The Faculty Lounge

ComplianceNet 2025

From Prof Nelson at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law...
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Dear Faculty Lounge readers,

 

ComplianceNet 2025 will be hosted by Fordham University School of Law in New York City. The event will take place on the Lincoln Center campus (150 West 62d St) May 28 – 30, 2025. It will have the theme of "Evolving Compliance,” though papers on all topics related to compliance will be welcome. We are not yet accepting paper submissions, but we hope that this announcement allows you to start thinking about potential contributions!

 

A formal call for papers will be issued in late fall 2024/early 2025. For individual papers, you will be asked to submit the paper title and abstract (up to about 200 words). For panels (3 papers minimum with a maximum of 5 per panel), you will be asked to submit an integrative statement explaining the panel (approximately 200 words), the titles of each paper and their authors, and an abstract for each paper (approximately 200 words). This year, we will have a new panel dedicated especially to graduate students and their work. We also offer prizes for the best papers from junior and senior scholars.

 

ComplianceNet seeks to bring together scholars from a range of different disciplines to study the interaction between rules (broadly defined) and individual, group, or organizational behavior. The first six annual conferences have been highly successful, bringing together academics from business, criminology, economics, law, political science, psychology, public policy, public health, and sociology, among other fields. See the ComplianceNet website for more details about the organization’s structure and goals, as well as for an opportunity to join the mailing list if you desire to do so.

 

We look forward to seeing you at ComplianceNet 2025 in New York City!

 

Sincerely,

 

Barbara-Ann Boehler (Conference Organizer)

 

J.S. Nelson, Yuval Feldman, Colin Provost, Wim Huisman, Phil Nichols, Antara Haldar, Eric Chaffee, Elysa Dishman, and Vera Cherepanova (ComplianceNet Steering Committee)

 

J.S. Nelson

Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Email: JS[email protected]

Hank

If you are looking for something to watch this weekend, the documentary Hank: Five Years from the Brink is now available on Netflix and Amazon. The film tells the story of the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. During the most dangerous days of the crisis, he played a crucial role in persuading Congress to authorize a $700 billion bank bailout, the biggest in American history. The October 2008 bailout averted a 1930s-style run on the banks and likely prevented another Great Depression.

Ironically, however, Paulson inadvertently helped trigger the crisis in the first place.

Policy Shock Has Arrived!

And you can get it at a discount. 

My new book, Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation After Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents, and Financial Crises  (Cambridge University Press, November 2017) is finally here. It is edited by Duke University Rethinking Regulation program members Edward Balleisen, Professor of History and Duke's Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies; Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy at the Nicholas School of the Environment; Kimberly Krawiec, the Kathrine Robinson Everett Professor of Law (AKA me!); and Jonathan Wiener, the William R. & Thomas L. Perkins Professor of Law, Professor of Environmental Policy, and Professor of Public Policy. 

The book looks at responses to events over the last century in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and assesses how they affected laws, regulations, and institutions. (A special discount of 30% off the list price is available from Cambridge University Press until June 1, 2018, by entering the code:  Policy17.)

I’ve included screen shots of the Table of Contents below. As you can see, some great authors are included here, representing contributions from law, economics, history, political science, psychology, engineering, and more.

I’ve also uploaded a pdf of the Introduction.  Download 9781107140219_excerpt-2

You can also read this Q&A with my colleague and co-author, Jonathan Wiener, discussing the book.

How The Other Half Banks At The Conglomerate

Our friends at The Conglomerate are hosting a book club discussion on Mehrsa Baradaran's How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy.  

