IRLE Faculty Spotlight: Eric Talley

Since its first workshop in 2004, the IRLE has had an outstanding faculty. Eric Talley brings his work in the law and economics of corporate finance to expand the understanding of financial economics used in regulatory decision-making. Eric is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and his academic background includes a B.A. from the University of California-San Diego and both a J.D. and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Eric’s research focuses on corporate governance and risk management, and he’s increasingly introducing machine learning and other data analytics techniques into law and economics research.

Finance can be one of the most complicated aspects of utility regulation, and is likely to get even more complicated as we experience changes in digital and distributed energy technologies that are bringing an energy transition into being. At the IRLE workshop, Eric presents financial tools and models, making sure participants understand betas and Black-Scholes, and he does so with great energy and wit. Who knew finance could be fun? Eric makes it fun while also making difficult concepts clear, comprehensible, and actionable.

At the IRLE workshop we also have informal fireside chats after dinner, where faculty and participants discuss a current issue related to faculty research. After 2007 Eric’s insights on financial instruments were, well, instrumental in helping us understand the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the upheavals in the financial industry that ensued. He’s also been known to lead us in song, but what happens in Aspen stays in Aspen…

In October 2020, Eric started a new podcast series: Beyond “Unprecedented”: The Post-Pandemic Economy. As the pandemic changes our daily routines, how will those changes affect businesses and the economy? Which of those changes will persist once the pandemic subsides? What implications will the pandemic have for the economy, law, and governance? Eric and his guests grapple with these important and thorny questions in a series of lively and engaging conversations that will inform and enlighten you.