Mathias Siems is a graduate from the Universities of Munich and Edinburgh. He has held visiting appointments at the European University Institute, Harvard Law School and the University of Cambridge, and has taught at the Riga Graduate School of Law, the University of Edinburgh and the University of East Anglia before joining Durham University in July 2011. He is also an Invited Fellow at the Maastricht European Law Institute and a Research Associate at the Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, and at the London Centre for Corporate Governance and Ethics, Birkbeck, University of London.
Law and Finance
Comparative Law and Finance: Past, Present and Future Research (with Simon Deakin), Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE) (2010)
“Comparative law and finance” codes how well the laws of different countries protect certain interests,...
Law and Financial Development: What We are Learning from Time-Series Evidence (with John Armour, Simon Deakin, and Viviana Mollica), BYU Law Review (2009)
The legal origins hypothesis is one of the most important and influential ideas to emerge...
Shareholder Protection and Stock Market Development: An Empirical Test of the Legal Origins Hypothesis (with John Armour, Simon Deakin, Prabirjit Sarkar, and Ajit Singh), Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2009)
We test the law matters and legal origin claims using newly created datasets measuring legal...
Legal Origins: Reconciling Law & Finance and Comparative Law, McGill Law Review (2007)
Law and finance scholars have increasingly relied upon comparative law in the last few years....
What Does Not Work in Comparing Securities Laws: A Critique on La Porta et al.'s Methodology, International Company and Commercial Law Review (2005)
The articles by La Porta et al. are some of the most-cited pieces in economics,...
Corporate Law
The Protection of Creditors of a European Private Company (SPE) (with Leif Herzog and Erik Rosenhäger), European Business Organization Law Review (EBOR) (2011)
Soon we can expect a new type of company: the European Private Company (Societas Privata...
Private Enforcement of Directors’ Duties: Derivative Actions as a Global Phenomenon (2010)
When directors are in breach of their duties, it seems natural to give shareholders a...
The Evolution of Ownership Disclosure Rules Across Countries (with Michael Schouten), Journal of Corporate Law Studies (2010)
This paper examines the evolution of the duty to disclose major share ownership across countries....
Convergence in Corporate Governance: A Leximetric Approach, The Journal of Corporation Law (2010)
Has there been convergence of corporate governance systems? There has been a great deal of...
The Web of Creditor and Shareholder Protection: A Comparative Legal Network Analysis, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (2010)
How different are common law and civil law legal systems? This question has occupied legal...
Comparative Law
Networks, Dialogue or One-Way Traffic? An Empirical Analysis of Cross-Citations between Ten European Supreme Courts (with Martin Gelter), Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI) Working Paper (2011)
Today, according to Anne Marie Slaugther, "judges see each other not only as servants and...
Language, Legal Origins, and Culture before the Courts: Cross‐Citations between Supreme Courts in Europe (with Martin Gelter), Fordham Law Legal Studies Research Paper (2010)
Should courts consider cases from other jurisdictions? The use of foreign law precedent has sparked...
Citation Patterns of the German Federal Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, King's Law Journal (2010)
This paper presents citation statistics on decisions of the Court of Appeal of England and...
How Do Legal Rules Evolve? Evidence From a Cross-Country Comparison of Shareholder, Creditor and Worker Protection (with John Armour, Simon Deakin, and Priya Lele), American Journal of Comparative Law (2009)
Much attention has been devoted in recent literature to the claim that a country’s ‘legal...
Comparative Law - Who is the Elephant in the Room? (Book Review of 'Comparative Law: A Handbook', Örücü and Nelken, eds.), Edinburgh Law Review (2008)
In the last two years three important comparative law handbooks have been published (“Comparative Law:...
Legal Methods
Measuring the Immeasurable: How to Turn Law into Numbers, Does Law Matter? On Law and Economic Growth (2011)
When economists try to measure legal rules and institutions their approach is often a “just...
A World Without Law Professors, Methodologies of Legal Research (2011)
Inspired by Alan Weisman’s book “The World Without Us” (2007) I analyse the thought experiment...
The Taxonomy of Interdisciplinary Legal Research: Finding the Way Out of the Desert, Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education (2009)
According to the 19th century jurist Julius von Kirchmann "law is like a wanderer in...
Legal Originality, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2008)
For outsiders it is often difficult to understand what the role of academic lawyers is....
Legal Adaptability in Elbonia, International Journal of Law in Context (2006)
Law has to be able to respond to new or changing circumstances. This adaptability of...
Contract Law
Unevenly Formed Contracts: Ignoring the Mirror of Offer and Acceptance, European Review of Private Law (2004)
According to Article 2:211 of the Principles of European Contract Law, the rules on the...
Disgorgement of Profits for Breach of Contract: A Comparative Analysis, Edinburgh Law Review (2003)
This article considers whether a contract-breaker is obliged not only to pay compensatory damages but...
No Risk, No Fun? Should Spouses be Advised Before Committing to Guarantees? A Comparative Analysis, European Review of Private Law (2002)
This article deals with the question of whether a spouse who grants a security for...
Commercial Law
The Financial Regulation of European Wholesale Energy and Environmental Markets (with Ivan Diaz-Rainey and John K. Ashton), USAEE Working Paper No. 11-070 (2011)
This study examines the financial risks posed by energy and environmental markets and how these...
Regulatory Competition in Partnership Law, International & Comparative Law Quarterly (2009)
Regulatory competition in company law has been extensively debated in the last few decades, but...
The Divergence of Austrian and German Commercial Law - What Kind of Commercial Law Do We Need in a Globalised Economy?, International Company and Commercial Law Review (2004)
This article discusses the recent reform of Austrian commercial law. This reform will replace the...
IT Law
The EU Directive on Electronic Signatures - A World Wide Model or a Fruitless Attempt to Regulate the Future?, International Review of Law, Computers & Technology (2002)
The European Directive on a Community Framework for Electronic Signatures is an essential and important...
Labour Law
The Evolution of Labour Law: Calibrating and Comparing Regulatory Regimes (with Simon Deakin and Priya Lele), International Labour Review (2007)
We present evidence on the evolution of labour law in five countries (the UK, USA,...
Securities Law
The Foundations of Securities Law, European Business Law Review (2009)
How does the law address topics such as the sale an trade of securities and...
The EU Market Abuse Directive: A Case-Based Analysis, Law and Financial Markets Review (2008)
Since the law on market abuse in EU countries has in recent years become predominantly...