About

Jennifer H. Arlen is the Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, where she also serves as the Director of the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement and the Center for Law, Economics and Organization. Her scholarship focuses on corporate liability, behavioral and experimental law and economics, and medical malpractice. She is the founder and faculty director of the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement, and teaches courses including Corporations, Business Crime, and a seminar on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing. Arlen has held prominent roles in the legal academic community, including serving as president of the American Law and Economics Association and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, which she co-founded. She has contributed to the development of legal principles through her work with the American Law Institute and is on the editorial board of the American Law and Economics Review. Her scholarly work has been published in leading journals such as the Yale Law Journal, Chicago Law Review, NYU Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. She holds a BA in economics from Harvard College, an JD from NYU School of Law, and a PhD in economics from NYU. Her professional background includes clerkship for Judge Phyllis Kravitch on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and academic appointments at institutions including Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and USC Gould School of Law, prior to her current position at NYU.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Law
• Economics
• Law and economics
• Engineering
• Accounting
• History
• Psychology
• Criminology
• Social psychology
• Finance
• Market economy

Selected publications

• The Compliance Function

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-05-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter identifies the features of the corporate compliance function and the steps countries should take to induce companies to implement effective compliance. The compliance function is comprised of the set of corporate inventions that deter corporate misconduct. This chapter uses empirical psychology to identify those features and reveals that many reside outside companies' "compliance programs" as typically designed. This chapter then shows that companies cannot be relied on to implement effective compliance without state-provided inducement because they regularly profit from misconduct and weak compliance. It then shows that countries cannot rely on regulatory mandates covering all features of compliance because optimal compliance varies substantially across firms and is not cost-effectively and accurately evaluated by regulators ex ante or ex post. Instead, countries must incentivize corporations to implement effective compliance functions by holding them criminally liable for their employees' misconduct. Corporate liability must ensure that companies do not expect to profit from misconduct. It also must induce them to detect and self-report misconduct and fully cooperate as these corporate undertakings are vital to effective compliance. To induce corporate self-reporting, countries also need to adopt effective laws to protect and reward employees who report misconduct to enforcement authorities.

  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral Self-Management and the Strategic Shifting of Fairness Norms

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Directors' Caremark Liability for Fraudulent Disclosures to Customers about the Company's Cybersecurity: SolarWinds Reconsidered

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Compliance Function

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Evolution of director oversight duties and liability under Caremark: using enhanced information-acquisition duties in the public interest

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-08-11 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Delaware law imposes four duties on directors to deter misconduct under the Caremark doctrine: (1) the duty not to knowingly commit misconduct or allow it to continue; (2) the duty to establish a system to deter, detect, and inform the board about misconduct; (3) the duty to assert effective oversight over the system; and (4) the duty to exercise effective oversight over detected misconduct. The effectiveness of the first duty, however, depends on whether the other three are effective in inducing the firm to detect and inform directors about detected misconduct, and on whether these duties are imposed to protect society as well as the firm. This chapter shows that Caremark’s traditional formulation is not effective because it gives directors full discretion to adopt systems that do not reliably detect misconduct or ensure they are informed about it. Recently, Delaware has imposed heightened duties on directors to ensure that they are informed about, and respond appropriately to, detected misconduct that is material to the firm or society. This expansion has the potential to enhance social welfare by inducing directors to deter corporate misconduct even when it benefits the firm.

  PublisherDOI

• Corporate sanctions: structuring corporate liability and nontrial resolutions to deter corruption

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-12-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Presenting the broad spectrum of interdisciplinary academic research on corruption, this essential reference book examines anti-corruption legislation, governance mechanisms, international instruments, and other preventative measures intended to tackle corruption. Including over 100 entries and adopting a comprehensive approach to researching and combating corruption, this Encyclopedia covers the key ideas, concepts, and theories in corruption law.

  PublisherDOI

• Evolution of Director Oversight Duties and Liability under Caremark: Using Enhanced Information-Acquisition Duties in the Public Interest

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Battle for Our Souls: A Psychological Justification for Corporate and Individual Liability for Organizational Misconduct

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Criminology
  PublisherDOI

• Countering Capture: A Political Theory of Corporate Criminal Liability

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Essential Role of Empirical Analysis in Developing Law and Economics Theory

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Throughout its history, the development of theoretical law and economics has depended on, and been shaped by, empirical analyses of law. Theoretical law and economics scholars cannot draw persuasive positive or normative conclusions about legal rules unless the models employed accurately capture the factors affecting people’s responses to legal rules. Models thus must accurately describe decision-makers’ decision-making environment, available choices, and decision-making processes. Empirical analysis plays a vital role in theoretical scholars’ ability to develop such models. Empirical analyses can improve theoretical models by testing the predictions of models; refuted theoretical predictions regularly spur lead theoreticians to revise and improve their models. Empirical analyses also contribute by providing direct evidence on the decision-making environment, available choice sets, or decision-makers’ mental processes. This interaction of empirical analysis and theory has led theoretical law and economics to rely increasingly on models predicated on incomplete information, incomplete contracting, and decision-making that deviates from rational choice theory.

  PublisherOA PDF

Frequent coauthors

• Eric L. Talley

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  152 shared

• Matthew L. Spitzer

  Northwestern University

  124 shared

• Lewis A. Kornhauser

  New York University

  22 shared

• W. Bentley MacLeod

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  22 shared

• Stephan Tontrup

  New York Law School

  21 shared

• Mark A. Cohen

  17 shared

• Cindy R. Alexander

  12 shared

• Marcel Kahan

  10 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Harvard College

  1982

• Other

  New York University

  1986

• Ph.D.

  New York University

  1992

Awards & honors

• Lifetime Achievement Award, Compliance.Net, 2025
• Honorary Doctorate of Law, University of St. Gallen, Switzer…