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At the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law & Policy, an important project is underway on The Central Bank of the Future.  It’s a great, timely topic.  The project’s website explains that: “In partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, this project explores the mandate and design of central banks to consider whether they might play an even stronger role in promoting financial inclusion, financial health, and a more inclusive economy. More broadly, it creates a vision for what the “central bank of the future” might look like and focuses in particular on how emerging technology could support central banks in their efforts to promote financial inclusion, growth, and development.”

The March 20, 2020, deadline is fast approaching to submit academic papers, policy proposals, and pitches for technology products or services to the Central Bank of the Future Conference (w/ co-host Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), November 16-17, 2020.  A link to all of the details of the call for papers is here.

At this point, we’re a bit past the New Year, but you might still be thinking about the conferences you’ll attend in 2020, right?  Here are some great ideas:   

The Academy of Legal Studies in Business has a great annual conference in early August.  This year it’s in Providence, Rhode Island, August 4-8, 2020.  I’ve never been to Providence, but I hear it’s lovely.  I can’t wait! 

The Academy also has a number of regional conferences.  Check out all the options (if I missed one, send me an email)!

Canadian ALSB Annual Conference April 30-May 2, 2020 (Toronto, Canada)

Great Lakes ALSB, Fall 2020 (Grand Rapids area, Michigan – check back for more info)

Mid-Atlantic Academy of Legal Studies in Business, April 23-25, 2020 (Atlantic City, NJ)

Mid-West Academy of Legal Studies in Business, March 26-27, 2020 (Chicago, Illinois)

North Atlantic Regional Business Law Association Annual Conference, April 4, 2020 (Easton, Massachusetts)

North East Academy of Legal Studies in Business, May 1-3, 2020 (Lakeville, Connecticut)

Pacific Northwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business, April 23-25, 2020 (Vancouver, Canada)

Pacific Southwest Academy of Legal Studies in Business, February 13-16, 2020 (Palm Springs, California)…

Call for Proposals – Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Corporate Law

DEADLINE: Friday November 1, 2019

The U.S. Feminist Judgments Project seeks contributors of rewritten judicial opinions and private contracts, and commentaries on rewritten opinions and contracts, for an edited collection tentatively titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Corporate Law.  This edited volume is part of a collaboration among law professors and others to rewrite, from a feminist perspective, key judicial decisions in the United States.  The initial volume, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, and Bridget J. Crawford, was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press.  Cambridge University Press has approved a series of Feminist Judgments books. In 2017, Cambridge University Press published the tax volume titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions. Other volumes in the pipeline include rewritten opinions in the areas of reproductive justice, family law, torts, employment discrimination, trusts and estates, and health law. More information about the project can be found at https://law.unlv.edu/us-feminist-judgments.

Corporate law volume editors are Anne Choike, Usha R. Rodrigues and Kelli Alces Williams. The corporate law volume’s advisory panel is comprised of Alina Ball; Lisa Fairfax; Theresa Gabaldon; Joan…

Friend-of-the-BLPB Seth Oranburg informs me that the call for papers is now open for the #Futurelaw 4.0 Junior Faculty Workshop, offering newer scholars the opportunity to present and respond to research and writing in law-and-technology areas of endeavor.  Details (including how to apply for inclusion) are available at www.duq.edu/future-law-4.  The workshop is to be held on November 22, 2019.  Submissions are due on October 14, and complete drafts are due on November 8.  

Please spread the word quickly!  This sounds like an exciting opportunity, but there is a short fuse on applications.

Call for Papers for Section on Law & the Social Sciences Program at the AALS Annual Meeting

The Section on Law & Social Sciences is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which one or two additional presenters may be selected for the section’s program panel to be held during the AALS 2020 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The panel is entitled “Empirical Research in Business Law: Works in Progress,” and the panelists will summarize the methods and/or results of their current qualitative or quantitative empirical research projects as works in progress.

Form and Length of Submission:

The Section welcomes relevant submissions in the form of research proposals, preliminary pilot studies, or even nearly completed projects with results. Junior scholars are particularly encouraged to submit. Submissions should incorporate at least a brief (3-5 page) summary or abstract of the project.

