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Penn Law and German students team up to produce scholarship on corporate governance

April 27, 2016

Penn Law and Goethe University students teamed up to produce research as part of the Global Research Seminar.
Penn Law and Goethe University students teamed up to produce research as part of the Global Research Seminar.
In the 2015-2016 Global Research Seminar “Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation,” U.S. and German students paired up to write original research papers comparing specific corporate governance issues in the United States and Germany.

In the 2015-2016 Global Research Seminar, Penn Law students had a chance to examine corporate governance and financial regulation from a global perspective, while teaming with German students to produce original scholarship.

Designed and taught by Penn Law professor Jill Fisch and Goethe University professor Brigitte Haar, the year-long course titled “Comparative Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation” paired U.S. and German students, who wrote original research papers comparing specific corporate governance issues in the United States and Germany. Topics ranged from executive compensation to corporate governance scandals. 

Each Penn Law student researched an issue of U.S. corporate governance, and his or her partner from Goethe University researched the German approach to the same issue. The teams then compared and analyzed the two corporate governance systems.

“People have compared German and U.S. corporate governance for a long time,” explained Fisch. Because both countries are global economic leaders with multi-national businesses and robust corporate law regimes, they are often looked to as models by other nations.

In the fall of 2015, the students from Goethe University came to the United States for a research visit. They and the students from Penn Law participated in a joint class at the law school. They visited the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in Washington, D.C., and met with judges from the Delaware Court of Chancery and the Delaware Supreme Court as well as experienced corporate law practitioners. The report on their research visit by Madhuri Jacobs-Sharma, Sharareh Zand, Michael Primbs, Anne-Marie Gerstner, and Fabian Brandt can be found here: [Corporate Governance Exchange Research Seminar Trip to US 2016].

In the spring of 2016, Penn Law students traveled to Frankfurt, Germany and Brussels, Belgium, where — along with their German partners — they visited the European Central Bank, and met with a variety of legal and policy officials from the European Union and the European Parliament.  In Frankfurt, the pairs of students also presented the results of their joint research projects to the seminar group. The report on this research trip by Daniel Velasquez Escobar LLM’16, Do Hee Jeong L’16, Konstantinos Georgiou LLM’16, Supawich Sirikanchana LLM’16, and Benjamin Lee LLM’16 can be found here: Corporate Governance Global Research Trip to Frankfurt & Brussels 2016.

The joint research papers prepared by the students are featured here and in Penn Law’s Legal Scholarship Repository.

Dual Class Shares, Katie Bental L’16 and Gabriel Walter

One-Tier vs. Two-Tier Board Structure: A Comparison Between the United States and Germany, David Block L’16 and Anne-Marie Gerstner

Shareholders vs Stakeholders Capitalism, Fabian Brandt and Konstantinos Georgiou LLM’16

The Structure of Corporate Ownership and Control, Sophia Dai L’16 and Christian Helfrich

Securities Regulation in Germany and the U.S., Marvin Fechner and Travis Tipton L’16

The Role of Private Litigation, Benedict Heil and Benjamin Lee LLM’16

Executive Compensation: Mannesmann v. Disney - A Case Study, Do Hee Jeong L’16 and Maurice Weidhaas

Notable Governance Failures: Enron, Siemens and Beyond, Michael Primbs and Clara Wang L’16

Executive Compensation, Moritz Reinhard and Daniel Velazquez Escobar LLM’16

The Manner in Which Corporate Law and Financial Regulations Are Made, Supawich Sirikanchana LLM’16 and Sharareh Zand

Gender Diversity on Corporate Boards: The Competing Perspectives in the U.S. and the EU, Tyler Winters L’17 and Madhuri Jacobs-Sharma