Conference on Law & Macroeconomics
Georgetown Law and IIEL hosted their first Law and Macroeconomics Conference in 2019 to engage diverse perspectives on the relationship between law and macroeconomics and evaluate it as a field of inquiry.
Upcoming & Past Conferences
5th Conference on Law & Macroeconomics
October 20 – 21, 2022
The macroeconomic instability of the 2020s continues to fuel economic, social, and political turmoil worldwide and to recast our understanding of law and macroeconomics. The ongoing crisis has opened up new and vitally important research opportunities. As we press on towards pandemic recovery and confront new challenges, the Fifth Conference on Law and Macroeconomics will focus on the law’s role in shaping a sustainable and resilient macroeconomy and on the role of macroeconomic policy in national, regional, and global governance.
Register for a free online virtual conference on October 20-21, 2022, that will continue to explore the connections between law and macroeconomics. Registrants will receive a full program with session times and Zoom links closer to the event.
Call for Papers (Closed)
We are now welcoming submissions for consideration to be presented at our 5th Conference on Law and Macroeconomics, taking place virtually from October 20 – 21, 2022, that will continue to explore connections between law and macroeconomics. Papers for consideration must be submitted here on or before September 15, 2022. Papers may address the role of law, regulation, and institutions in:
- Monetary policy (conventional or unconventional) including how it is impacted by payments systems (i.e. new platforms and technologies), and the effects and risks of unwinding QE;
- Financial regulatory policy (domestic or international) including its effect on the economy, its role in crisis containment and resolution, access to capital, and other aspects of financial inclusion;
- Fiscal policy, especially its role in mitigating the effects and frequency of economic downturns, and the roles of federal, state, and local governments in implementing fiscal policy. We are particularly interested in papers that explore the combination of expansionary fiscal policy and loose monetary policy;
- Moderating recessions through policy levers, including bankruptcy, contract, and property law; environmental, utility, and labor regulation; and investment and capital controls;
- Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) – Which coalitions decide how to implement ESG and what does this mean for investment?
- Law and data – Whose data is it anyway?
- Sovereign debt management, debt distress, debt relief and the possible consequences thereof;
- Can the legal profession deliver for citizens in the twenty-first century economy?
- Legal strategies to reduce inequality, including policies that affect labor and competition; access to housing, healthcare, and other public services; and personal, corporate and public debt relief.
Past Conferences
Conference on Law & Macroeconomics
September 27 – 28, 2019
In 2019, Georgetown Law and the Georgetown Institute for International Economic Law hosted the first Law and Macroeconomics Conference along with the Georgetown Law Professors, Anna Gelpern and Adam Levitin. The Conference and the accompanying volume of Law & Contemporary Problems (guest edited by Anna and Adam) engaged diverse perspectives on the relationship between law and macroeconomics, and evaluated what “Law and Macro” might look like as a field of inquiry. Watch a captioned recording of the conference here.
The Conference responded, in part, to the explosion in legal scholarship dealing with macroeconomic policy and financial stability topics – post-financial crisis – and to the growing volume of economic policy writing on macro-prudential regulation, crisis intervention, fiscal rules, and central bank governance. Further, Domestic and international implications of inequality and interdependence were increasingly resonating across disciplines.
Since at least the early 1990’s, law scholars have periodically observed that the law-and-economics movement confined itself to law-and-microeconomics, and have argued for deeper engagement with macroeconomics. Yet efforts to theorize the space at the intersection of law and macroeconomics were yet to catch up, until recently.
The Conference’s intention was to take a broad view of this space, without prejudging the outcome. Participants were encouraged to consider the design of fiscal and monetary policy institutions, public debt, financial regulation, and crisis response, contract and market architecture, antitrust, trade and development policy. It successfully teased out assumptions about decision-making, enforcement, and accountability that would normally reside outside the frame.
Speakers included: Randal K. Quarles, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision and Chair of the Financial Stability Board, delivered the opening remarks, and former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and former Federal Reserve Governor and Georgetown Law Professor Daniel K. Tarullo, featured in an evening conversation. View the entire program schedule.