Posts so far include:

How The Other Half Banks: What Will Replace Banks? Posted by David Zaring

How the Other Half Banks: Banking and Blame Posted by Matt Bodie

How the Other Half Banks: More of the Regulatory Story Posted by Christine Hurt

How The Other Half Banks As A Regulation Story Posted by David Zaring

Weidemaier: Dear NY Times: Thank You For Letting Me Sue Only 500 Miles From My Home

Over at Credit Slips, Mark Weidemaier has a nice post on the NY Times recent series on arbitration.  From the text:

The attention on arbitration also seems a bit disproportionate, given the nearly-infinite ways that businesses use contracts to extract hidden value from employees and customers: incomprehensible warranty disclaimers, clauses limiting liability for damages, clauses requiring claimants to bring claims in remote and therefore expensive places, etc. Even if competition results in somewhat lower prices, that's cold comfort for those on whom the costs fall most heavily. For all its high-mindedness, the NY Times is no different. Have a legal claim arising out of Times digital products? The Times graciously lets you file a lawsuit, but you'll have to go to New York to do it, wherever you happen to live.* 

I assume the NYT timed the series roughly to coincide with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's anticipated decision to regulate the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts. One likely regulation would ban the use of class action waivers. For better or worse, private individual and class action lawsuits have come to occupy a significant place in the U.S. regulatory system. Yet the Supreme Court has gradually interpreted the Federal Arbitration Act to let businesses decide whether they want to participate in this system; many have opted out. This is an extraordinarily consequential development, and political actors should assume responsibility for deciding whether to embrace or reject it. So whatever the CFPB ultimately does, the decision will be noteworthy, and welcome, as one of the too-rare moments when politically-accountable actors finally take responsibility for deciding the limits of arbitration.  

Read the whole thing here. 

Kweku Adoboli’s Future Career In Music Promotion?

I mentioned earlier Kweku Adoboli’s recent podcast interview with Lindsay Fortado of the FT, and listening to it has convinced me that, though his career as a trader may be over, perhaps he has a future in music promotion. 

Let me explain.

Adoboli is the UBS rogue trader who was brought up on criminal charges in the UK stemming from unauthorized trading that first came to light in September 2011. He served about four years in prison and was recently released.

Adoboli was a trader on UBS’s four person ETF desk.  According to Adoboli, he began off-books trading in 2008 using an account nicknamed “umbrella,” which he used as a slush fund to hide profits until he needed them to cover a loss on some later, rainier, day.  As I’ve discussed, such smoothing of profits and losses is a common element in other recent rogue trading cases, including Jerome Kerviel at Société Générale.

As I said at the time: 

The umbrella account is the one element of the case that has finally convinced me of the possibility of an Adoboli made-for-television movie (note to networks: I’m willing to consult on the cheap in exchange for hobnobbing with movie stars . . . or just for free lodging).  I think that we’re due for another rogue trading movie.  Though Nick Leeson got a real (not TV) movie out of his ordeal -- starring Ewan McGregor, no less -- it was a real dud, which hasn’t prevented me from showing it in class about a dozen times. 

The umbrella account turned out to be an important element of Adoboli’s defense.  Adoboli’s lawyer, Charles Sherrard argued that all three ETF desk traders, including Adoboli’s supervisor, John Hughes, knew about the umbrella account.  Sherrard introduced numerous email and chat communications referencing Adoboli’s “umbrella,” “Rhianna,” and “ella ella,” in an attempt to establish that Adoboli, far from being a rogue agent, was part of a collaborative scheme in which other bank employees (again, including his direct supervisor) acquiesced. 

Fortado asks Adoboli about the account in the podcast (“you had an internal fund that you created for the ETF desk, called the ‘umbrella’ or ‘Rihanna’ which was discussed at trial”) and Adoboli repeats his position that others (“many others”) at UBS knew about the trading scheme and either approved, directly participated, or turned a blind eye to it, because it was profitable. 

Adoboli is the only rogue trader that ever gave me an excuse to show part of a Rihanna video at an international conference.

And now, he’s provided another music recommendation.  At the end of the podcast, Fortado tells Adoboli that she knows he loves music and asks whether there is a song that is indicative of the way that he felt during the ordeal.  His new theme song?  Caught in the Hustle, by Immortal Technique: 

So if I should ever fall and get caught in a hustle

Let them know that I died while I fought in a struggle

From the hoodrats to the rich kids lost in a bubble

Spray painting on the streets and at the subway tunnels

Write it down and remember that we never gave in

The mind of a child is where the revolution begins

So if the solution has never been to look in yourself


How is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

Well, there’s that then.

