Lucian Bebchuk

Lucian Bebchuk serves as the James Barr Ames Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance, and the Founding Director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School. Bebchuk is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inaugural Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Network, and Director of the SSRN Corporate Governance Network. Trained in both law and economics, Professor Bebchuk holds an LL.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Harvard Economics Department. His research focuses on corporate governance, law and finance, and law and economics. Upon electing him to membership in 2000, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences cited him as "[o]ne of the nation's leading scholars of law and economics," who "has made major contribution to the study of corporate control, governance, and insolvency." He currently serves as Senior Advisor to Dimensional Fund Advisors.

How the Start-Up Nation Could Fail

Lucian Bebchuk and Oliver Hart explain why Israel’s proposed legal transformation would undermine not only its democracy but also its economy. Israel’s ruling coalition is...

Twitter’s Corporate Leaders Pushed their Stakeholders under the (Musk) Bus

In a new study, we examine whether, in negotiating the sale to Elon Musk, Twitter’s corporate leaders took into account the commitments to employees...

Have Business Roundtable Companies Lived Up to Their Stakeholder Commitments?  

In 2019, more than 100 CEOs of US public companies signed a Business Roundtable statement in which they pledged to deliver value to all...

How Enlightened is Enlightened Shareholder Value?

There has been growing support for replacing the traditional corporate purpose with so-called “enlightened shareholder value,” which would guide firms to consider stakeholder interests...

The Flaws and Limits of ESG-Based Compensation

Companies increasingly use ESG metrics in their compensation packages for CEOs. A new empirical study suggests that this practice has questionable promise and produces...

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Put Corporate Stakeholder Promises to the Test

Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, corporate leaders pledged to look after all stakeholders, not just deliver value to shareholders. Did they live up...

For Whom Corporate Leaders Bargained: What the Past Can Teach Us About the Questionable Promise of Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism Today

The debate about stakeholder capitalism should seek to learn from our experience with constituency statutes, which authorized corporate leaders to take into account stakeholder...

The Illusory Promise of “Stakeholderism”: Why Embracing Stakeholder Governance Would Fail Stakeholders

Stakeholderism—granting corporate leaders discretion to give weight to the interest of all stakeholders—should not be expected to deliver its purported benefits to stakeholders. Furthermore,...

Towards the Giant Three: The Rise and Rise of the Big Three Index Funds

The Big Three index fund managers—BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors—hold a significant proportion of the stock of US public companies, and they...

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