
Through September 24, 2020
Webinar
Sep. 10
The Coase‐Sandor Institute for Law and Economics is hosting a series of advanced lectures in Law and Economics, featuring the cutting‐edge work of its faculty. The Fall 2020 Global Lectures Series will take place over five dates, September 10–24. All lectures are open to any interested party.
All lectures start at 8:30 pm Beijing time.
Lectures are 60 minutes long, with some time for Q&A.
Click HERE to join the lecture, password: Coase2020.
Registration is not required for attendance, only for active participation in Q&A.
“Dark Patterns”: Online Manipulation of Consumers
Lior J. Strahilevitz
Moderated by Xin Dai, Peking University Law School
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020
Firms exploit consumers’ cognitive biases to manipulate them into buying goods or services they do not want. Professor Strahilevitz will describe the use of a particular strategy—“Dark Patterns,” present his new experimental research on their troubling effectiveness, and assess the role of market forces and legal regulation in constraining their use.
Innovation During Pandemics: Patents, Prizes, and More
Daniel Hemel
Moderated by Haitian Lu, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2020
The Covid‐19 crisis added new urgency to an old debate: patents versus prizes as mechanisms for innovation. It also cast light on other innovation policies, including public‐private partnerships and drug‐development tax credits. Professor Hemel will evaluate innovation incentives in a pandemic, within a framework informed by economics, political science, and distributive justice.
Coordinating Behavior Through Law and Norms: Covid‐19, Climate Change, and Beyond
Lee Fennell
Moderated by Ruoying Chen, Peking University
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
Tackling large, volatile problems like Covid‐19 and climate change requires coordinating many small, interacting decisions. In this talk, Professor Fennell discusses how law and norms might be leveraged to assemble the cooperation necessary to avoid catastrophic outcomes and pursue desirable ones.
Personalized Law
Omri Ben‐Shahar
Moderated by Florence G'Sell, Université de Lorraine
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2020
Personalized Law—rules that vary person by person—may be a profound revolution in law’s future. A legal norm aimed for the “reasonable person” could be replaced by a multitude of rules—each actor with their own “reasonable you” standard. Weaker consumers would receive stronger protections; borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures, and default rules
would vary across people. In this lecture, Professor Ben‐Shahar discusses his forthcoming book, Different Rules for Different People.
The Scope of Normative Law and Economics
Eric A. Posner
Fernando Gomez, Pampeu Fabra University
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
Normative law and economics remains controversial decades after its emergence, despite its successes in legal scholarship. Many of its proponents have exaggerated its value for policy while discounting other methods. Professor Posner examines the premises of normative law and economics and explains when such work is more successful. He argues that even the more successful research can be properly put to use only if additional factors are reintroduced into analysis prior to application.