About

Quinn Curtis is an Associate Dean for Curricular Programs and a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He joined the law faculty in 2011 and teaches courses on corporate law, securities, and venture capital. His research focuses on empirical law and finance, with extensive work on the regulation of mutual funds and retirement accounts, including empirical analyses of 401(k) plans, mutual fund governance, and fee litigation. Curtis's scholarship also covers corporate governance and corporate litigation. His publications have appeared in prominent journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, and the Journal of Legal Studies. He is a board member of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies and a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute. Curtis holds undergraduate degrees in philosophy and physics from Ohio State University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he served as an articles editor on the Yale Law Journal, and a Ph.D. in finance from Yale School of Management.

Research topics

• Business
• Finance
• Accounting
• Sociology
• Economics
• Management

Selected publications

• Rebalancing Retirement: How 401(k) Plans Exacerbate Inequality and What We Can Do About It

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The <scp>ESG</scp> Backlash and the Demand for <scp>ESG</scp> Mutual Funds

  Journal of Empirical Legal Studies · 2025-10-02 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT The backlash to ESG investing is in full swing, with dozens of states enacting measures aimed at curtailing the consideration of environmental, social, and governance factors in their pension funds. Meanwhile, ESG mutual funds are experiencing net outflows after a period of lagging performance. Is this the end for ESG funds? This paper draws on the literature on mutual fund flows to study how the demand for ESG funds has changed over time and how that demand interacts with the political and legal backlash to ESG. It finds that ESG funds received significant positive flows, controlling for conventional predictors of fund flow, starting in 2017. This effect peaked in late 2019, much earlier than the publicly perceived decline of ESG. Abnormal investor preference for ESG funds disappeared in 2020, around the time of the Trump Department of Labor rule targeting ESG and then reappeared in 2021 before declining again. The excess demand for ESG was driven largely by institutional share classes, particularly pre‐2021. While the positive effect of ESG branding on flows has disappeared, demand for ESG funds (controlling for past performance) has generally remained non‐negative up to 2024. Most of the decline in excess demand for ESG funds predates the political backlash and state anti‐ESG laws. Tests for a causal relationship between ESG fund flows and the political backlash, as measured by mentions of ESG in conservative media and state laws restricting ESG, show no statistical connection.

  PublisherDOI

• The ESG Backlash and the Demand for ESG Mutual Funds

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What More Fiduciaries Should Learn

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherDOI

• The Case for Proactive Fiduciaries

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can Streamlining and Guardrailing Mitigate Allocation Error?

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherDOI

• Retirement Guardrails

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31 · 22 citations

  bookOpen accessSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we've only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or 'guardrails' can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What Fiduciaries Can Do to Remedy Menu Misuse

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherDOI

• Of Lawsuits and Letters

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-05-31

  book-chapterSenior author

  Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we’ve only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or “guardrails” can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ian Ayres

  17 shared

• Michal Barzuza

  University of Virginia

  13 shared

• John Morley

  7 shared

• Justin Hopkins

  5 shared

• Jill E. Fisch

  University of Pennsylvania

  5 shared

• David H. Webber

  4 shared

• Andrew T. Hayashi

  University of Virginia

  3 shared

• Adriana Robertson

  3 shared