Stephen Choi

About

Stephen Choi is the Bernard Petrie Professor of Law and Business at NYU School of Law, where he also serves as the Director of the Pollack Center. He joined NYU Law faculty in 2005, having previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. Choi graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School in 1994, where he also served as a legal methods instructor and was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. He earned his PhD in economics from Harvard in 1997. His research interests focus on the theoretical and empirical analysis of corporations and capital markets, with particular emphasis on corporate law, empirical legal scholarship, judicial performance, law and finance, and securities regulation. Choi has published extensively in leading law reviews and has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including the Fay Diploma, the Sears Prize, and the Irving Oberman Memorial Award. His work includes the development of empirical databases and courses related to securities regulation and corporate law, contributing significantly to the academic and practical understanding of securities enforcement, judicial impact, and financial regulation.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Political Science
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Industrial organization
• Labour economics
• Economy
• Accounting
• Marketing

Selected publications

• Working Hard or Making Work? Plaintiffs’ Attorney Fees in Securities Fraud Class Actions

  Journal of Empirical Legal Studies · 2020 · 13 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  In this article, we study attorney fees awarded in the largest securities class actions: “mega‐settlements.” Consistent with prior work, we find larger fee awards but lower percentages in these cases. We also find that courts are more likely to reject or modify fee requests made in connection with the largest settlements. We conjecture that this scrutiny provides an incentive for law firms to bill more hours, not to advance the case, but to help justify large fee awards—“make work.” The results…

  DOI

• Trump’s Lower Court Judges and Religion: An Initial Appraisal

  The Journal of Legal Studies · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  It is widely believed that President Donald J. Trump’s first-term judicial appointments reflect a strategy of appeasing evangelical Christians and other religious groups that favor a more conservative, Christian judiciary and that in pursuing this strategy Trump sacrificed quality. We explore this theory by examining the biographies and credentials of Trump’s lower court nominees and the voting records of his circuit court appointments in free-exercise cases. We find that Trump’s appointments to…

  PublisherDOI

• Is Delaware Different? Stockholder Lawyering in the Court of Chancery

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Us

  2025-11-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter Fourteen concludes by asking why do landmines persist in the contract documents for many financial markets, and can the problems they cause be solved either through state or collective action. One culprit is agency costs—the costs that result from drafters’ failure to meet the markets’ demand for both speed and accurate documentation. A failure to revise or even review the artifact contract inevitably leads to strategic manipulations, blunders, and obsolescence. Another culprit…

  PublisherDOI

• Landmines All the Way Down

  2025-11-10

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Having documented the existence and persistence of landmines in sovereign bond contracts, Chapter Nine asks whether they are unique to the world of sovereign debt and its particular types of agency costs. At the opposite end of the thick liquid market, such as that for sovereign bonds, is the classic one-off or “bespoke” contract. Traditional theory assumes that these bespoke transactions are individually negotiated and designed and thus are free from landmines. That conception is likel…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mitu Gulati

  84 shared

• Eric A. Posner

  78 shared

• Adam C. Pritchard

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  71 shared

• Jill E. Fisch

  University of Pennsylvania

  59 shared

• G. Mitu Gulati

  43 shared

• Robert E. Scott

  34 shared

• Marcel Kahan

  28 shared

• Jessica Erickson

  University of Richmond

  27 shared

Labs

• Pollack Center for Law & BusinessPI

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1997

• B.A.

  Harvard Law School

  1994

Awards & honors

• Fay Diploma
• Sears Prize
• Irving Oberman Memorial Award
• John M. Olin Fellowship
• Jacob K. Javits Fellowship

Similar researchers at New York University

• Gráinne de Búrcah-45
• Philip G. Alstonh-40
• Jennifer H. Arlenh-32