Ph.D. Education

At the Center for Law & Economics, Ph.D. students typically have a background in law or a related social science field. They receive a tailor-made education which often focuses on acquiring methodological knowledge from other social sciences. Areas of recent PhD theses and projects have included copyright law, patent litigation, contract law, tort law, regulatory design, law & tech, the regulation of disintermediated financial systems, automated decision-making, and judicial behavior (EU, Switzerland and the U.S.). Former and current external co-examinors include Alessandro Acquisti (Carnegie Mellon), Ryan Bubb (NYU), Dan Burk (UC Irvine), Ben Depoorter (UC Hastings), Stuart Graham (Georgia Tech), Benjamin Lauderdale (LSE), Dan Rubinfeld (UC Berkeley), David Schwartz (Northwestern), Heike Schweitzer (FU Berlin), Christopher Sprigman (NYU), and Wen Wen (Texas). For more information, please contact Prof. Elliott Ash, Stefan Bechtold or Alexander Stremitzer.

Prof. Stefan Bechtold is involved in the organization of two annual law & economics courses for doctoral students at the external page Study Center Gerzensee. The Study Center is a foundation of the Swiss National Bank. For more information, please consult the external page website of the Study Center.