Stephan Tontrup
Law and Economics Fellow  2023-2024

Stephan Tontrup's research focuses on empirical legal studies and experimental law and economics, he is interested in jurisprudence and the effects of new technologies on legal policy, regulation, and private ordering. His empirical work focuses on contract law and contract design, privacy law and voting rights. He has also employed experimental methods for cross-cultural comparisons of preferences for institutions; this work has a special focus on China. Tontrup conducts laboratory, internet, and field experiments that allow him to analyze the cognitive mechanisms of decision-making within legal institutions. For his economics PhD he has in several empirical studies analyzed the economic consequences of failed expressive effects of the law. In recent years at NYU he has developed a theory of behavioral-self-management. The theory shows that people are not simply subjects to their biases like loss aversion or hyperbolic discounting but rather often able to control those biases, using legal institutions to mute their impact or even use own biases to their advantage--for example, in one set of his experiments people reduce their loss aversion to trade their entitlements; in another they utilize their loss aversion to raise their performance in fulfilling a work contract. Tontrup’s current work extends this theory into the area of social preferences for compliance with applications in contract law and corporate governance. His work has been published in many top legal and economic journals, including the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Legal Analysis, the Journal of Law and Social Inquiry, the Journal of International Law and Economics, the University of Arizona Law Review, the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, and the Journal of Economic Psychology.

Tontrup has received a PhD (JSD) in law with summa cum laude from the Max-Planck Institute for the Law of Collective Goods and the University of Bonn and is expecting to receive his PhD in Experimental Economics from the Max-Planck Institute of Economics and the University of Jena this Summer. He holds a JD from the University of Osnabrück and has worked on research positions for several years at NYU law, at the Max Planck Institute of Economics, the Max Planck Institute for the Law of Collective Goods and a Max Planck Research Group on the cognitive mechanisms of decision making.
 

Past Fellows

Adam Feher
Law and Economics Fellow  2021-2022

Adam Feher studies the commitment of human capital through formal economic modeling. In his recent research, he analyses optimal contracting with the so-called non-competition clauses. His other research interests are contract theory and the theory of the firm. Adam Feher received his BSc in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest and his Mphil from the Tinbergen Institute. He is expected to receive his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute in 2022.

Yijia Lu
Law and Economics Fellow  2018-2020

Yijia Lu studies the development and transition of institutions to resolve commercial disputes through formal economic modelling. His current research analyzes the rise of international commercial arbitration and arbitral innovations such as hybrid mechanisms. His research interests also cover contracts, comparative law and political economy. Yijia Lu received his J.D. from Stanford Law School, where was a recipient of the John M. Olin fellowship from 2011 to 2014. He received his A.B. in Physics from Princeton University in 2007. Yijia Lu was a postdoctoral fellow at the ESSEC Business School (École Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) in France under the Paris Seine Excellence Initiative from 2017-2018 prior to his current position at NYU. He expects to receive his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in December 2018.

Edward Fox
Law and Economics Fellow  2017-2018

Edward Fox's research focuses on individual and business taxation, as well as corporate and securities law. His work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Columbia Law Review.  Fox graduated from Yale Law School in 2015 where he served as an articles editor for the Journal on Regulation. He was twice awarded the Ralph K. Winter Prize for the best paper in law and economics and was also given the William Wang prize. After law school, he clerked for the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He expects to receive his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in October 2017 and also holds his B.A, magna cum laude, in history and economics from Columbia University.

Stephan Tontrup
Law and Economics Fellow  2015-2018

Stephan Tontrup's research focuses on the empirical analysis of contract law, contract design and voting rights. One strand of his work uses experimental methods for cross cultural comparisons of preferences for institutions; this work has a particular focus on China. Tontrup conducts laboratory, internet, and field experiments to analyze the cognitive mechanisms of decision-making within legal institutions. Before coming to NYU he has worked on debiasing institutions, for example, in one set of his experiments he shows that agents and corporate bodies reduce people`s loss aversion which allows them to trade their entitlements without being affected by their bias. At NYU Tontrup aims to broaden this work showing that people do not only get debiased by the institutions they work in, but that they are also deliberately using legal institutions to mute their biases. His work has been published in the Journal of Legal Studies, the University of Arizona Law Review and the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. 

