Business Scholarship Podcast

Emmanuel Yimfor, assistant professor of finance at the University of Michigan, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his paper Misconduct Synergies, which was co-authored with Heather Tookes of Yale University. In this paper, Yimfor and Tookes conduct a study of M&A in the investment-advisory industry and find that following mergers, a large share employees of the acquired firm who have prior misconduct leave the combined firm. Contrary to some expectations in the literature, the authors find that firms with high or low misconduct tend to acquire firms with similar misconduct histories. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Angela Aneiros, lecturer at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article The Unlikely Pressure for Accountability: The Insurance Industry’s Role in Social Change. In this article Aneiros examines the role of D&O insurance in shaping corporate directors’ decisions around diversity, equity, and inclusion. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Paolo Saguato, assistant professor of law at George Mason University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his articles Financial Regulation, Corporate Governance, and the Hidden Costs of Clearinghouses and The Ownership of Clearinghouses: When 'Skin in the Game' Is Not Enough, the Remutualization of Clearinghouses. In these articles, Saguato conducts political-economy analyses of securities clearinghouses and their systemic risks. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Benjamin Ho, associate professor of economics at Vassar College, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his paper Do Investors Care about Corporate Apologies? Evidence from Chemical Disasters, which he co-authored with Sijia Fan, Qi Ge, and Lirong Ma. In this paper, Ho and his co-authors study impacts on stock prices when companies apologize after chemical disasters. They find that although admissions of error might help restore trust with the public and regulators, those apologies can also reduce investors’ perceptions of firm competence, leading to drops in stock price. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Melissa Jacoby, professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her essay Shocking Business Bankruptcy Law. In this essay Jacoby examines what she dubs “ad hoc” and “off-label” business bankruptcies as opportunistic uses of Chapter 11 for purposes other than managing overindebtedness. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

David Kershaw, dean and professor at the London School of Economics Law School, and Edmund Schuster, associate professor at the London School of Economics Law School, join the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss their article The Purposive Transformation of Corporate Law. In this article Kershaw and Schuster frame the long-standing question of what is a corporation’s purpose in terms of aspirational mission-purpose. This frame, the authors argue, in turn requires either that shareholders be purposeful themselves or that corporate law insulate purpose from shareholders. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Four scholars join the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss their recent work on unicorn startups. Abraham Cable, professor of law at the University of California Hastings, is the author of Time Enough for Counting: A Unicorn Retrospective; Alexander Platt, associate professor of law at the University of Kansas, is the author of Unicorniphobia; Matthew Wansley, assistant professor of law at Yeshiva University, is the author of Taming Unicorns; and Amy Deen Westbrook, professor of law at Washburn University, is the author of We('re) Working on Corporate Governance: Stakeholder Vulnerability in Unicorn Companies. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Tom Gosling, executive fellow of finance at the London Business School, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article CEO Compensation: Evidence From the Field, which he co-authored with Alex Edmans of the London Business School and Dirk Jenter of the London School of Economics. In their article, Gosling and his co-authors conduct an interview-based field study of public-company directors and investors on how boards set CEO compensation and under what constraints they make those decisions. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Harwell Wells, professor of law at Temple University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article Shareholder Meetings and Freedom Rides: The Story of Peck v Greyhound. In this article, Wells recounts the efforts of Bayard Rustin and James Peck to use the proxy rules and their purchase of Greyhound shares to protest the bus company’s segregationist policies. These efforts were ultimately thwarted, Wells explains, by the SEC’s re-writing of the proxy rules to undermine civil-rights shareholder activism. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.

Afra Afsharipour, professor of law at the University of California, Davis, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Women and M&A. In this empirical study Afsharipour highlights the dearth of women among lead lawyers in the largest public-company M&A deals. She relates this gap to prior literatures on board and executive gender diversity and proposes steps to help close it. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, with editing by Daniel Hamilton, a third-year student at Brooklyn Law School.