Roy Germano and Lauren E. May from NYU) uses data from the EU’s ‘Have Your Say’ platform to examine how actors from the Global South responded to the European Commission’s formal consultation process on the proposed Corporate Sustainability and Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Actors from the Global South who participated in the consultation overwhelmingly supported the proposed due diligence framework. The CSDDD is supposed to establish a corporate due diligence standard on sustainability issues, such as environmental concerns, climate change, and human rights, for businesses operating in the EU.

However, the findings of Prof. Davis' study call into question the strength of the EU’s commitment to including affected actors from the Global South in regulatory processes. They are consistent with the hypotheses that actors from the South have limited capabilities to participate in formal consultation processes or believe that they lack the power to influence outcomes through those processes.

In this vlog episode, Prof. Davis talks about the background of the study, the findings, and its implications.

Paper References:
Kevin Davis – New York University
Roy Germano – New York University
Lauren E. May – New York University

Did the Global South Have Their Say on EU Supply Chain Regulation?
NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 24-13
https://ssrn.com/abstract=4735442

Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w

In this episode of the CLE Vlog & Podcast series, Amit Zac (University of Amsterdam) and Filippo Lancieri (ETH Zurich) discuss Prof. Zac’s study "The Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPR", which is an empirical analysis of the mobile applications’ response to the famous European Court of Justice ’Schrems II’ decision in the EU.

In July 2020, the European Court of Justice invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield with immediate effect. As a result, many personal data transfers from the European Union to the United States became illegal overnight. Prof. Zac and his co-authors present a unique dataset allowing them not only to observe what firms say about their behavior in privacy policies, but also how firms actually behave. Using machine-learning tools, they analyze the privacy policies of over 7,500 apps on the Spanish Google Play Store and find limited compliance with the Schrems II decision. In this vlog episode, Prof. Zac discusses his study with Dr. Lancieri (ETH Zurich).

Paper References:

Amit Zac – University of Amsterdam
Pablo Wey – ETH Zurich
Stefan Bechtold – ETH Zurich
David Rodriguez – Polytechnic University of Madrid
Jose M. Del Alamo – Polytechnic University of Madrid

The Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPR
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4709913

Audio Credits for Trailer:

AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w

In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Christoph Engel (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn) and Prof. Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) discuss Engel's recent study on the German Constitutional Court. The latter has powers that are no weaker than the powers of the US Supreme Court. Justices are openly selected by the political parties. Nonetheless, public and professional perception are strikingly different. Justices at the German court are not believed to be guided by the policy preferences of the nominating party.

In his paper, Prof. Engel uses the complete publicly available data to investigate whether this perception is well-founded. It exploits three independent sources of quasi-random variation to generate causal evidence. There is no smoking gun of ideological influence. Some specifications show, however, that justices nominated by the left-wing parties (SPD and the Greens) are more activist, even in domains where activism likely runs counter the ideological preferences of these parties.

Paper References:
Christoph Engel – Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn
The German Constitutional Court – Political, but not Partisan?
(Work in Progress)

Audio Credits for Trailer:
AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w

In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Christopher S. Yoo (University of Pennsylvania) and Christophe Gösken (ETH Zurich) talk about Prof. Yoo's study "An Economic Analysis of the Right to be Forgotten". The so-called “right to be forgotten” has gained prominence under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar regulatory frameworks have recently been introduced in US state privacy statutes.

Commentators have largely defined the right to be forgotten as a clash between the privacy interests of data subjects and the free speech rights of data controllers. However, framing the issues as a clash of individual rights ignores how giving data subjects the ability to render certain information unobservable can give rise to systemic effects that can harm society as a whole. Prof. Yoo's analysis fills this gap by exploring the implications that adverse selection, moral hazard, and the emerging policy intervention know as “ban the box” have on the right to be forgotten. In this vlog episode, Prof. Yoo discusses his study with Christophe Gösken (ETH Zurich).

Paper References:

Christopher S. Yoo – University of Pennsylvania
An Economic Analysis of the Right to Be Forgotten
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4124596

Audio Credits for Trailer:

AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w

For a long time, scholars have been classifying most legal systems around the world as falling within one of two inherently different categories: common or civil law systems. While the former (common law), rooted in England and practiced also in the US, involves precedent or deference to previously published judicial opinion; the latter (civil law), practiced in continental Europe and elsewhere in the world, does not – or so many still think.

In this episode of the CLE vlog series, Prof. Holger Spamann (Harvard Law School) examines the myths and the reality of common and civil law with Alessandro Tacconelli (ETH Zurich). After a brief explanation of the alleged differences between the two systems and the history of such distinction, Prof. Spamann explains the findings of some of his work on the topic. In his paper ‘Judges in the Lab,’ he and his co-authors recruited 299 real judges from seven major jurisdictions to judge an international criminal appeals case and to determine the appropriate prison sentence, to show that: (i) document use and written reasons did not differ between common and civil law judges, and (ii) ‘precedent effect’ was barely detectable. Similarly, in his paper ‘The Reasons Highest Courts Give,’ Prof. Spamann and co-authors quantitatively analysed 80 representative opinions of English and German apex courts in the late 19th century and early 21st century, to find that, even in 1880s, opinions of English and German courts differed in degree rather than kind and that, by the 2000s, the Germans cited precedent as frequently as the English.

Paper References:

Judges in the Lab: No Precedent Effects, No Common/Civil Law Differences
Holger Spamann, Lars Klöhn, Christophe Jamin, Vikramaditya Khanna, John Zhuang Liu, Pavan Mamidi, Alexander Morell, Ivan Reidel
Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2021, Pages 110–126
https://doi.org/10.1093/jla/laaa008

The Reasons Highest Courts Give: England vs. Germany, 1880-1889 vs. 2007-2016
Jasper Kunstreich, Markus Lieberknecht, Heinrich Nemeczek, Holger Spamann, Stefan Vogenauer
Working Paper

Audio Credits for Trailer:

AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w

For years, academic experts have championed the widespread adoption of the “Fama-French” factors in legal settings. Factor models are commonly used to perform valuations, performance evaluation and event studies across a wide variety of contexts, many of which rely on data provided by Professor Kenneth French. Yet these data are beset by a problem that the experts themselves did not understand: Widespread retroactive changes which can materially affect a broad range of estimates.

In this episode of the CLE vlog & podcast series, Prof. Adriana Robertson (University of Chicago) discusses the background and findings of the study "Noisy Factors in Law" with Alessandro Tacconnelli (ETH Zurich). In their study, she and her co-authors Mikhail Simutin and Pat Akey (both University of Toronto) show how these retroactive changes, heretofore overlooked by experts, can have enormous impacts in precisely the settings in which experts have pressed for their use. They provide examples of valuations, performance analysis, and event studies in which the retroactive changes have a large—and even dispositive—effect on an expert’s conclusions. Their analysis demonstrates how even the most well accepted expert approaches can be fraught with hidden peril.

Paper References:

Adriana Robertson - University of Chicago
Mikhail Simutin - University of Toronto
Pat Akey - University of Toronto

Noisy Factors in Law (Please contact the authors for the latest version)

Audio Credits for Trailer:

AllttA by AllttA
https://youtu.be/ZawLOcbQZ2w