I have some thoughts on the interview itself, which I’ll try to return with, schedule permitting.

Related posts:

Kweku Adoboli Speaks!

Ella . . . Ella

AMV Seminario De Control Interno Y Compliance: Bogotá, Colombia

Kweku Adoboli Trial Began Today

The Rogue Trading KISS

When $61bn Seemed Like Real Money

Denial: It Ain’t Just A River In Egypt

It’s The Stupid Culture

It’s The Culture, Stupid

Kerviel’s Fake Trades: Genius Or Copy Cat?

Kerviel’s Fake Trades: The Anatomy of A Cover-Up

On Warning Signs II: Follow The Money

On Warning Signs: You Can’t Get There From Here

Rogues Versus Scapegoats

Kerviel Trial Opens to Fanfare

Société Générale: Back In The Saddle Again

Jérôme Kerviel to Société Générale: Stand By Your Man

Kweku Adoboli Speaks!

With Lindsay Fortado of the FT, that is. 

Adoboli, who just finished a four-year prison term in connection with his loss of $2.3 billion through unauthorized trades while employed at UBS gives a podcast interview with the FT, in which he discusses his life, his work, his rogue trading, and subsequent trial. 

The nine-week trial, which I blogged about on a few occasions, generated substantial public attention.  I’ll try to check back in with some thoughts about the interview, but for now, wanted to alert readers to the podcast.

 http://podcast.ft.com/2015/10/22/the-crime-and-punishment-of-kweku-adoboli/ 

 

Related posts:

Ella . . . Ella

AMV Seminario De Control Interno Y Compliance: Bogotá, Colombia

Kweku Adoboli Trial Began Today

The Rogue Trading KISS

When $61bn Seemed Like Real Money

Denial: It Ain’t Just A River In Egypt

It’s The Stupid Culture

It’s The Culture, Stupid

Kerviel’s Fake Trades: Genius Or Copy Cat?

Kerviel’s Fake Trades: The Anatomy of A Cover-Up

On Warning Signs II: Follow The Money

On Warning Signs: You Can’t Get There From Here

Rogues Versus Scapegoats

Kerviel Trial Opens to Fanfare

Société Générale: Back In The Saddle Again

Jérôme Kerviel to Société Générale: Stand By Your Man

CFP: SECOND WORKSHOP ON COMPARATIVE BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL LAW

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPARATIVE LAW

YOUNGER COMPARATIVISTS COMMITTEE

SECOND WORKSHOP ON COMPARATIVE BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL LAW

The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased to invite submissions for its second workshop on comparative business and financial law to be held on February 5-6, 2016 at UC Davis School of Law in Davis, California. The purpose of the workshop is to highlight, develop, and promote the scholarship of new and younger comparativists in accounting, banking, bankruptcy, corporations, commercial law, economics, finance, and securities.

Up to fifteen papers will be chosen from those submitted for presentation at the workshop pursuant to this Call for Papers. The workshop audience will include invited young scholars, faculty from UC Davis School of Law and Graduate School of Management, faculty from other institutions, and invited guests.

Submissions will be accepted from scholars who have held a full-time academic appointment for no more than ten years as of June 30, 2016.

Submission Instructions

To submit an entry, scholars should email an attachment in Microsoft Word or PDF containing an abstract of no more than 1000 words before October 15, 2015, to the following address: [email protected]. Please title the email “YCC Business Law Workshop – [Name].” Abstracts should reflect original research that will not yet have been published, though may have been accepted for publication, by the time of the workshop. Abstracts should include a cover page with the author’s name, title of the paper, institutional affiliation, contact information, as well as the author’s certification that she/he qualifies as a younger scholar.

