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Comparative and empirical commercial law

Researchers at the EUI explore many topics of commercial law (widely understood), in particular corporate, insolvency, securities and financial law, as well as adjacent fields such as contract and consumer law. Such research often uses a comparative approach. For example, it examines whether EU and US law responds to market failures in these fields with different tools, and whether different regulatory approaches confirm or refute the view of ‘varieties of capitalism’. EUI research also scrutinises the need for comparative law to adjust its methods and outlook given that today’s comparative lawyers are bound to work in the spirit of interdisciplinarity and given the need to incorporate the impact of rules of transnational, international and global law. Empirical approaches are also increasingly relevant in this field. Starting with the studies on ‘law and finance’, it is now often discussed how far it is possible to provide evidence about the effect of legal rules in different areas of commercial law. Such empirical work also includes data collection about the operation of corporate governance at the firm level. Moreover, empirical approaches consider the role of courts, in particular how far we can identify forms of judicial dialogues and networks in commercial law, as well as further afield.