Workshop in Empirical Law and Economics
Course Description
Goal: Empirical work has been increasingly used in policymaking, litigation, regulation, and research regarding many legal areas, including criminal law, torts, environmental law, administrative law, the litigation process, corporate law, securities regulation, and so forth and so on. Some HLS students are planning to conduct empirical research (for a fellowship, independent written work, an LLM thesis, or some other purpose), and the workshop will provide them with an opportunity to present their research project in a workshop session and get feedback and comments. Other HLS students are planning to conduct empirical research later on in the future, and the workshop will expose them to how empirical research is designed, conducted, critically thought about, and improved by addressing identified problems.
Sessions: This one-credit course will meet for six two-hour sessions. The first three sessions will take place in the fall semester – on the Thursdays of October 3, 10, and 17, and the last three sessions will take place in the spring semester – on the Wednesdays of February 19 and 26 and March 4. All the sessions will take place in WCC Room 3011 in the 7-9 pm slot, and a light supper will be served; students who have dietary restrictions of any kind should inform the course coordinator, Marina Apostol, at mapostol@law.harvard.edu. It is expected that most of the sessions of the course will be devoted to presentation by students on their empirical projects. If time remains, we might also have one or more presentation of current empirical projects by faculty.
Although workshop sessions will start only in early October, the instructor will be available to meet with students who wish to discuss the course throughout the first week of classes; if you wish to talk with the instructor during that week (or otherwise) please email her assistant, Marina Apostol at mapostol@law.harvard.edu, to get a slot.
Course requirements: There will be no examination. Instead, students will satisfy the course requirements in one of two ways: (a) by presenting an empirical project that they are working on or planning to work on in one of the sessions and submitting 3 one-page memos before any three of the sessions, or (b) by submitting 8 one-page memos before sessions. For students who choose to present, the grade will be based primarily on their presentation and their memos, but the grade could be raised in case of good class participation during sessions (as discussed further below). For students who choose not to present, the grade will be based primarily on the entire body of each student’s memos submitted during the term, but the grade could be raised in case of good class participation during sessions.
The presentation: Students who are doing an empirical project during 2019-2020 may choose to present their project in class. In such a case, they should prepare some materials that will be distributed to participants prior to their presentation to enable them to prepare brief memos on the subject. Students presenters may not yet have a draft of their paper, and in such a case the materials distributed prior to the presentation may include a brief write up (several pages long) that would provide a sense of their project (discussing, for example, such matters as the subject, its importance, the data used, the empirical approach, etc.) and the PowerPoint slides that they will present.
The memos: Students may choose to submit one or two memos (the nature of which is discussed further below) prior to any given session. Students will be required to submit a total of three or eight memos (depending on whether they are presenting or not).
The memo should focus on making point/s of the kind that could be raised in a seminar discussion of the project to be presented. To illustrate, students may discuss in their memos their view on whether the subject is a good one for an empirical analysis, their comments or reactions to any analysis of the subject that the presenter has already done, additional related issues that could be worth examining, alternative explanations for any findings the presenter has already obtained, potential policy implications of the analysis, and so forth. Because students taking the course might substantially vary in their background and interests, students should feel free to focus on points and use approaches that best fit them.
As to the format and submission of memos, each submitted memo should be about one to two pages, 1.5-spaced. Because students taking the course might substantially vary in their background and interests, students should feel free to focus on points and use approaches that best fit them.
Each memo should be submitted as a Microsoft Word file (.doc or .docx) or a rich text file (.rtf). All memos should be submitted by 4:00 PM on the day of the session in which the paper will be discussed. Please submit by logging into Canvas with your Harvard ID and PIN. Once you have logged in and selected the Empirical Law and Finance course, you can submit memos by clicking on Assignments in the left-hand menu. Then select the appropriate session and upload your memo by clicking Submit Assignment in the right-hand menu.
Course materials: All the course materials will be PowerPoint presentations or draft papers that will be presented and discussed during workshop sessions. Materials will be made available prior to sessions on the Course Materials page of the course website on Canvas (canvas.harvard.edu), and in the copy center. When readings are available students will be notified by an announcement through the course website.
Attendance: Students are expected to attend sessions regularly, and students who have to miss a session for health or other reasons should contact the course coordinator. Because students submitting memos will have thought critically about the readings before each session, sessions are expected to contain a great deal of student discussion. It is hoped that all students will choose to participate in the discussion, and good class participation during workshop sessions would raise a student’s grade.
Optional additional credit: Students who wish to do so may choose to do an empirical project in conjunction with the workshop for an additional one or two credits.
Administrative issues: Any administrative questions should be emailed to the course coordinator, Marina Apostol, at mapostol@law.harvard.edu. If you have any technical problems with the submission of memos, please contact the student help desk at (617) 496-1316.