Scholars may make only one submission. Both individual and co-authored submissions will be accepted. For co-authored submissions, at least one author must qualify as an eligible younger comparativist.

Notification

Invitees will be selected via a blind review by a workshop selection committee. Authors of the submissions selected for the workshop will be notified no later than November 15, 2015. There is no cost to register for the workshop but participants are responsible for securing their own funding for travel, lodging and other incidental expenses. A limited number of travel stipends may be awarded to scholars from ASCL member schools who demonstrate financial need. If you would like to be considered for a travel stipend, please make that request in your submission.

Final papers for the workshop will be due no later than January 18, 2016.

Acknowledgements and Questions

The YCC gratefully acknowledges the support of UC Davis School of Law and the California International Law Center. Please direct all inquiries to Professor Afra Afsharipour, Chair of the Program Committee, by email
at [email protected] or telephone at 530-754-0111.

Please feel free to share this Call for Papers with any colleagues who may be interested.

The Program Committee:

Afra Afsharipour (UC Davis School of Law) (Chair)
Martin Gelter (Fordham University School of Law)
Haider Ala Hamoudi (University of Pittsburgh School of Law) Virginia Harper Ho (University of Kansas School of Law)

Workshop Selection Committee:

Afra Afsharipour (UC Davis School of Law)
Martin Gelter (Fordham University School of Law)
Haider Ala Hamoudi (University of Pittsburgh School of Law) Virginia Harper Ho (University of Kansas School of Law) Andrew Tuch (Washington University School of Law)

YCC Board of Directors:

Afra Afsharipour, Professor of Law, University of California - Davis Richard Albert, Associate Professor, Boston College, Chair
Virginia Harper Ho, Associate Professor, University of Kansas, Treasurer Sally Richardson, Associate Professor, Tulane University

Ozan Varol, Associate Professor, Lewis & Clark, Vice Chair & Secretary

CFP: AALS Program of the Section on Securities Regulation

Call for Papers
AALS Section on Securities Regulation - 2016 AALS Annual Meeting

January 6-10, 2016  New York, NY

The AALS Section on Securities Regulation invites papers for its program on “The Future of Securities Regulation:  Innovation, Regulation and Enforcement.”

TOPIC DESCRIPTION: This panel discussion will explore the current trends and future implications in the securities regulation field including transactional and financial innovation, the regulation of investment funds, the intersection of the First Amendment and securities law, the debate over fee-shifting bylaws, the ever-expanding transactional exemptions including under Regulation D, and judicial interpretations of insider trading laws.  The Executive Committee welcomes papers (theoretical, doctrinal, policy-oriented, empirical) on both the transactional and litigation sides of securities law and practice.

ELIGIBILITY: Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Pursuant to AALS rules, faculty at fee-paid law schools, foreign faculty, adjunct and visiting faculty (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school), graduate students, fellows, and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit. Please note that all faculty members presenting at the program are responsible for paying their own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.  NOTE FURTHER, AALS has announced reduced registration fees for junior faculty for the 2016 conference.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Up to four papers may be selected from this call for papers. There is no formal requirement as to the form or length of proposals. However, more complete drafts will be given priority over abstracts, and presenters are expected to have a draft for commentators two weeks prior to the beginning of the AALS conference.

Papers will be selected by the Section's Executive Committee in a double-blind review. Please submit only anonymous papers by redacting from the submission the author's name and any references to the identity of the author. The title of the email submission should read: "Submission - 2016 AALS Section on Securities Regulation."

Please email submissions to the Section Chair Christine Hurt at:  [email protected] on or before August 21, 2015.

Risk Regulation Slides Are Posted

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the OECD Regulatory Policy Division, together with the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and the Rethinking Regulation program at Duke University recently held a conference on Improving Risk Regulation: From Crisis Response To Learning and Innovation at the OECD Conference Centre in Paris.  All of the slides from the conference, including mine, have now been posted online, and some of you may find some of the presentations useful. 