Submission Method and Due Date:

Papers should be submitted electronically to David Kwok (dkwok@uh.edu). The due date for submission is September, 20, 2019. Authors selected will be notified by September 27, 2019. The Call for Papers presenters will be responsible for paying their registration fee and hotel and travel expenses.

Inquiries or Questions:

Call for Papers
AALS Section on Securities Regulation—2020 AALS Annual Meeting
Emerging Voices in Securities Regulation
Works-in-Progress Program
January 2-5, 2020
Washington, DC

The AALS Securities Regulation section invites proposals for its “Emerging Voices in Securities Regulation” works-in-progress workshop at the 2020 AALS Annual Meeting.  The workshop will bring together junior and senior securities regulation scholars for the purpose of giving junior scholars feedback on their scholarship and helping them prepare their work for the spring law review submission cycle.  A junior scholar is any untenured full-time faculty member as of January 2, 2020. 

FORMAT:  The program will involve multiple simultaneous roundtables, with one junior scholar, one or two senior scholars, and interested observers at each table.  Junior scholars’ presentations of their drafts will be followed by oral comments from senior scholars and further discussion, as time permits. 

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:  Junior scholars who are interested in participating in the program should send an abstract (or longer summary) or draft-in-progress to Professor Eric C. Chaffee, Chair of the AALS Securities Regulation Section, at Eric.Chaffee@utoledo.edu, on or before September 16, 2019.  The cover email should state the junior scholar’s institution, tenure status, number of years in his or her current position, and any previous positions…

The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased to invite submissions for its Fifth Workshop on Comparative Business and Financial Law to be held on February 7-8, 2020 at the University of Akron School of Law in Akron, Ohio. The purpose of the workshop is to highlight, develop, and promote the scholarship of new and younger comparativists in accounting, banking, bankruptcy, corporations, commercial law, economics, finance, and securities.

The deadline to submit proposals is October 25, 2019.  For more information, please see the Call for Papers.

Screenshot 2019-07-05 15.51.43

The dark side of entrepreneurial finance

Editors: Arvind Ashta, Olivier Toutain

Theme of the special issue

Whether we are talking about start-ups, more recently “grow up” or more broadly about company creation-takeover, entrepreneurial finance attracts a lot of attention, from the entrepreneurs’ side and from the side of private and public financing organisations and the media. Entrepreneurial finance includes Founder’s equity, Love Money, Business Angel, Venture Capital, LBO Funds, banks, IPOs and various alternative financing treated as shadow banking: micro-credit, loan sharking, leasing, crowdfunding, Initial Coin Offerings, among others (Block, Colombo, Cumming, & Vismara, 2018; Wright, Lumpkin, Zott, & Agarwal, 2016).

Financing is considered as an inherent dimension of the entrepreneurial development process (Panda, 2016; Yunus, 2003). Without financing, there is no investment and, therefore, little chance of starting a business with adequate production tools and an organization capable of absorbing the trials and tribulations of starting and developing entrepreneurial activities. Without funding, the risk of lack of legitimacy is also high: what does it mean in the entrepreneurial ecosystem not to have the support of one or more funding agencies? More so in the start-up world! Is that conceivable? Finally, can the entrepreneur now free himself from financial support, even if he does not really need it to start his business? If the reasoning is pursued further, does the entrepreneur have a choice? In other words, is it possible to create and develop your company without mobilizing the financial resources of the territory? Without entering into a financial system and ecosystem that regulates the creation and takeover of companies in a territory? Or a system that pushes the entrepreneur to finance so much that the system itself collapses by bringing forth a financial crisis (Boddy, 2011; Diamond & Rajan, 2009; Donaldson, 2012; Guérin, Labie, & Servet, 2015; Mishkin, 2011).

