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AI Lecture Series: Lecture 7

The Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) and the National Centre of Excellence in Research and Innovation (NCER FutureFinTech) is pleased to invite you, as part of the AI Lecture Series, to this lecture.

Abstract

This lecture presents recent research on legal judgment prediction and the creation of the underlying dataset, namely the Cambridge Law Corpus. The focus is on predicting claim success in the UK Employment Tribunal, whether judge identity matters for outcome prediction and the practicalities of creating large datasets for AI research.

����Vlog the speaker

is Professor of Law at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow (Privileges) at Newnham College. He serves as Deputy Chair of the Faculty of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law (3CL). He is Global Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), Principal Legal AI Advisor at Thomson Reuters and Associate Director of the TR Imperial Frontier AI Lab.

Language

English.

This is a free hybrid event. Registration is mandatory.

Lunch will be offered from 11:30.

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“Identification in (Endogenously) Nonlinear SVARs Is Easier Than You Think”

With the Lunch Seminar series, the Department of Finance is bringing eminent and up-and-coming researchers from around the world to Luxembourg.

Abstract

We study identification in structural vector autoregressions (SVARs) in which the endogenous variables enter nonlinearly on the left-hand side of the model, a feature we term endogenous nonlinearity, to distinguish it from the more familiar case in which nonlinearity arises only through exogenous or predetermined variables. This class of models accommodates asymmetric impact multipliers, endogenous regime switching, and occasionally binding constraints. We show that, under weak regularity conditions, the model parameters and structural shocks are (nonparametrically) identified up to an orthogonal transformation, exactly as in a linear SVAR. Our results have the powerful implication that most existing identification schemes for linear SVARs extend directly to our nonlinear setting, with the number of restrictions required to achieve exact identification remaining unchanged. We specialise our results to piecewise affine SVARs, which provide a convenient framework for the modelling of endogenous regime switching, and their smooth transition counterparts. We illustrate our methodology with an application to the nonlinear Phillips curve, providing a test for the presence of nonlinearity that is robust to the choice of identifying assumptions, and finding significant evidence for state-dependent inflation dynamics.

����Vlog the speaker

‘s research is in macroeconometrics, and he is especially concerned with the challenges for inference, and the opportunities for identification, created by strongly dependent time series. In particular, he has worked on: nonlinear generalisations of cointegration; nonparametric estimation and inference; and on the robustness of inferences to departures from exact unit roots (in SVARs). He is also interested in problems of identification and inference in structural macroeconomic models. His work has been published in the Annals of Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics, and Econometric Theory.

Language

English.

This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.

Cold lunches are provided to registered participants only.

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“Incident-Driven ESG Engagement”

With the Lunch Seminar series, the Department of Finance is bringing eminent and up-and-coming researchers from around the world to Luxembourg.

Abstract

Using proprietary engagement records from a large European asset manager, we study how ESG shocks shape institutional monitoring. We find that salient negative ESG incidents are a key trigger for engagement because they deteriorate public sentiment, heighten investors’ reputational concerns, and reveal information about previously hidden ESG weaknesses. Investors respond not only to incidents at focal firms but also to incidents at peer firms, consistent with both reactive monitoring following realized ESG failures and preemptive monitoring based on shared risk exposures within product markets. We further show that incident-driven engagement is more informed and more effective: it mitigates subsequent sentiment deterioration, reduces future ESG incidents, attenuates declines in institutional ownership, and is associated with higher firm value. More intensive engagement is also significantly more likely to succeed. Taken together, our findings speak to the fundamental question of what initiates institutional engagement and underscore its role as an important channel of external corporate governance.

����Vlog the speaker

is a Professor of Finance.

Language

English.

This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.

Cold lunches are provided to registered participants only.

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“Creative Destruction in the Healthcare Sector: Hospital Closures and Patient Outcomes”

With the Lunch Seminar series, the Department of Finance is bringing eminent and up-and-coming researchers from around the world to Luxembourg.

Abstract

Since 1975, the US has seen the net closure of over 800 hospitals, with more ex-pected following the recent $1 trillion reduction in federal healthcare spending. This trend underscores the need to better understand how closures impact patient outcomes. Using confidential patient-level data, we track patients who are displaced from closed hospitals and forced to seek treatment elsewhere, measuring their outcomes pre- and post- closure. We find patients at closing hospitals who subsequently switch to another facility experience better health outcomes, relative to patients who do not lose their hospital. Patients displaced by closures tend to receive treatment at higher quality hospitals characterized by stronger financial performance and higher staffing ratios, suggesting that market exit by inefficient providers may reallocate patients toward better-performing institutions. While average displaced patients find higher quality care, elderly patients in rural areas experience elevated mortality rates, suggesting limited accessibility to substitute providers. Overall, our findings reveal heterogeneous effects of hospital closures: while they may enhance care quality and efficiency for most patients, they pose risks to patient health in immobile populations.

����Vlog the speaker

is Professor of Finance at ESMT Berlin. At the same time, she is the head of the Department of Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets at IWH Halle Institute for Economic Research.