From the IRCG conference website:

New approaches to regulation may be stimulated by careful research and practical experience, but also spurred by crisis events that alter perceptions and spark demand for policy change.  What can we learn from these diverse sources of regulatory change? How can we do a better job in fostering constructive regulatory improvement?

The conference identified, evaluated and discussed the relevance and effectiveness of new approaches to improving risk governance, both as they result from responding to and learning from crises, and as deliberate innovations in how regulatory power is exercised and shared.  It built upon: 

• Work from the OECD Regulatory Policy Division about “Risk and Regulatory Policy – Improving the Governance of Risk” and recommendation about performance- and consumer-based regulation
• The project on “Recalibrating Risk: Crises, Perceptions and Regulatory Change,” of the Rethinking Regulation program at Duke University, which investigates how regulatory policies and institutions change in response to crisis events, and seeks lessons for the future
• IRGC’s work on the role of regulatory frameworks and institutional arrangements in the context of risk governance, including mechanisms for adaptive regulation that are able to update in response to new information and contexts.

The conference brought together practitioners of risk governance and regulation from private, public and academic organizations interested in sharing knowledge and enhancing their understanding of crisis and new forms of risk regulation. 

To download slide presentations, go to the agenda and click on the respective presentation. For a short summary of each section, click on “Highlights” next to the session title.

Meet me in Paris!

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to attend the conference on “Improving Risk Regulation:  From Crisis Response to Learning and Innovation,” to be held in Paris on 13-14 October. 

The latest conference agenda summary (version of 9 September) is accessible through the link at the bottom of this post.  

The agenda, further details, and links to register are at:  http://www.irgc.org/event/annual-conference-2014/ .

This conference is co-hosted by the IRGC (www.irgc.org ), the OECD Regulatory Policy Division ( http://www.oecd.org/regreform/regulatory-policy/ ), and the Duke University “Rethinking Regulation” program (http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/regulation/  ). 

 

• The first day addresses how crisis events shape regulatory change and how regulatory institutions can learn from crises.  This is the theme of a research project we are leading at Duke University on “Recalibrating Risk: Crises, Perceptions and Regulatory Change” (book forthcoming in 2015). 

 

• The second day addresses how regulatory systems can be designed to learn and improve over time, both exhibiting adaptive policy innovation and stimulating technological innovation. 

 

• Case studies to be highlighted during the conference include the regulation of oil spills, nuclear accidents, financial crashes, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals; the use of behavioral insights and non-government networks in regulation; and more.

 

• Speakers will come from numerous countries, disciplines, and organizations.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

Best regards,

 

Ed Balleisen

Lori Bennear

Kim Krawiec

Jonathan Wiener

 

Duke University – “Rethinking Regulation” program

http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/regulation/

in collaboration with

IRGC, www.irgc.org  

OECD Regulatory Policy Division,  http://www.oecd.org/regreform/regulatory-policy/

 

  Download Improving Risk Regulation - Summary Agenda v09Sept2014

Shanghai: Work, Food, and More

I was in Shanghai last week for the first time, attending a conference and an alumni dinner. The conference – The 2014 International Forum on Financial Law — was at KoGuan Law School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and was a lot of fun. The conference format was a new one for me and I thought worked very well, especially for an international audience.

The morning consisted of public lectures by party officials, regulators, practitioners, and academics with simultaneous translation. One or two of the Chinese academics were fairly critical of various aspects of the Chinese legal system, and watching the responses from fellow presenters and audience members was especially interesting, though I’m sure that I missed many of the subtleties of these exchanges.

The afternoon was divided into parallel sessions, one in Chinese and one in English, with paper presentations by invited guests. My presentation was in the English session, of course, so I can only speak to the specifics of that one, but I was very pleased with the quality of the presentations and discussion. I learned some new things about emerging corporate law and financial regulation issues in China, Singapore, and Japan, and was struck by both the similarities and the differences of the concerns: for example, several of the papers were on shadow banking in China, which is clearly a concern (as it is in the U.S.), but the character of shadow banking appears quite different in China, making the US experience only partially comparable.

