The April 2, 2014, Lab presentation was led by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow, Kim Pernell-Gallagher. During her second fellowship year, Kim has continued to investigate cross-national policy divergence in banking regulation, specifically focusing on the Basel Accords and capital adequacy standards voluntarily adopted by banks in the United States, Spain, and Canada. Her Lab seminar, titled: “How the U.S. Got it Wrong: Regulation of Securitization in...

The March 5, 2014, Lab seminar was presented by Katherine Silz Carson, Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow and Professor of Economics at the Unites States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. An environmental and experimental economist, Silz Carson's research focuses on the experimental investigation of individual and collective incentives in group decision-making environments. Recently, Silz Carson has directed her research to using experimental...

The February 26, 2014, Lab seminar, "Information and Regulatory Capture," was presented by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow, Laurence Tai. Having recently earned his JD and PhD in Public Policy at Harvard in May 2013, Tai's research is primarily concerned with agencies and their information. His dissertation research focused on the costs and benefits of information transparency in administrative rulemaking, with regulatory capture as a significant theme. During his Lab fellowship...

The February 19, 2014, Lab seminar was led by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow, Gregg Fields, and Senior Faculty Associate and Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus of Business Administration, Malcolm Salter. Titled, "Breaking the Curse: What to do about Institutional Corruption in the Private Sector," the presentation probed underlying...

The first Lab seminar of the spring semester convened on February 12, 2014, and was led by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellows, Maryam Kouchaki, Yuval Feldman, and Elizabeth Doty. Titled, "Influencing Ethical Behavior in the Workplace," and...

The November 2013, 2013, Lab seminar was presented by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow, Jim Morris. A journalist since 1978, Morris is senior reporter and editor at the Center for Public Integrity where he is also co-leader of the environment and labor team. During his fellowship year, Morris will investigate the forces that allow American workers to be exposed to chemicals at levels that are scientifically known to be dangerous. Specifically, he will explore how persistent industry...

The November 11, 2013, Lab seminar was presented by Marie Newhouse, an Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow whose work focuses on think tank ethics and governance issues. Titled, "Think Tank Ethics and Excellence: A Framework for Analysis," Newhouse's presentation provided a comprehensive overview of her research concerning think tank practices and contemplated the significance of interpersonal and intrapersonal integrity in think tank scholarship. The primary goal of Newhouse's...

The November 6, 2013, Lab seminar was led by Edmond J. Safra Lab fellow, Dr. Jennifer Heerwig. Heerwig is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University where she serves as a faculty advisor for the University's interdisciplinary computational social science initiative. During her fellowship, Heerwig plans to write a book on the evolution of donation strategies among elite individual campaign contributors using an original, longitudinal dataset. Titled...

The October 23, 2013, Lab seminar was presented by Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow, Professor Thomas Stratmann. Professor Stratmann is University Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University, and a faculty member at both the Center for Study of Public Choice and the interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, as well as a fellow at the Mercatus Center. During his fellowship year, Professor Stratmann will undertake an empirical study of possible insider...

The October 2, 2013, Lab seminar was presented by Michelle Mello, an Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow and Professor of Law and Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Titled, "Peering into 'Private Time': Medical Schools' Oversight of Faculty Consulting Contracts," Mello's presentation provided a comprehensive overview of her research on policies and practices adopted by medical schools toward their faculty's use of outside time to engage in consulting...

The September 18, 2013, Lab seminar was led by Lab Fellows Ken Silverstein and Brooke Williams on possible and proposed solutions for institutional corruption in think tanks. This is their second year of studying think tanks at the Edmond J. Safra Center Lab. While their Spring 2013 Lab seminar focused on the implications of their initial...

The first Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Lab seminar of the 2013-14 academic year convened on September 9, 2013, and was led by the Center's Director, Professor Lawrence Lessig. Intended as an introductory seminar, Lessig laid the framework for his conception of institutional corruption and presented to the participants of the Lab seminar several examples of its occurrence. Lessig began his presentation with a simple, yet powerful analogy of a compass deviating from...

Dan Kahan, an Edmond J. Safra Lab Fellow and Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Psychology at Yale University led the May 8, 2013, Lab seminar. The presentation used climate change and campaign finance reform as jumping off point to posit that meaningful public engagement of individuals with any particular issue or set of information requires the right "collective cognitive climate." He argues that the reason issues like climate change or campaign finance reform did not...

The May 1, 2013 Lab seminar was presented by Professor Mahzarin Banaji who is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and an Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Lab affiliate. Also presenting with Professor Banaji was her research collaborator from the Implicit Social Cognition Lab, Mr. Paul Meinshausen. Through a series of experiments in which participants responded to stories and vignettes,...

The April 24, 2013 Lab seminar was led by Ken Silverstein, an Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Fellow and investigative reporter who recently completed an Open Society Foundation fellowship on corruption and the international energy industry. Silverstein's research is specifically concerned with institutional corruption of think tanks in the context of wider institutional corruption of American political culture. With specific focus on think tanks' widespread refusal...