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Tel: 215.898.7852
Fax: 215.573.2025
Email: mwachter@law.upenn.edu
Expertise
- Corporations
- Law and Economics
- Corporate Finance
Bio
Michael Wachter is a prominent cross-disciplinary scholar in the fields of law and economics, with his current research focusing on topics of corporate law, labor law and economics.
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Michael Wachter is a prominent cross-disciplinary scholar in the fields of law and economics, with his current research focusing on topics of corporate law, labor law and economics. Since 1970, when he joined the Penn faculty, he has held full professorships in three of Penn’s schools: Arts and Sciences, where he has been professor of economics since 1976; the Wharton School, where he was professor of management, 1980-92; and the Law School, where he became professor of law and economics in 1984. In that year he also took on the directorship of the Institute for Law and Economics.
Under his leadership, ILE has grown to become a nationally regarded think tank for areas at the intersection of law and business, using the tools of economics to understand the law and analyzing the impact of law on the global economy and the role that economics plays in fashioning legal policy. The law and economics approach takes on a real-world aspect through the roundtable conferences and other programs that Wachter organizes with ILE co-director Edward Rock, bringing together academics with members of the bar and judiciary for focused, off-the-record interchange around current issues in corporate governance, corporate finance, labor law, and bankruptcy.
Wachter's talents as an administrator have been recognized at the University level; he served as Deputy Provost of the University of Pennsylvania from July 1995 to January 1998, and as Interim Provost from January to December 1998.
Outside of Penn, Wachter has consulted for private corporations as well as government agencies such as the Postal Service, the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, and the Council of Economic Advisors. He has served as a commissioner on the Minimum Wage Study Commission and as a senior advisor to the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.
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Representative Professional Positions
Penn Law - William B. Johnson Professor of Law & Economics (1993 -); Professor (1984-1993)
U.S. Postal Service - Consultant (1980 -)
Penn - Interim Provost (1998); Deputy Provost (1995-98); Faculty Assistant to the President (1975-79)
Commissioner, Minimum Wage Study Commission, Congressional Commission - established by Public Law 95-151, 95th Congress (1978-81)
Representative Publications
The Short and Puzzling Life of the “Implicit Minority Discount”, U. PA. L. REV. (forthcoming) (with Lawrence Hamermesh).
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Labor Unions: A Corporatist Institution in a Competitive World, 155 U. PA. L. REV. 581 (2007).
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The Fair Value of Cornfields in Delaware Appraisal Law, 31 J. CORP. L. 119 (2005) (with Lawrence Hamermesh).
Theories of the Employment Relationship: Choosing Between Norms and Contracts, in THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WORK AND THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP (B.E. Kaufman, ed., Champaign: IRRA, 2004).
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Corporate Policy and the Coherence of Delaware Takeover Law, 152 U. PA. L. REV. 523 (2003) (with Richard E. Kihlstrom).
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Judging Unions' Future Using a Historical Perspective: The Public Policy Choice Between Competition and Unionization, 2 J. LAB. RES. 339 (2003).
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Corporate Control Transactions, 152 U. PA. L. REV. 463 (2003) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Takeover Defense When Financial Markets Are (Only) Relatively Efficient, presented at the ILE Corporate Governance Roundtable, April 2002 and the Preferences and Rationale Choice Symposium, March 2002.
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Dangerous Liaisons: Corporate Law, Trust Law, and Interdoctrinal Legal Transplants, 96 NW. U. L. REV. 651 (2002) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Meeting by Signals, Playing by Norms: Complementary Accounts of Nonlegal Cooperation in Institutions, 36 U. RICH. L. REV. 423 (2002) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Islands of Conscious Power: Law, Norms, and the Self-Governing Corporation, 149 U. PA. L. REV., 1619 (June 2001). Also published in 44 CORP. PRAC. COMMENTATOR 115 (2002) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Difficulties of Regulation When Wage Costs Are the Major Cost, FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN POSTAL REFORM (Michael A. Crew & Paul R. Kleindorfer eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001) (with Barry T. Hirsch & James W. Gillula).
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Waiting for the Omelet to Set: Match-Specific Assets and Minority Oppression in the Close Corporation, in CONCENTRATED CORPORATE OWNERSHIP, (Randall Morck ed., NBER/Univ. of Chicago 2000), also published in 24 J. Corp. L. 913 (1999) and 42 CORP. PRACT. COMMENTATOR 1 (2000) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Postal Service Compensation and the Comparability Standard, 18 RES. LAB. ECON. 243 (1999) (with Barry T. Hirsch & James W. Gillula).
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Tailored Claims and Governance: The Fit Between Employees and Shareholders, EMPLOYEES & CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (Margaret Blair & Mark J. Roe eds., Brookings Institution 1999) (with Edward B. Rock).
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Asset Restructuring and Union Bargaining, NEW PALGRAVE DICTIONARY OF LAW AND ECONOMICS (1998) (with Edward B. Rock).
The Enforceability of Norms and the Employment Relationship, 144 U. PA. L. REV. 1913 (1996) (with Edward B. Rock).
Union Effects on Nonunion Wages: Evidence from Panel Data on Industries and Cities, 49 INDUS. & LAB. REL. REV. 20 (1995) (with David Neumark).
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For additional publications, please consult
Current & Recent Research
Current Working Papers
Corporate Governance and Managerial Incentives Under Alternative Legal Regimes (with Richard Kihlstrom, ILE Working Paper 2006).
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