My panel line-up was scheduled as follows, though for scheduling reasons there was a last minute switch of Shen Wei’s presentation on Chinese local government debt and shadow banking (which was excellent) instead of Cheng-Yun Tsang (who did a fine job on the next panel):

Host: Shen Wei, Professor of KoGuan Law School, SJTU

Discussant: Douglas Arner, Professor of The University of Hong Kong

Speakers:

Kim Krawiec, Professor of School of Law, Duke University

Wang Jiangyu, Associate Professor of Law School, National University of Singapore

Manabu Matsunaka, Professor of Nagoya University

Tang Yingmao, Associate Professor of Law School, Peking University

Cheng-Yun Tsang, Doctoral Student of School of Law, Duke University

Naturally, I made time for some food tourism as well (courtesy of UnTour, which I highly recommend). Included are photos of my street food breakfast in Shanghai on the day of departure, which was delicious, and can be roughly divided into three categories: noodles, dim sum, and deep fried dough (yum, yum!)

 

Call For Papers: Combating Threats To The International Financial System

The New York Law School Law Review is calling for papers to be published in connection with its April 25, 2014 symposium, Combating Threats to the International Financial System: The Financial Action Task Force.

Although this symposium will specifically address the Financial Action Task Force, the symposium's companion Law Review publication will broadly examine contemporary threats to the international financial system, such as money laundering and terrorist financing. In examining these issues, the publication will address how these threats have been responded to in the past, as well as how they should be responded to at the international, federal, and state levels in the future.

The Law Review is currently accepting abstracts for papers to be considered for publication in the spring of 2015.  To be considered for publication, please send by March 28, 2014 an abstract of no more than 500 words in MS Word format, accompanied by a CV, to Editor-in-Chief G. William Bartholomew  at [email protected].

Final papers will be due June 13, 2014, and may not exceed 35 pages in length (double-spaced, including footnotes).  Details on the symposium are here.

Call for Papers

AALS Joint Program of the Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services Section and the European Law Section

Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation

AALS Annual Meeting, January 3, 2014

New York, New York

 

The AALS Section on Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services and Section on European Law are pleased to announce that they are sponsoring a Call for Papers for their joint program on Friday, January 3, at the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting in New York, New York. 

 

The topic of the program and call for papers is “Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation.”  The financial crisis of 2008 was truly a global crisis, and the world continues to face a wide range of post-crisis economic and political challenges. Today, several years after the market turmoil began, both the United States and the European Union are in the midst of major regulatory reforms in the financial services sector. The effects of these financial regulation reforms however, remain unclear. Structural reform in the U.S. is thus far limited to a yet-to-be finalized "Volcker Rule," while in the U.K. and the Eurozone, respectively, Vickers- and Liikanen-style "ring-fencing" remain incomplete if not inchoate.  Debate in the U.S. still rages around whether and how smaller "community banks" should be regulated differently from megabanks, while the E.U. continues to debate whether to form a "banking union" at all and, if so, what it might or could entail, given various political constraints.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to innovate in the realm of monetary policy in the absence of functional fiscal policy, while the European Central Bank moves furtively toward acting as a full Fed-style central bank capable of backstopping sovereign debt instruments and providing real liquidity.  Where might these multiple developments be ultimately heading, and what might the Americans and Europeans learn from each other as they grope tentatively forward? What broader implications do they raise for political accountability and legitimacy in a post-crisis world?

 

Form and length of submission

The submissions committee looks forward to reviewing any papers that address the foregoing topics.  While the preference will be given to papers with a clearly comparative focus, the committee’s overall goal is to select papers that will facilitate discussion of, and comparisons between, American and European approaches to various aspects of financial services regulation. Potential topics include macro-prudential regulation, consumer protection, monetary policy, regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries, structural reforms, and related issues of political accountability and legitimacy.

