John M. Olin Conference on Real Options and the Law

Friday and Saturday, October 1-2, 2004, Room WB128
Contact: Joyce Holt

Real options techniques are widely used in finance and economics to evaluate investment flexibility and to design multi-period strategies that maximize returns from flexibility. Legal scholars have begun to apply real options analysis to a range of legal contexts in which a party enjoys a discretionary right: for example, the right of an actor to commit a wrong (or breach a contract) and incur liability, the right of the innocent party to choose among remedies, the right to file a law suit and proceed through multi-staged litigation. This conference brings together scholars who have introduced options analysis to law in their prior writing, to examine a range of legal options.

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2004
9:15 a.m.	Joseph Grundfest, Stanford Law School Peter Huang, University of Minnesota Law School The Unexpected Value of Litigation Discussants: Paul Mahoney, University of Virginia School of Law; Alexander Triantis, University of Maryland School of Business.
10:45 a.m.	Break
11:00 a.m.	Michael Knoll and Reed Shuldiner, University of Pennsylvania Law School Real Options and Tax Law Discussants: Robert McDonald, Northwestern University School of Management; Jeff Strnad, Stanford Law School
12:30 p.m.	Lunch, Stone Dining Room, by reservation only.
1:45 p.m.	Ian Ayres, Yale Law School Paul Goldbart, University of Illinois Department of Physics Instantaneous Liability Rule Auctions: The Continuous Extension of Higher-Order Liability Rules Discussants: Bentley MacLeod, USC Law School/Department of Economics; Richard Brooks, Yale Law School
3:15 p.m.	Break
3:30 p.m.	Lee Anne Fennell, University of Illinois Law School Revealing Options Discussants: Albert Choi, University of Virginia School of Law/Department of Economics; George Triantis, University of Virginia School of Law
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2004
9:00 a.m.	Ronen Avraham, Northwestern University School of Law Incomplete Contracts with Asymmetric Information: The Option to Enforce Discussants: Avery Katz, Columbia University School of Law; Alan Schwartz, Yale Law School
10:30 a.m.	Break
10:45 a.m.	Oren Bar-Gill, Society of Fellows, Harvard University Pricing Legal Options: A Behavioral Perspective Discussants: Russell Korobkin, UCLA School of Law; Robert Scott, University of Virginia School of Law