Applying for funding today is often considered as a difficult adventure: is it really a fighter’s path given the particularly numerous mechanisms in France? But are they also numerous in Europe? In the world? Is the cost of financing transparent or hidden (Attuel-Mendes & Ashta, 2013)? In any case, to adventure is to walk and remove obstacles while following a guide… often at the funder’s request… which is often called coaching or mentoring. Or following the guide, sometimes – or often, depending on the reader’s appreciation – results in respecting rules, imposed steps, in short, to adopt a good conduct… to such an extent that the entrepreneur can lose track of his North Star, or at least part of his project, modified by “pitching” and integrating the comments, suggestions, strong suggestions of potential funders… In other words, if we push the reflection further, the accompanying logic proposed in the form of good intentions by the funders of an ecosystem, are they not likely, by force, to respond to external constraints, to generate effects opposite to expectations: inhibited entrepreneurs, whose project has lost its originality, vitality and excellence through the coaching or mentoring of initially imagined value creation (Collewaert, 2009)? Isn’t the finance injected into the support systems finally a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of entrepreneurship? In other words, if it constitutes an unprecedented measure of support for entrepreneurial growth in the world, does it not at the same time generate “antipreneurial” effects? Normative and highly biased, do financial actors deserve such a place in the creative process? What is it that basically legitimizes their central place? (Bateman, 2010; Sinclair, 2012) What is the hidden face of entrepreneurial finance (Henderson & Pearson, 2011; Krohmer, Lauterbach, & Calanog, 2009; Toe, Hollandts, & Valiorgue, 2017)?

The purpose of this issue is to extract itself from the normative fields and discourses that highlight, in the vast majority of cases, the important role of finance in the development of entrepreneurship, whether purely economic, social or environmental. In other words, we are asking ourselves here about the secondary, even hidden, effects of finance on the emergence and development of new companies in France and around the world.

The proposals will address, among other things, the following topics:

  • What place does finance occupy today in the feeling of success and accomplishment of an entrepreneurial activity?
  • How do entrepreneurs interact with potential funders?
  • How do funders dialogue with each other?
  • How do funders make their investment decisions? Rationality, Short termism, information asymmetry….
  • How do entrepreneurs and funders negotiate? On which elements of the project or company? Are there any losers? What is lost in the process?
  • How does the relationship between entrepreneurs and funders change over time?
  • Can finance harm the value creation produced by entrepreneurial activity? Can it affect entrepreneurial freedom?
  • Is it possible to free oneself from financing circuits? How?

Finally, what is the dark side of entrepreneurial finance?

Timeline:

Submission of texts: By April 30, 2020 at the latest

Publication: March 2021

[I have omitted here the list of references supporting the text citations.  Please contact me by email if you would like a .pdf copy of the call for papers that includes the list.  There is more information after the jump.]

The AALS Section on Agency, Partnership, LLCs, and Unincorporated Entities is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which up to three presenters will be selected for the section’s program to be held during the AALS 2020 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The program will explore decisions and strategies for choice of business form. As unincorporated business forms have matured and those who use them have learned their advantages and disadvantages, key decisions about choice of form have changed in important and interesting ways. In addition, accelerating advances in technology promise to play surprising roles in the formation and operation of unincorporated firms. 

Submission Information: 

Please submit an abstract or draft of an unpublished paper to Kelli Alces Williams at kalces@law.fsu.edu before August 5, 2019.  Please remove the author’s name and identifying information from the submission. Please include the author’s name and contact information in the submission email. 

Papers will be selected after review by members of the Executive Committee of the Section. Authors of selected papers will be notified by August 30, 2019. The Call for Paper presenters will be responsible for paying their registration fee, hotel, and travel expenses. 

Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted…

AALS SECTION ON TRANSACTIONAL LAW AND SKILLS Markets & Regulation: The Shifting Context of Transactional Practice 2020 AALS Annual Meeting Washington, D.C.

The AALS Section on Transactional Laws and Skills is pleased to announce a call for papers for its program, “Markets and Regulation: The Shifting Context of Transactional Practice,” to be held at the AALS 2020 Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. on “Pillars of Democracy: Law, Representation, and Knowledge.” This session will explore the changing regulatory context of transactional legal practice, which is rapidly evolving in response to new innovations and challenges across a range of markets. Emerging issues range from privacy law and cybersecurity, to national security concerns, antitrust, and international trade and investment, to the prospect of new regulatory responses to climate change and other environmental threats. The forms these regulatory responses take are also diverse, including not only traditional public regulation, but also private governance, which draws upon the efforts of NGOs, trade associations, and international organizations.

In addition to paper presentations, the program will feature a panel focusing on how to incorporate regulatory concepts and issues across the transactional curriculum, including in clinics and other experiential courses, as well as in doctrinal courses. This program…