Language

English.

This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.

Cold lunches are provided to registered participants only.

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House Prices and Quantities Around the World

With the Lunch Seminar series, the Department of Finance is bringing eminent and up-and-coming researchers from around the world to Luxembourg.

Abstract

We establish several first-order facts using house price and quantity data for middle- and high-income countries. First, housing units and rooms per person rise with per capita income and then asymptote so that additional increases in income are uncorrelated with housing quantities. Second, growth in housing units is strongly correlated with population growth at all incomes. Third, real house prices and housing expenditure shares rise in near-constant proportion with per capita income. A model with non-homothetic demand for housing space, homothetic demand for housing quality, and upward-sloping supply of the unit-quality housing bundle can explain these relationships. Our findings are consistent with Baumol cost disease interpretations of global housing affordability, but are not indicative of increasingly tight supply constraints, as a model where the quantity of housing asymptotes because supply is increasingly inelastic does not match the facts.

����Vlog the speaker

is a Distinguished Endowed Chair in Macroeconomics and Public Finance and Professor at UC San Diego.

Language

English.

This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.

Cold lunches are provided to registered participants only.

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“Parsing the pulse: Decomposing macroeconomic sentiment with LLMS”

Abstract

Macroeconomic indicators provide quantitative signals that must be pieced to gether and interpreted by economists. We propose a reversed approach of parsing press narratives directly using Large Language Models (LLM) to recover growth and inflation sentiment indices. A key advantage of this LLM-based approach is the ability to decompose aggregate sentiment into its drivers, readily enabling an interpretation of macroeconomic dynamics. Our sentiment indices track hard-data counterparts closely, providing an accurate, near real-time picture of the macroe conomy. Their components–demand, supply, and deeper structural forces–are in tuitive and consistent with prior model-based studies. Incorporating sentiment indices improves the forecasting performance of simple statistical models, pointing to information unspanned by traditional data

����Vlog the speaker

is Acting Head of the Monetary and Economic Department and Head of Economic Analysis and Statistics. He is a member of the Bank’s senior management team.

Language

English.

This is a free seminar. Registration is mandatory.

Cold lunches are provided to registered participants.

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Abstract

How a small country can do its part to protect international law, human rights, and international humanitarian law in the digital space in 2026. Luxembourg’s thematic ambassador for cybersecurity and digitalisation Luc Dockendorf will offer an overview over cybersecurity challenges, multilateral cooperation, human rights protection online, and striving for digital sovereignty at a time when it looks like things are really falling apart.

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Luc Dockendorf is an Ambassador for Cybersecurity and Digitalisation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luxembourg.

Language

English.

This is a free hybrid event. Registration is mandatory.

The event will run from 12.30 until 14.00. A cold lunch will be offered from 12.00.

• Find out more about the Chair in Cyber Policy

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Economic Analysis for Food Systems Transformation: Global-Local-Global Approach

Abstract

Food systems are a major driver of planetary boundary exceedance (Richardson et al. 2023). As climate uncertainty intensifies and an increasingly affluent global population increases food demand, ambitious environmental policies are essential to sustainably manage the limited stock of natural resources. This presentation highlights how economic analysis can deepen our understanding of the market-mediated effects of conservation efforts through a global-local-global lens.

Environmental challenges, like biodiversity loss, groundwater depletion, and excessive nutrient leaching, are experienced locally. Yet their drivers often operate globally through commodity markets as global population and incomes increase. Labour markets, operating between these global and local scales, further shape the effectiveness and distributional impacts of conservation policies (Ray and Hertel 2025; Ray 2025), particularly as farm labor scarcity intensifies.

This talk draws on recent advances in economic analysis that connect global drivers to decisions by local producers at a fine spatial scale while considering the mediating impacts of sub-national markets. This approach can inform policies targeting food systems transformation while minimizing unintended economic and distributional consequences.

����Vlog the speaker

• 

  Dr. Srabashi RAY

  LCSES

  Research scientist

  Learn more

Language

English

This is a free seminar. Registration is mandatory.

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PRIVILEGED Conference

Abstract

The PRIVILEGED final conference brings together leading scholars, EU officials, and practitioners to explore one of the most pressing issues in European and cross-border administrative and criminal enforcement: the balance between confidentiality, secrecy, and professional privileges on the one hand, and effective investigations on the other. Hosted at the ����Vlog, this two-day event will present the key findings of the PRIVILEGED research project, which examines how professional privileges shape both administrative and criminal proceedings across EU Member States.Against this background, the conference will address critical questions: how should confidentiality be balanced with transparency? How do different branches of law – criminal, banking, financial, competition, and tax – approach the tension between enforcement powers, confidentiality, and procedural rights? Do professional privilege regimes operate consistently across these fields, or do they create fragmentation that affects the effectiveness of investigations? And ultimately, is harmonization at the EU level needed in this field – and what could it look like?

Language

English.

This is a free event. Registration is mandatory.

