Professor Ed Morrison (Columbia Law School) on the Law and Economics of Restructuring and Insolvency ~ Dieter Heremans Lectures series in Law & Economics 2025 at KU Leuven (Belgium)

The Dieter Heremans Lectures series in Law & Economics 2025 at KU Leuven (FEB and Faculty of Law and Criminology) will be given by Professor Edward R. Morrison (Columbia Law School).

You are kindly invited to the opening lecture Tuesday November 4 2025, in Grote Aula, (Maria Theresia College), 3000 Leuven (Belgium).

You can register here. Registration if free but mandatory.

Opening Lecture | Why is Insolvency Law Rarely Used By Failing Businesses Around the World? 
Welcome by Professor Joeri Vananroye
Introduction by Professor emeritus Dirk Heremans
Tuesday November 4 : 11u
Grote Aula (Maria Theresia College)
Hosts: Professors Frederik De Leo and Gillis Lindemans

Lecture 2 | Valuation in Corporate Reorganization and Beyond: Why Experts Disagree 
Tuesday November 4: 18u
KU Leuven Campus Brussels, rooom 4215, Hermesgebouw, Stormstraat 2, Brussels
Host: Professor Olivier Roodhooft

Lecture 3 | Why the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency is Failing: It’s Time to Change the “Center of Main Interest” (COMI) Rule
Wednesday November 5: 14u
Aula DV1 01.54 (Faculty of Law)
Host: Professor Bram Devolder

Lecture 4 | Corporate Debt Restructuring: Which Firms Restructure Out-of-Court? How Do They Do It? How Does Insolvency Law Influence the Restructuring Process?
Thursday November 6 : 11u
Aula Michotte (Tiensestraat 102)
Host: Professor Marieke Wyckaert

Lecture 5 | What’s Changing in U.S. Corporate Restructuring Today
Friday November 7 : 14u
MSI 00.28 (Erasmusplein 2)
Host: Professor Bert Keirsbilck

You can register here. Registration if free but mandatory.

Professor Morrison is an expert in corporate finance, corporate restructuring, household finance, consumer bankruptcy, and contract law. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), former co-editor of the Journal of Legal Studies and the American Law and Economics Review, and a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference.

Morrison’s scholarship has addressed corporate restructuring, consumer bankruptcy, the regulation of systemic market risk, and foreclosure and mortgage modification. His recent work studies patterns in out-of-court restructurings, inter-creditor agreements, valuation disputes in corporate bankruptcies, racial disparities in Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings, and the relationship between financial distress and mortality rates. 

Morrison teaches Contracts, Bankruptcy Law, and Corporate Finance. He is co-director of Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy and is faculty director of the Law School’s Executive LL.M. Program. In 2018, he received the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching, awarded by the graduating class of the Law School. 

Morrison’s research has been published in the American Economic Review, The Journal of Law and Economics, and other leading peer-reviewed publications. His work has been cited by the bankruptcy bench and bar and received support from the National Science Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts. Morrison and his co-author (Douglas Baird) received the 2012 John Wesley Steen Law Review Writing Prize from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) for an article on the Dodd-Frank Act published in the ABI Law Review.

He recently served as a director of the American Law & Economics Association and a member of the Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules.

Morrison clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and for Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. The then joined Columbia Law School in 2002, and from 2009 to 2012 was the Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law and Economics. From 2012-14, he was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. After returning to Columbia in 2014, he became the Charles Evans Gerber Professor of Law.

You can register here. Registration if free but mandatory.