Corporate law scholar to join Law School faculty

Robert M. Daines, an internationally known corporate law scholar, has been appointed the Law School's inaugural Pritzker Professor of Law and Business. Daines, whose work focuses on the empirical study of corporate practices and their implication for legal regulation, also will hold a courtesy appointment in the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Daines is currently a professor of law at New York University; he is scheduled to join the Stanford faculty in July.

"In an era when corporate governance is being closely scrutinized by the public, it is more important than ever to have sound empirical knowledge of how corporations really operate and how corporate law can help them operate better," Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan said. "Daines has done path-breaking research that contributes enormously to this effort and is an ideal choice to train the next generation of our students."

Daines' work analyzes data on corporate management and boards of directors. For example, he has used econometric methods to measure the impact on the value of a firm's shares of incorporating in Delaware, the leading state in the market for corporate charters. He concluded that firms that incorporated in Delaware have higher market valuations than companies incorporated elsewhere, and that Delaware's takeover law, which empowers shareholders and constrains management, was a significant cause of that higher valuation.

Working with Stanford law Professor Michael Klausner, who is the Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business, Daines also has demonstrated that a significant percentage of firms making initial public offerings include in their charters substantial antitakeover defenses. This work disproved the previous view among corporate law scholars that investors buying stock in initial public offerings will choose the corporate charter that maximizes firm value.

Daines earned bachelor's degrees in economics and American studies in 1989 from Brigham Young University and a law degree in 1992 from Yale University.