Professor Simon Deakin awarded the 2010 ECGI Allen & Overy Law Prize

On 7th May the winners of the 2010 Allen & Overy Law Working Paper prize were announced at a dinner held last night in Luxembourg to mark the 8th General Assembly of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).

The €5,000 prize for the best paper in the Law series sponsored by the international legal practice, Allen & Overy, was awarded to ‘How Do Legal Rules Evolve? Evidence from a Cross-Country Comparison of Shareholder, Creditor and Worker Protection’ by John Armour from the University of Oxford, Simon Deakin and Priya Lele from the University of Cambridge, and Mathias Siems from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and University of Cambridge. The winning paper is available to download from the SSRN website.

Eilis Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law, University of Cambridge Law Faculty and Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law (3CL) who chairs the Editorial Board that adjudicated the 2010 Law prize said:

“From the strong field of excellent papers published in Law Working Papers Series, the Editorial Board selected the Armour, Deakin, Lele and Siems paper as the outstanding contribution in 2009.  This paper presents findings from a new index of legal change which measures shifts in shareholder, creditor and labour protection in five countries (the UK, the USA, Germany, France and India) over a 35-year period (1970-2005). The index is distinctive in its time-series approach and in the depth of its analysis. By using longitudinal datasets on shareholder, creditor and worker protection, Armour et al cast light on some of the central claims of the legal origins hypothesis. The legal origins hypothesis – that legal institutions matter to economic development - has been one of the most important ideas to have emerged in the social sciences in recent years. The hypothesis has exerted considerable influence on the regulatory reform agenda in many countries. Through the refinements they make in quantitative research design and their insightful conclusions, Armour et al advance our understanding of the interconnections between law and development.”

Professor Deakin is pictured receiving his prize from Marc Feider, Senior Partner at Allen & Overy Luxembourg.  Photo courtesy of the ECGI.