Business Scholarship Podcast

Charlotte Haendler, a PhD student in finance at Boston College, and Rawley Heimer, an assistant professor of finance at Boston College, join the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss their article The Financial Restitution Gap in Consumer Finance: Insights from Complaints Filed with the CFPB. In this paper, Haendler and Heimer use data from customer complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to examine how financial-services providers treat customers of different socioeconomic statuses. After finding racial and income gaps in the likelihood that complaints result in restitution, the authors examine potential mechanisms, including financial industry reaction to changing presidential administrations. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Charles McClure, assistant professor of accounting at the University of Chicago, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his paper Disclosure Processing Costs and Market Feedback Around the World, which was written with co-authors Shawn Shi and Edward Watts. In this paper, McClure and his co-authors exploit international introductions of centralized electronic disclosure systems, like the SEC's EDGAR database, to examine how disclosure technologies affect managers' learning from securities prices and investors' information processing. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Amanda Dixon, Madison Sherrill, and Hadar Tanne, students at Duke University School of Law, join the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss their article Damages as a Function of Fault: Willful Breach in M&A Contracts, which was written with co-authors Theresa Arnold and Mitu Gulati. In this article, Dixon, Sherrill, and Tanne investigate why sophisticated parties incorporate the concept of willful non-performance into contracts despite the black-letter doctrine that contract law follows strict liability for breaches. This article is the third by the Duke contracts group. Their prior papers are The Myth of Optimal Expectation Damages and 'Lipstick on a Pig': Specific Performance Clauses in Action. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Gregory Burke, a PhD student in accounting at Duke University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his paper SEC Rule 14a-8 Shareholder Proposals: No-Action Requests, Determinants, and the Role of SEC Staff. In this paper, Burke examines shareholder proposals submitted by firms to the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance for no-action relief. He tests whether four determinants (legal characteristics, pressure, proposal attributes, and individual staff) are associated with higher probabilities of no-action relief being granted and finds that there are statistically significant associations for each. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Laura Coordes, associate professor of law at Arizona State University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Bespoke Bankruptcy. This article considers instances in which debtors require bankruptcy-like protections despite not fitting within the Bankruptcy Code's existing chapters. Coordes offers examples of how Congress addresses these scenarios through "bespoke bankruptcy" provisions, which she concludes sometimes fill important needs even as they raise new concerns about the nature of bankruptcy law. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Emily Strauss, clinical professor of law at Duke University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Is Everything Securities Fraud?. In this article, Strauss analyzes the extent to which corporate harms to non-shareholders—such as victims of oil spills, tainted medicines, or defective automobiles—come to serve as the basis for securities litigation. Based on her findings, she concludes that this event-driven securities litigation could have deterrent effects but is likely a suboptimal mechanism for mitigating harms to non-shareholder victims of corporate misconduct. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Asaf Raz, a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article Mandatory Arbitration and the Boundaries of Corporate Law. In this article, Raz considers whether case developments point toward mandatory arbitration clauses being incorporated into corporate charters and bylaws, which he predicts would have a negative impact on corporate governance. He further examines whether a contractarian view of the corporation—which, under the Federal Arbitration Act, could justify such provisions—should hold or whether corporate law should be viewed as a distinct body of law. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Kish Parella, associate professor of law at Washington & Lee University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her works Improving Social Compliance in Supply Chains and Compliance as an Exchange of Legitimacy for Influence. In these works, Parella examines the legal institutions and reputational mechanisms that foster human-rights compliance by transnational enterprises, as well as how that compliance might be influenced by developments like the draft UN business-and-human-rights treaty. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Carlos Berdejó, professor of law at Loyola Law School, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his article Financing Minority Entrepreneurship. In this article, Berdejó examines barriers faced by minority-owned businesses and frames information asymmetry as a cause of racial disparities in entrepreneurship. He also uses this framework in explaining why policy interventions designed to foster minority-owned businesses have failed to correct those disparities. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.

Episode Notes Anat Alon-Beck, assistant professor of law at Case Western Reserve University, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss her article Alternative Venture Capital: The New Unicorn Investors. In this article, Alon-Beck examines the emergence of "alternative" venture capitalists—including family offices, high-net-worth individuals, and sovereign-wealth funds—and how their participation in financing affects governance arrangements in high-growth unicorn startups. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. here