A months-long strike by screenwriters and actors recently brought all creative output in the world of Hollywood to a standstill. Skilled workers for the big and small screen were worried about seeing their legal and financial interests wrecked by the encroachment of artificial intelligence (AI). In the context of this grassroots movement, we ask two questions from the perspective of comparative law as we try to swot aside certain legal and judicial “figments of the imagination” in favor of the technical reality: What is the legal status of a cinematographic work? And what is the legal status of AI?
How can the E.U. respond to the growing clamor for more citizen participation in its institutions? In a wide-ranging podcast, the Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law, Alberto Alemanno, proposes a permanent European Citizens Assembly to bring E.U. voters and their representatives closer together. The HEC professor also explores how lobbies can become a force for promoting social change. And he points out structural problems within the E.U. which are stymying the continent’s youth. Finally, Alemanno’s research with fellow academic Elie Sung pinpoints the oft-neglected impact of lobbies on judicial courts by interest groups– which are having devastating effects on societal issues like women’s and LBGTQI+ rights. Extracts.
Because of Europe’s strong social welfare tradition, the social dimension of business has an additional legitimacy and urgency here. Top-quality research and teaching have an essential role to play in understanding growing inequalities which hinder the urgently needed ecological transition, in interrogating the environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, their interplay and their promise and limitations, in leveraging theory and the most ambitious empirical methods. As a leading business school and research center in France and Europe, HEC Paris’ faculty has a responsibility in providing science-based evidence and practical tools to reinvent the business of tomorrow.
Is globalization’s time up? There are two major, and conflicting, views about this tricky topic. For many economists, free trade is a natural state of the global economic system. Any upheavals – Covid-19, the war between Ukraine and Russia, the resurgence of protectionism - can only result in temporary disruptions which, sooner or later, will be corrected. They are just bursts of irrationality, arising momentarily from political forces upsetting otherwise harmonious economic balance, etc.
Top personalities from the political and academic worlds, including Pascal Lamy, Peter Altmaier, John Denton and Merit Janow, were amongst the 17 speakers at a September 29 conference at HEC Paris on constitutionalism. Over three intense sessions, the policymakers and professors of law explored reforms in governance of public goods. In this article, however, our focus was on how innovative research in faculties should and sometimes does lead to concrete policy proposals.
The September 26 federal elections in Germany have been earmarked as one of its most important in the past two decades. For a start, it signals the end of Angela Merkel’s tenure as Chancellor, after 16 years at the helm of Europe’s largest economy. To comment on this landmark vote, its uncertain outcome, and economic outlook, we turn to Armin Steinbach, HEC professor in law and economics. Steinbach is ideally placed to comment: prior to his September arrival at our business school, he spent over a decade as a government official and adviser in the Ministries of Finance and of Economic Affairs and Germany’s Parliament.
The forced landing of a Ryanair airplane and the subsequent arrest of two Belarusians on May 23 has sparked a major diplomatic crisis between EU and US authorities and the Minsk government. This has led to calls for across-the-board sanctions by both Europe and the United States. But just how effective are these measures? HEC Paris Professor Alberto Alemanno shares his analysis of the stand-off and its reflections on EU foreign policy.
Matteo Winkler is a law professor at HEC Paris, focusing an important part of his research on international human rights and on teaching Diversity and Inclusion. Professor Winkler also chairs the HEC Paris Diversity Committee. Eloïc Peyrache is a professor of economics. He began his research career with a study of gender diversity in admissions to French Grandes Ecoles. He was nominated Dean of HEC Paris in January 2021. Both professors share their insights on the stakes in Diversity and Inclusion, ways to address discrimination and proposals to include diversity through research. These, they say, are just some of a panoply of initiatives being explored at HEC Paris.
According to recent research published by the Harvard Business Review, a strong privacy policy can help firms save millions. If privacy policies have indeed become more important for firms and consumers today, the real challenge lying ahead is to ensure compliance within and beyond the firm. A new tool developed at HEC Paris uses artificial intelligence to help managers, data protection officers, and project leaders take privacy-preserving decisions and implement privacy by design.
The image of a Falcon rocket topped by the Crew Dragon capsule designed and manufactured by private company SpaceX as part of a NASA mission, has struck world public opinion in May 2020. Like its landing in the Gulf of Mexico a few weeks later, in early August. It illustrates the profound changes that have affected the space industry in recent years. In this article, Professor of international business law Lucien Rapp describes the transformation of the space industry and the strategies developed to enter the space market, as well as the challenges of its privatization for the future of the industry.