Roy Shapira

S.J.D. Candidate

Clark Byse Fellow

John M. Olin Corporate Governance Fellow

rshapira at sjd.law.harvard.edu

Dissertation

“Corporate Philanthropy and other ‘Non-Maximizing’ Corporate Behaviors”

In traditional models, business corporations are supposed to strictly maximize profits. My dissertation tries to shed light on exceptions to the rule: corporate behaviors which are not strictly profit-maximizing. The extreme example for such behaviors is corporate philanthropy: charitable contributions to some non-related third-party. Specifically, the dissertation is trying to shift the focus from the traditional “buying-goodwill” explanation (i.e., companies engage in pro-social sacrifices because stakeholders are willing to pay more for corporate goodness) to a signaling explanation (i.e., pro-social sacrifices mitigate asymmetric information about a firm’s fundamentals). The implications for focusing on the informational (rather than just emotional/cognitive) aspects of cooperative corporate behavior are then sketched: the new perspectives allows us to understand better concepts like reputation formation, corporate culture and corporate political influence; as well as pointing towards some policy implications (e.g., strengthening the case for introducing mandatory disclosure requirements).

Fields of Research and Supervisors

Comparative Corporate Governance with Professor Mark Roe, Harvard Law School, Overall Faculty Supervisor
Corporate Finance with Professor Lucian Bebchuk, Harvard Law School
Laws, Markets and Morals in the Commercial Context with Professor Robert Clark, Harvard Law School

Additional Research Interests

Corporate Governance
Economic Analysis of Law
Social Psychology’s Applications to Commercial Law (e.g., Group Behavior and Corporate Governance)
Sociobiology’s Applications to Commercial Law (e.g., Cooperative Corporate Behavior)

Education

Harvard Law School, S.J.D. Candidate 2009-Present
Harvard Law School, LL.M. Program 2008-2009
IDC, Israel, LL.M. 2006
IDC, Israel, LL.B., BA. 2005

Academic Appointments and Fellowships

Harvard University, Adjunct Lecturer (Economics), 2010-Present
John M. Olin Fellow and Fellow of the Program on Corporate governance, 2009-Present
Harvard Law School Graduate Program Fellow, Perspectives TA, 2010-Present
Harvard Law School Graduate Program Fellow, Writing Workshop TA, 2010-2012
Harvard Law School Graduate Program Fellow, LL.M. Advisor, 2009-2010

Representative Publications

Corporate Philanthropy as Signaling and Co-optation, 80 Fordham Law Review 1889 (2012).
Justice and Efficiency in Civil Procedure: A Novel Interpretive Approach, 7 IDC Law Review 75 (2007) (in Hebrew) (with Alon Klement)

Last Updated: August 22, 2012