Abstracts should be comprehensive enough to allow the committee to meaningfully evaluate the aims and likely content of papers they propose.  Eligible law faculty are invited to submit manuscripts or abstracts dealing with any aspect of the foregoing topics. Untenured faculty members are particularly encouraged to submit manuscripts or abstracts.  

The initial review of the papers will be blind.  Accordingly the author should submit a cover letter with the paper.  However, the paper itself, including the title page and footnotes must not contain any references identifying the author or the author’s school.  The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes. 

Papers may be accepted for publication but must not be published prior to the Annual Meeting.

Deadline and submission method

To be considered, papers must be submitted electronically to Saule Omarova at [email protected] and Peter Lindseth at [email protected].

The deadline for submission is September 3, 2013. 

Papers will be selected after review by members of a Committee appointed by the Chairs of the two sections.  The authors of the selected papers will be notified by September 30, 2013. 

The Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Eligibility

             Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers.  The following are ineligible to submit: foreign, visiting (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, fellows, non-law school faculty, and faculty at fee-paid non-member schools. Papers co-authored with a person ineligible to submit on their own may be submitted by the eligible co-author.

 

Please forward this Call for Papers to any eligible faculty who might be interested.

 

Early Childhood Intervention and Consumer Debt

Over the course of the past month Professor Lauren Willis from Loyola-Los Angeles (who will be visiting at Harvard 2013-2014) has been blogging up a storm at Credit Slips about consumer financial education--not much value in it, she concludes. Mediocre financial education may make folks overconfident and even good financial education can quickly become dated in the fast-moving world consumer financial products and their savvy marketers. Nor do "nudges" have the welfare enhancing impact their designers had hoped to see.

I had the opportunity to interview Lauren as part of my ABI Resident Scholar gig. You can listen to the podcast here. It's rather long even after editing but I think it's worth the time to listen to an insightful run-down on the problems of consumer financial education and non-regulatory actions that can help folks from getting into a never-ending cycle of debt. A bit of a surprise to me--social investments in pre-natal care and early childhood education help develop  "executive function" may have more long-term bang for the buck than regulation. These sorts of programs can do more than a perfunctory high school class and better disclosures to develop the ability to defer gratification in the face of financial need and incessent (and misleading) advertising for expensive financial products.

And given the recent VAP discussions, I'd also like to point folks to an earlier interview I did with Pamela Foohey, a VAP at the University of Illinois College of Law. Pamela and I discussed her soon-to-be-published piece on Chapter 11's of religious organizations. Turns out that such organizations have effectively used used Chapter 11 both to preseve equity in their real estate and continue to provide a community-center(ed)(ing) place of worship. Foohey concludes that the "placedness" of some entities makes a purely economic analysis of the application of bankruptcy law incomplete.

Race and Infertility Care

Several research assistants and I spent last summer looking at websites from virtually every US fertility clinic.  One of the things we recorded was the race of any babies pictured on the first page of the clinics’ websites.  I have no background in critical legal studies or critical race theory, so I am probably not the best person to do this study, but I was looking at other advertising issues on the website, and I had read that minorities use assisted reproductive technologies at a much lower level than Whites, despite experiencing higher rates of infertility and even when states mandate fertility insurance (which should control for wealth effects).

 I was surprised by the results, which are included here.  It turns out that the picture of fertility care in America on websites is quite literally a picture of White doctors helping patients have White babies. 

Texas Leads the Way in Consumer Protection

Well, not really.  But there is one small way in which Texas’ payday loan and auto title loan law has incorporated recent research on behavioral economics before other states, so I thought I’d use that title because it may be one of the few chances in my life to do so. 

Some behavioral economists have argued that disclosure regulation should inform consumers of how they are likely to interact with lending products by disclosing other consumers' patterns of use.  Lauren Willis has an interesting series of posts on Credit Slips about disclosure regulations.  In one in particular, she highlights the work of Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse.  Bertrand and Morse partnered with a payday lender and disclosed different information to different borrowers, including information about how long borrowers usually take to pay off their loans.  They found that some of the disclosures affected borrowing behavior.

