Michael L. Wachter, William B. and Mary Barb Johnson Professor of Law and Economics, Emeritus, passed away on September 3. He was a prominent cross-disciplinary scholar in the fields of law and economics, with his research focusing on topics of corporate law, corporate finance, and labor law and economics.
In 1970, when he joined the Penn faculty, he held full professorships in three of Penn’s schools: Arts and Sciences, where he was a 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 grew to become a nationally recognized center at the intersection of law and business, bringing together at roundtables and conferences with eminent law and finance scholars, judges, lawyers, private equity and hedge fund managers, and general counsels of major public corporations to discuss cutting edge issues in corporate governance and corporate finance.
Wachter served as Deputy Provost of the University of Pennsylvania from July 1995 to January 1998, and as Interim Provost from January to December 1998.
Corporate Law| Corporate Finance| Corporate Theory Seminar
Adolf Berle, E. Merrick Dodd and the New American Corporatism of 1932, in RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON THE HISTORY OF CORPORATE LAW (Harwell Wells ed., Edward Elgar 2018) (with William B. Bratton).
