Professor Michal Barzuza Elected to Prestigious ALEA Board

University of Virginia School of Law professor Michal Barzuza has been elected to the American Law and Economics Association Board of Directors.

ALEA is the largest and most prestigious organization dedicated to the advancement of economic understanding of law and related areas of public policy and regulation. Each year it hosts the nation's most elite law and economics conference.

Barzuza, a seven-time conference participant who researches and teaches corporate law, corporate governance, corporate finance and law and economics, said she is looking forward to serving her three-year term.

"I'm excited and I'm honored," she said. "ALEA has really shaped law and economics research and our economic understanding of the law."

Barzuza is an award-winning researcher, whose analysis of Nevada’s attempt to compete with Delaware over incorporations by offering lax law was selected as one of the top 10 papers in corporate and securities law for 2012 in a national survey of corporate law professors and was reprinted in the Corporate Practice Commentator. Her empirical analysis, showing that Nevada corporations tend to file financial restatements at heightened rates, co-authored with David Smith of the McIntire School of Commerce, was selected for publication in the Review of Financial Studies, a top, peer-reviewed finance journal.

Founded in 1991, ALEA's membership includes academic and practicing lawyers and economists. The association holds an annual two-day meeting in May at which members present papers dealing with a wide variety of topics concerning the interrelation of law and economics. The association also publishes the American Law and Economics Review, a refereed journal.

At this year's meeting, UVA law professor Albert Choi and Geeyoung Min, a research assistant professor of law, presented papers. Barzuza, Choi and Quinn Curtis served as discussants, and Barzuza helped the organization to choose papers for the conference. 

Choi and UVA Law Dean Paul Mahoney have served on the board in the past.

Barzuza earned her S.J.D. from Harvard Law School, where her dissertation won the John M. Olin Prize for Outstanding Paper in Law and Economics. She earned an LL.B. and a B.A. in economics from Tel Aviv University.