As proof that some academic work affects the real world at least, Texas has adopted this sort of approach in its disclosures about payday lending and title lending.  It appears Texas adopted Bertrand and Morse’s approach almost completely.  Even the graphics look the same – compare page 40 of Bertrand and Morse’s paper with Texas’ disclosure. 

Regulating Title Loans Blindfolded

I started thinking about title loans several years ago, and one of the arguments that you see over and over is that we need to prohibit title lending because it causes a lot of people to lose their car and their only way to work.  Title loans are short-term, high-cost, small-dollar loans that are secured by a vehicle that the borrower usually owns outright.  They are often used by people who are already in a financial bind, so academics, policymakers, and consumer advocates are concerned about the distress caused by borrowers losing their way to work.

One time I asked a consumer advocate what evidence we had of this phenomenon, and I was surprised that we had none.  Despite its preeminence in the discussion, no one had measured how many people were actually losing their means of getting to work.  Policymakers relying on this justification were regulating blindfolded, so I began to work on the issue.

Why Don’t Colleges Get Out of the Credit Card Business?

Thanks so much for the chance to be part of the Faculty Lounge this month.  I’ve been reading since it was created, so I am happy to join in.  I plan to blog about consumer credit issues–credit cards, title loans, and payday loans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently asked students to tell the Bureau about students’ experiences with financial services like debit cards and bank accounts.    As the Bureau points out, credit card companies have to disclose their agreements with colleges, but the relationships with these other financial service providers is still pretty murky.  My big question is not for students but for colleges: Why are you still partnering up with credit card companies?

There are of course a lot of reasons from a public welfare standpoint that we might think it is bad for colleges to partner with credit card companies, but my question is purely about the business decision.  Most colleges make only tiny sums of money from these partnerships, so why do they chance reputational harm or risk losing students who get overburdened by credit card debt?

Because of the CARD Act, the Federal Reserve gets information from credit card companies and colleges (and other college-related organizations like alumni associations) about their partnerships, and the Fed creates a report anyone can view.  In 2009, for instance, 604 of the college-related organizations
(57.85%) made less than $10,000 under their agreements with issuers, with 219 making less than $1,000, and 99 making no money at all.  The median payment for all of the colleges was $5,891.  So, for most organizations, their agreement with the issuer had a negligible effect on their bottom line, compared to say, the tuition of a single student for a single year.  Why stay in these relationships?  What am I missing?

Crowdfunding JOBS

Crowdfunding, a variation on crowdsourcing, is an Internet-driven way to raise money apart from the traditional capital markets. Since the late naughts its use has increased from $530 million in 2009 to $2.8 billion in 2012. Thus far, however, crowdfunders have not been able to receive a stake in the object of their largesse. Thus, notwithstanding increasing crowdfunding revenues, most contributors are still driven by sympathy or personal interest and receive nothing more tangible than free T-shirts, movie tickets, and the like.

That should have changed a month ago. On April 15, 2012, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act that added a new exemption to the application of the Securities Act of 1933 for issuers that raise money through crowdfunding. The JOBS Act directed the SEC to issue regulations by the end of January but so far none have been forthcoming.  One of these days, however, the regs will be issued and crowdfunding will add investment for profit to its current hipster image.

One of the perks of being ABI Resident Scholar is the opportunity to do smashups. So listen here if you like as I discuss using crowdfunding as a tool for businesses in financial distress. My conversationalist is David McGrail who has some interesting ideas about using crowdfunding to finance a Chapter 11 reorganization.

In short, the $1 million limit on a single issuer's use of crowdfunding will limit its utility to small cases. But even that's a plus because financially distressed small business debtors have a very hard time getting new capital. More important are changes the JOBS Act made to the exemptions from registration under Regulation D and Rule 144A of the Securities Act.

I don't need to pretend that I know next to nothing about securities law but McGrail knows more than a bit. I learned a lot talking with him and I think our conversation should interest many folks.