AsLEA 2025 Annual Conference Successfully Concluded

Organised by the School of Law and Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (CCCL) at the City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), the Asian Law and Economics Association (AsLEA) 2025 Annual Conference (“Conference”) was successfully held from 13 to 15 August 2025.

The Conference attracted more than 120 scholars from leading universities and research institutions from over 20 regions to discuss pressing issues at the intersection of law and economics against the backdrop of Asia.

The Conference was kicked off with two pre-conference workshops. The first workshop, Methodology Workshop, was led by Prof. Jennifer H. ARLEN, Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law, New York University and moderated by Prof. John Zhuang LIU from Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong. The subsequent Editors’ Workshop was jointly presented by Prof. Adriana Z. ROBERTSON from University of Chicago Law School, Editor of Journal of Legal Studies, Prof. Yun-chien CHANG from Cornell Law School, Editor of Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and Prof. Wenming XU from China University of Political Science and Law, Editor of International Review of Law & Economics, with Prof. Lauren Yu-Hsin LIN, President of AsLEA, as the moderator.

A highlight of the Conference was our keynote speeches, delivered by Prof. Adriana Z. ROBERTSON and Prof. Yun-chien CHANG on 14 and 15 August, respectively. 

In her keynote speech titled “Empirical Corporate Law: Challenges and Opportunities”, Prof. Robertson observed that recent replication studies have overturned once-canonical findings and posed a significant challenge to the field of empirical corporate law research. Yet, this challenge also presents new opportunities for researchers to explore new directions through empirical data. Meanwhile, Prof. Chang discussed two major concepts, collegiality among, and familiarity between judges in his keynote speech, “Familiarity and Collegiality: The Law and Economics of Judicial Behavior”. By examining millions of court judgments and promotion data, his research on the determinants of judicial decision-making extends the economic theories of judicial behaviour.

Prof. LIN Feng, Dean and Chair Professor of Basic Law, School of Law (left) and Prof. Jiangyu WANG, Director of CCCL (right) delivered welcoming remarks

Another key moment of the Conference was the presentation of the AsLEA Best Paper Award for Junior Scholars, established to recognise outstanding emerging scholarship. Out of 67 submissions, only two exceptional papers were honoured.

Prof. Kenneth KHOO from National University of Singapore and Prof. Roberto TALLARITA from Harvard Law School won for their co-authored paper titled “Expanding Shareholder Voice: The Impact of SEC Guidance on Environmental and Social Proposals”. They used machine learning to study how environmental and social proposals affect shareholder support, providing key insights for corporate governance.

Another winning paper, “Utilitarian Proportionality: Empirical Evidence from Crimes of Embezzlement and Bribery in China” by Mr. Huabing LI, a PhD candidate at University of Hamburg, University of Bologna, and Erasmus University Rotterdam, offers a fresh perspective on criminal policy reform through empirical study of proportionality within the utilitarian framework.

The Conference held 25 concurrent panels which cover diverse topics such as judicial behaviour, intellectual property, state power and corporate ownership, family law and labour law, securities enforcement, data, privacy and innovation and etc., demonstrating deep integration of theory and empirics and fostering two-way interaction between scholarship and practice.

We express our deepest gratitude to all participants, the Organising Committee - led by Prof. Lauren Yu-Hsin LIN, with Prof. James Si ZENG, Prof. Virginia HARPER HO and Prof. Martin Sin Chit LAI, and dedicated CityUHK School of Law staff for making this event a huge success.

For the full event recap story, please visit CCCL Website.