About

Merritt B. Fox is the Michael E. Patterson Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he is also the codirector of the Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets and the Center for Law and Economic Studies. His research focuses on the regulation of stock markets, examining how markets work, how they fail, and how they should be regulated. Fox's work draws on the informational paradigm of microstructure economics to highlight the role of information asymmetries and adverse selection in market behavior, and he explores a wide range of issues including high-frequency trading, insider trading, manipulation, short selling, broker-dealer practices, and trading venue fees and rebates.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Business
• Finance
• Economics
• Computer Security
• Psychology
• Market economy
• Economic system
• Law and economics
• Law

Selected publications

• Socially-Minded Investors and Corporate Behavior

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Common Ownership and Corporate Governance

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-05-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The common ownership literature advances the claim that investment funds’ shareholdings of rival firms cause these firms to compete less and that it does so even without the funds communicating with, or facilitating the collusion among, the companies in which they are invested. This chapter uses the lens of corporate governance to evaluate this claim. The chapter’s method of analysis is based on the fundamental premise that a firm’s competition decisions are not made directly by its shareholders, whether they are common owners or otherwise, but instead are made by the firm’s managers. These managers, in turn, operate within an intricate and well-studied corporate governance framework that serves to shape their incentives. As the chapter shows, after application of the necessary corporate governance analysis, there is little reason to believe that common ownership, at least at current levels, is lessening managerial incentives to operate firms in any way less competitive than if there were no common ownership.

  PublisherDOI

• The Rise of Foreign Ownership and Corporate Governance

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-12-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines the global rise of foreign share ownership over the past three decades and its relationship to corporate governance. It first documents the dramatic increase in cross-border holdings, showing how technological change, reduced transaction costs, and liberalization of trade and capital markets have weakened traditional impediments to global investment. The chapter then analyzes how greater foreign ownership is promoted by the benefits arising from more diversified portfolios and from savings reallocations from countries rich in savings relative to their investment opportunities to ones poor in savings relative to such opportunities, while it has historically been impeded by information asymmetries across national boundaries, exchange-rate risks, and government restrictions. The chapter goes on to note that better corporate governance and a higher level of foreign ownership are positively associated with each other, and that both theory and empirical studies suggest that the direction of causation runs both ways. It also explores how corporate governance both shapes and is shaped by foreign ownership, with stronger legal and disclosure regimes attracting more foreign shareholders, and with these increased numbers of foreign shareholders, in turn, pressuring firms to adopt better governance. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that the weakening of the factors impeding foreign ownership has acted as a catalyst, encouraging improvements in corporate governance and reinforcing the upward trajectory of foreign ownership worldwide.

  PublisherDOI

• Slack v. Pirani: Brief for Amici Curiae Law and Business Professors in Support of Respondent

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Event-Driven Suits and the Rethinking of Securities Litigation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Distributed Ledger Technology and the Securities Markets of the Future: A Stakeholder Survey

  Columbia Business Law Review · 2022 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Computer Security
  • Computer Science

  This Article evaluates the implications of distributed ledger technology (DLT) for the securities markets of the future and their regulation. DLT is an integral part of the larger revolution in computing, communication and data storage capacity that has transformed securities markets over the last few decades and promises further radical change in the years to come. The potential of DLT, if it can be realized, could improve the functioning of our securities markets while at the same time sharply reducing costs. Based on an interview survey of about 100 persons who play prominent roles in actually making these markets work or in regulating them, this Article reports on the most important topics and themes that have emerged from the wide range of interviewees’ opinions about the extent to which DLT will affect the future of securities markets and their regulation. A significant number saw the potential for DLT to transform securities markets and market structure, from the possibility of stock trading on DLT to the potential impact on intermediaries, the ordinary retail investor, and on preventing wrongdoing in the stock market. However, key questions remain about implementation and the appetite for making DLT-based changes among both market participants and regulators.

  Publisher

• Spoofing and its Regulation

  Columbia Business Law Review · 2022 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Law and economics

  Nearly a century after the United States enacted its first securities laws, urgent questions remain as to the scope of manipulation law: whether manipulation is possible in principle, and if so, how the law should respond in practice. Sharp disagreement among courts, economists, and legal scholars as to whether trading or quoting activity constitutes illegal manipulation has led to a legal framework that lacks precision and cogency. Moreover, the poorly articulated normative basis for court rulings has resulted in enforcement that is both under-inclusive and over-inclusive in ways that do a poor job of discouraging socially harmful transactions and enabling socially beneficial ones. This Article seeks to clarify this confusion. Drawing on microstructure and financial economics, this Article offers a new understanding of a common kind of quote-driven manipulation, often referred to as “spoofing.” By employing an analytical and normative framework developed previously by two of the authors in assessing another major form of manipulation, trade-driven manipulation, this Article assesses the impact of spoofing on what occurs in the securities markets and carefully evaluates its effects on social welfare and economic efficiency. The result is a new understanding of quote-based manipulation that helps resolve essential questions in manipulation law and provides guidance for future regulation and enforcement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distributed Ledger Technology and the Securities Markets of the Future

  Columbia Business Law Review · 2022-01-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This Article evaluates the implications of distributed ledger technology (DLT) for the securities markets of the future and their regulation. DLT is an integral part of the larger revolution in computing, communication and data storage capacity that has transformed securities markets over the last few decades and promises further radical change in the years to come. The potential of DLT, if it can be realized, could improve the functioning of our securities markets while at the same time sharply reducing costs. Based on an interview survey of about 100 persons who play prominent roles in actually making these markets work or in regulating them, this Article reports on the most important topics and themes that have emerged from the wide range of interviewees’ opinions about the extent to which DLT will affect the future of securities markets and their regulation. A significant number saw the potential for DLT to transform securities markets and market structure, from the possibility of stock trading on DLT to the potential impact on intermediaries, the ordinary retail investor, and on preventing wrongdoing in the stock market. However, key questions remain about implementation and the appetite for making DLT-based changes among both market participants and regulators.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Manipulating Citadel: Strategies to Profit at the Expense of Retail Stock Traders’ Market Makers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What Is Good Corporate Governance?

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2021-04-13 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lawrence R. Glosten

  33 shared

• Gabriel V. Rauterberg

  30 shared

• Randall Mørck

  12 shared

• Ronald J. Gilson

  Stanford Medicine

  11 shared

• Michael Heller

  9 shared

• Bernard Yeung

  8 shared

• Artyom Durnev

  6 shared

• Darius Palia

  Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Law

  Columbia University

  1987

• M.A., Economics

  Princeton University

  1987

• B.A., Economics

  Yale University

Awards & honors

• Doctorate of Laws, University of Buenos Aires (2019)