W&M Law School’s Center for Law and Markets Hosts Merritt B. Fox on “The New Stock Market”
New Stock Market Professor Merritt B. Fox of Columbia Law School visited the Center for the Study of Law and Markets to discuss ideas in his latest book, “The New Stock Market: Law, Economics, and Policy.” Photo by David F. Morrill
On November 8, William & Mary Law School’s Center for the Study of Law and Markets hosted a public lecture by Professor Merritt B. Fox, “The New Stock Market: Law, Economics, and Policy,” based on his latest book.
In his introduction, Prof. Kevin Haeberle, a faculty fellow of the Center and host of the event, described the book as being based on Fox’s formal effort over the past decade of assembling and leading a group of legal academics, economic and business academics, and market participants.
“It’s a book and a project that is based—as the title suggests—on law, economics and policy, and it brings all these different groups together toward one project and one aim,” Haeberle said.
The idea, Haeberle said, “will hopefully lead to improved regulation in the area.”
“Why ‘The New Stock Market’?” Fox asked as he began his lecture. “Because the world really has changed in a huge way in the last couple of decades in terms of how securities, and particularly equities, are traded.”
Fox described how, 20 years ago, the trading of public-company stock was generally concentrated in one forum, either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ—venues where human hands determined the prices at which things were bought or sold.
“Today, a company like Intel or IBM or Facebook is traded in probably 60 different competing trading venues,” Fox said. With the rise of computers and “electronic limit order books,” he explained, none of these transactions involve human hands or human brains.
To listen to Fox’s full lecture and subsequent Q&A, please visit our SoundCloud page.
Fox is Michael E. Patterson Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is Co-Director of the Center for Law and Economic Studies and co-director of the Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets.
Fox teaches international securities regulation, securities regulation, corporate finance, and capital markets regulation at the Law School, which he joined as a faculty member in 2003.
About the Center for the Study of Law and Markets
The Center for the Study of Law and Markets at William & Mary Law School seeks to advance the understanding of the role of legal institutions in promoting well-functioning markets in a free society. Learn more.
About William & Mary Law School
Thomas Jefferson founded William & Mary Law School in 1779 to train leaders for the new nation. Now in its third century, America's oldest law school continues its historic mission of educating citizen lawyers who are prepared both to lead and to serve.