Professor Ed Morrison

Edward R. Morrison

  • Charles Evans Gerber Professor of Law
Education

Ph.D. (economics), University of Chicago, 2003
J.D., high honors, University of Chicago Law School, 2000
M.A. (economics), University of Chicago, 1997
B.S., summa cum laude, University of Utah, 1994

Areas of Specialty

Bankruptcy Law and Corporate Reorganization
Corporate Finance
Contract Law
Law and Economics
Empirical Methods

Ed Morrison is an expert in corporate finance and restructuring, household finance and consumer bankruptcy, and contract law. He is co-editor of the Journal of Legal Studies.

Morrison’s scholarship has addressed corporate reorganization, consumer bankruptcy, the regulation of systemic market risk, and foreclosure and mortgage modification. His recent work studies patterns in 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. 

He received the 2018 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, Journal of Law & 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 is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and recently served as a director of the American Law & Economics Association, member of the Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules, and associate editor of the American Law & Economics Review.

Morrison was the Paul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 2013 to 2014. He first began teaching at Columbia Law School in 2003 and from 2009 to 2012 was the Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law and Economics. 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.

Publications

  • Restructuring vs. Bankruptcy,” Working Paper (2020) (with Jason Roderick Donaldson, Giorgia Piacentino, and Xiaobo Yu)
  • Manipulating Random Assignment: Evidence From Consumer Bankruptcies in the Nation's Largest Cities,” Working Paper (2020) (with Belisa Pang and Jonathan Zytnick) 
  • “Race and Bankruptcy: Explaining Racial Disparities in Consumer Bankruptcy,” 63 J. L. & Econ. 269 (2020) (with Belisa Pang and Antoine Uettwiller) (Working Paper)
  • Valuing Firms in A World Of Pandemic-Induced Bankruptcies,” in Law360.com (June 9, 2020) (with Andrea Okie and Kerri Leonhardt) 
  • Bankruptcy’s Role in the COVID-19 Crisis” (with Andrea C. Saavedra), in Law in the Time of COVID-19 (Columbia Law School: Katharina Pistor, ed., 2020) 
  • “Beyond Options” (with Anthony J. Casey), in Handbook on Corporate Bankruptcy (Edward Elgar Press: Barry Adler, ed., 2020) (Working Paper)
  • “Valuation Disputes in Corporate Bankruptcy,” 166 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1819 (2018) (with Kenneth M. Ayotte) (Working Paper)
  • “Consumer Bankruptcy Pathologies,” Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (2017) (with Antoine Uettwiller) (Working Paper)
  • “Rules of Thumb for Intercreditor Agreements,” University of Illinois Law Review (2015) (Working Paper)
  • “Mortgage Modification and Strategic Default: Evidence from a Legal Settlement with Countrywide,” American Economic Review (2014) (with Christopher Mayer, Tomasz Piskorski, and Arpit Gupta) (Working Paper)
  • “Rolling Back the Repo Safe Harbors,” Business Lawyer (2014) (with Mark Roe and Christopher Sontchi) (Working Paper)
  • “Extraterritorial Avoidance Actions: Lessons from Madoff,” Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commerical Law (2014) (Working Paper)
  • “The Economics of Bankruptcy: An Introduction to the Literature,” Economics of Bankruptcy (Edward R. Morrison, ed.), Edward Elgar Press (2012) (Working Paper)
  • “Dodd-Frank for Bankruptcy Lawyers,” American Bankers Institute Law Review (2011) (with Douglas G. Baird) (Working Paper)
  • “Bargaining around Bankruptcy: Small Business Distress and State Law,” Journal of Legal Studies (2009) (Working Paper)
  • “Creditor Control and Conflict in Chapter 11,” Journal of Legal Analysis (2009) (with Kenneth Ayotte) (Working Paper)
  • “Is the Bankruptcy Code an Adequate Mechanism for Resolving the Distress of Systemically Important Institutions?” Temple Law Review (2009) (Working Paper)
  • “A New Proposal for Loan Modifications,” Yale Journal on Regulation (2009) (with Christopher Mayer and Tomasz Piskorski) (Working Paper)  
  • “Bankruptcy’s Rarity: Small Business Workouts in the United States,” European Company and Financial Law Review (2008) (Working Paper)
  • “Bankruptcy Decision Making: An Empirical Study of Continuation Bias in Small Business Bankruptcies,” Journal of Law and Economics (2007) (Working Paper)
  • “Serial Entrepreneurs and Small Business Bankruptcies,” Columbia Law Review (2005) (with Douglas Baird) (Working Paper) “Derivatives and the Bankruptcy Code: Why the Special Treatment?” Yale Journal of Regulations (2005) (with Frank Edwards) (Working Paper)
  • “Bankruptcy Decision Making,” Journal of Law, Economics & Organization (2001) (with Douglas Baird) (Working Paper 1) (Working Paper 2)

Honors and Awards

Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching

2018

University of Utah Par Excellence Award

2009

Remarks and Testimony

On Why We Teach

“It’s important to be open to learning from those around you, including your students.”

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