Tontrup is finishing his PhD (JSD) in law from the Max-Planck Institute for Collective Goods and has completed his PhD-program in Experimental Economics at the Max-Planck Institute of Economics. He holds a JD from the University of Osnabrück. Before coming to NYU Law, he has worked on research positions at the Max Planck Institute of Economics, the Max Planck Institute for the Law of Collective Goods.
 

Laurence Tai
Law and Economics Fellow  2014-2015

Laurence Tai has written on topics in administrative law and policymaking, with information transparency and regulatory capture as major themes, and much of his work entails formal modeling of regulatory institutions. He earned his PhD in Public Policy and JD at Harvard in 2013, as well as an AB in environmental science and public policy in 2006. During his graduate studies, Laurence was a Terence M. Considine Fellow in Law and Social Sciences and received the Olin Prize for student writing in law and economics. Before coming to NYU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.

Yun-chien Chang 
Global Law and Economics Research Fellow  2014-2016 

Yun-chien Chang is an associate research professor at Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and serves as the deputy director of its Empirical Legal Studies Center. He was a visiting professor at Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Fall 2011. His current academic interests focus on economic, empirical, and comparative analysis of property law and land use law. Chang’s English articles have appeared in Journal of Legal Studies; Journal of Legal Analysis; Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; The University of Chicago Law Review; Notre Dame Law Review; Supreme Court Economic Review, among others.

His book in English, Private Property and Takings Compensation: Theoretical Framework and Empirical Analysis, a winner of Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, was published by Edward Elgar in 2013. Empirical Legal Analysis: Assessing the Performance of Legal Institutions, a book Chang edited, was published by Routledge in 2014. Law and Economics of Possession, an edited volume, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. His two books in Chinese, Eminent Domain Compensation in Taiwan: Theory and Practice and Empirical Studies of the Judicial Systems 2011 (the latter an edited volume), was published in 2013. He is working on a new book on economic analysis of property law in China and Taiwan. His academic achievement has won him The Best Poster Prize at 2011 CELS and several research grants.

Chang received his JSD and LLM degree from NYU School of Law, where he was also a Lederman/Milbank Law and Economics Fellow and a research associate at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Before going to NYU, Chang had earned LLB and LLM degrees at National Taiwan University and passed the Taiwan bar. Chang has had some working experience with prestigious law firms in Taiwan and served as a legal assistant for the International Trade Commission.

Jinghui Lim 
Law and Economics Fellow  2013-2014

Jinghui Lim's research focuses on monitoring and enforcement of environmental regulations. She graduated in 2013 from Vanderbilt's JD/PhD program in law and economics. At Vanderbilt, she served on the Vanderbilt Law Review as an articles editor and also earned the Archie B. Martin award for highest 1L GPA. Lim graduated from Duke University in 2006 with a BS in economics with a second major in computer science.

Yehonatan Givati 
Law and Economics Fellow  2010-2012

Yehonatan Givati studied law and economics at Hebrew University, where he earned his LLB in 2002 and his MA.in economics in 2005. After clerking for Justice Esther Hayut at the Israeli Supreme Court, Yehonatan pursued his graduate studies at Harvard University, where he earned his LLM in 2007, his SJD. in 2011, an MA in economics in 2011, and a PhD in economics in 2013. During his studies Yehonatan has been awarded several prizes, including a Fulbright Fellowship, an Olin Fellowship, and a research fellowship from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. After completing two years as a Post Graduate Research Fellow in Law and Economics at NYU Law, Yehonatan joined the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2012.