Ph.D. candidate in Law and Economics, Samuel Miller, successfully defended his dissertation, “Economic and Empirical Analysis of Contractual Dispute Resolution,” on March 20. After five years of study, Miller will graduate with his Ph.D. in Law and Economics at Commencement in May.
Miller’s advisor is Professor of Law Paige Marta Skiba. Professors Andrew Daughety, Erin O’Hara O’Connor, and Edward Van Wesep (University of Colorado Boulder) comprise the rest of his dissertation committee.
Summary of dissertation
This dissertation uses Python-based programming to retrieve and analyze a sample of approximately 400,000 material contracts that companies filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission between 2001 and 2013, focusing on the dispute resolution mechanisms specified therein. The first chapter considers the effectiveness of two state-level efforts to attract dispute resolution business, examining how specialized “business courts” and the Revised Uniform Arbitration Act affected arbitration and choice-of-forum clause use in these material contracts. The second chapter examines whether and how companies and executives “customized” their arbitration clauses in response to Internal Revenue Code § 409A, which increased both the likelihood and the complexity of potential disputes between these parties. The third chapter considers how companies and executives responded when the Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit’s anomalous refusal to enforce employment-related arbitration clauses. Each chapter finds that contracting parties adjusted their dispute resolution provisions in response to the policy change(s) at issue – suggesting that for the sophisticated parties in my dataset, these provisions receive careful thought and are not mere “boilerplate.”