FOR 2774:  Foundations of Law and Finance

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392809952

The mission of the Center for Advanced Studies “Foundations of Law and Finance” is to enhance our understanding of how (financial) markets respond to law as a dynamic and evolutionary system and how theoretical and empirical scholarship should optimally reflect these insights. It aims to connect the comparative strengths of the disciplines involved to improve our understanding of the interdependency of law and finance by a more fundamental questioning of methodologies and unreserved rethinking of research questions. Arguably, many negative results of misguided regulatory initiatives could be avoided if law and finance scholars liaised more intensely and developed more holistic approaches for assessing the medium-to-long-term impact of reforms of the legal framework for financial market transactions. The Center aims to provide a significant impulse to the academic literature and prevent a research culture of disciplines working in their silos. The goal is that interdisciplinary work, particularly on understanding the impact of institutions and (financial) regulation on market outcomes, becomes the standard instead of the exception. The standards of academic research in the field of the Center’s work program should ultimately improve to provide more reliable advice to policymakers on the intended and unintended consequences of their actions. In the long term, the Center also aims to establish interdisciplinary research in law and finance as a center of gravity at the House of Finance at Goethe University (HoF). At the heart of the Center’s activities is the fellowship program. The visits of fellows who are globally recognized thought leaders or aspiring junior talents lead to intense interdisciplinary collaborations culminating in joint research output and ongoing projects across disciplines or disciplinary scholarship significantly enhanced by cross-disciplinary input. The Center became a nexus of collaborative initiatives that involved resident scholars, fellows, affiliated researchers, and other faculty members from law and finance. The long-term commitment of the two faculties involved and of the Leibniz Institute SAFE to the Center’s mission also led to several hiring decisions that strengthened the Center’s local network. In promoting a contextualized approach to the institutional analysis of financial market outcomes, the Center focuses on four core areas: • The pricing of law • The impact assessment of legislative intervention in corporate governance and corporate finance • The impact assessment of financial regulation • The political economy of regulation The Center could develop significant activities in all core areas during the first funding period. We intend to continue on this trajectory but will integrate political economy consideration into the remaining three core areas. In addition, we want to capitalize on our specific expertise and focus on green financial regulation.

• DFG Programme: Advanced Studies Centres in SSH

Projects

• Coordination Funds (Applicant Tröger, Tobias )
• Foundations of Law and Finance (Applicant Tröger, Tobias )
• Foundations of Law and Finance - Koordination (Applicant Tröger, Tobias )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Tobias Tröger
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Rainer Haselmann