Behavioral Ethics, Corporations & Trust

The talk will discuss behavioral ethics, compliance and trust, both with regard to individuals and to corporations. It will combine insights from two books. The first is the Law of Good People (CUP 2018) and the second one Can we Trust the Public (CUP 2024)

The main theme of the first book introduces behavioral ethics – the area of psychology which examines the different behavioral mechanisms allowing normative people to behave unethically. Consequently, this area challenges the ability of states to regulate people who are only partially aware to their own wrong-doing because they are affected by various self-serving mechanism. The book makes suggestions on how to design laws, regulations, corporate rules and enforcement mechanisms with a view to enhance compliance by individuals and corporate members.

The second book examines, based on theories of motivation, behavioral change and trust, the advantages and disadvantages to states and organizations from voluntary compliance by the public. The advantages of voluntary compliance, which is driven by intrinsic motivation and trust rather than due to monitoring and incentives, were demonstrated during the covid pandemic. Voluntary compliance is expected to be of higher quality, endurance and with limited enforcement costs. However, the need to rely on intrinsic motivation and the need of governments to reduce monitoring and increase level trust in public’s voluntary compliance, creates a whole new set of problems related to heterogeneity, distributive justice and the fear of states attempting to influence peoples’ intrinsic motivations.

Speaker: Yuval Feldman

Yuval Feldman is The Mori Lazarof Professor of Legal Research at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law where he is the head of the Voluntary Compliance Lab and the Associate Dean for Research. He obtained his Ph.D. (Jurisprudence and Social Policy) from the UC Berkeley in 2004 after receiving his L.L.B. and B.A (Psychology) from Bar-Ilan University (1998) and clerking for the Israeli supreme court Justice Tova Stresberg-Cohen.

His areas of research include Behavioral Analysis of Law, Experimental Law and Economics, Behavioral Ethics, Regulation, Enforcement and Compliance. From 2011 to 2013, he was a fellow in the Edmond J. Safra Institutional Corruption Lab at Harvard Law School and the Implicit Social Cognition Lab in Harvard Psychology. Since 2014 he has been a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. He has advised various governmental bodies on behavioral and experimental informed policies in areas related to corruption, trust enhancing regulatory design, public cooperation and enforcement in areas related to public health (Covid) Environment and Tax. Between 2016-20 he served as a member of Israel’s Young Academy.

Feldman has received numerous national fellowships including Rothschild, Fulbright, Alon, and awards such as Zeltner ( 2008 Young), Chesin ( 2019 Senior researcher), Bruno Award (2020) and Fatal Award (2021), Provost Innovative Researcher (2023) as well as more than 25 competitive research grants from foundations such as Olin, GIF, Marie Currie, ISF, and IIAS. During the years 2022-2027 he held the ERC Advanced Grant for his research on: Generating Voluntary Compliance Across Doctrines and Nations: Integrating Behavioural & Regulatory Aspects of Governments’ Ability to Trust the Public’s Cooperation, Ethicality & Compliance.

He has co-authored more than 75 papers, many of them published leading journals in law, public policy, management and psychology among them NYU, Texas, Georgetown and Northwestern Law Reviews J. of Legal Studies, J. of Empirical Legal Studies, Regulation & Governance, J. of Eur Pub Policy, J. of Business Ethics; Psychological Science and J. of Applied Psychology. He is on the editorial board of Regulation and Governance, Law & Policy and European Journal of Law & Economics and among the founders of ComplianceNet an interdisciplinary and global network of compliance researchers. His first book: The Law of Good People, was published with Cambridge University Press in June 2018. His second book “Can the Public be Trusted” is expected with 2024 in CUP as well.

Chair: Eva Micheler

This event will be on a first-come, first serve basis.