Programme

Monday, 18 May 2026

• 13.00

  Welcome lunch

• 14.00 – 14.10

  Welcome address

  • Katalin Ligeti, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, Professor of European and International Criminal Law, ����Vlog

• 14.10 – 15.00

  Introduction to the PRIVILEGED project

  Chair: Katalin Ligeti, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance, Professor of European and International Criminal Law, ����Vlog

  • Introductory remarks: The PRIVILEGED Project, Silvia Allegrezza, Professor of Criminal Law, Principal Investigator of PRIVILEGED, ����Vlog
  • Insights from the PRIVILEGED comparative report and the draft Directive, Lorenzo Bernardini, Postdoctoral Researcher in Criminal Law, ����Vlog
  • Legal Professional Privileges between the CJEU and the ECtHR, Lorena Bachmaier Winter, Professor of Procedural Law, Complutense University of Madrid

• 15.00 – 16.30

  Panel 1: Regards croisés on transparency and confidentiality: The European Union Legal Order (part I)

  Chair: Takis Tridimas, Director of Luxembourg Centre for European Law, ����Vlog

  Discussants:

  • Confidentiality and secrecy in the CJEU’s case-law, Court of Justice, CJEU (to be confirmed)
  • Transparency and democracy within the EU legal order, Joana Mendes, Professor of European Public Law, LCEL, ����Vlog
  • Confidentiality in the EU legal order, Jacob Öberg, Professor of EU Law, University of Southern Denmark
  • Confidentiality, secrecy and transparency in EU Tax Law, Katerina Pantazatou, Professor of Tax Law, ����Vlog
  • Confidentiality and secrecy in anti-fraud investigation (OLAF), Salla Saastamoinen, Acting DG and Deputy DG, OLAF

• 16.30 – 17.00

  Coffee break

• 17.00 – 18.30

  Panel 2: Regards croisés on transparency and confidentiality: Focus on criminal justice

  Chair: Stefan Braum, Professor of Criminal law, ����Vlog (to be confirmed)

  Discussants:

  • Secrecy and criminal justice, Michele Panzavolta, Professor of Criminal Law, KU Leuven
  • Business secrecy and criminal justice, Carsten Momsen, Professor of Criminal Law, Freie University Berlin
  • Investigative secrecy, Sławomir Steinborn, Professor of Criminal Procedure, University of Gdańsk
  • Non-legal Professional privileges, Anna Mosna, Assistant Professor of Criminal Law, Leiden University
  • Legal Professional Privilege, Holger Matt, Lawyer, Honorary Professor, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main

• 19.00

  Conference dinner

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

• 09.00 – 11.00

  Panel 3: Regards croisés on transparency and confidentiality: : The European Union Legal Order (part II)

  Chair: Silvia Allegrezza, Professor of Criminal Law, Principal Investigator of PRIVILEGED, ����Vlog

  Discussants:

  • Confidentiality and monetary policy within the ECB, Chiara Zilioli, Director General, Legal Services, European Central Bank
  • Confidentiality within the SSM: vertical dimension, Stefano Montemaggi, Legal Service, Bank of Italy
  • Confidentiality, secrecy and transparency in EU financial supervision, Nikolai Badenhoop, Head of Junior Research Group, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE
  • Confidentiality and secrecy in AML-CTF, Janneke De Smet-Dierckx, Strategic Programme Lead, Anti-Money Laundering Authority of the European Union (AMLA)
  • Banking secrecy: a transversal analysis, Olivier Voordeckers, ����Vlog

• 11.00 – 11.30

  Coffee break

• 11.30 – 13.00

  Panel 4 – Confidentiality, secrecy and privileges: the enforcement approach

  Chair: Carsten Momsen, Professor of Criminal Law, Freie University Berlin

  Discussants:

  • Confidentiality and secrecy: toward an EU harmonization?, Laura Stelzer, Legal Advisor, Legal and Policy Officer, DG Just, EU Commission
  • Confidentiality and secrecy. Experience from EUROPOL, Giovanni D’Auria, Institutional and Legal Affairs Department, Europol
  • Confidentiality and secrecy. Experience from the EPPO, Emmanuel Farhat, Legal Service, European Public Prosecutor’s Office
  • Confidentiality and secrecy: a continental view, Valentina Covolo, Legal expert, Parquet financier du Tribunal de Luxembourg

• 13.00

  Closing remarks

  Silvia Allegrezza, Professor of Criminal Law, Principal Investigator of PRIVILEGED, ����Vlog

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The fifth edition of the Gender and Economics Workshop will be held at the ����Vlog, Luxembourg City, on 21–22 May 2026. The workshop is organised by the Department of Economics and Management of the ����Vlog and LISER. The event aims to bring together scholars presenting cutting-edge research in economics, with a particular focus on gender, culture, family, fertility, and diversity.

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
We have the great honor to welcome the following keynote speakers:
Johanna Rickne (Stockholm University) and Klaus Desmet (SMU)

ORGANIZING AND SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Luisito Bertinelli, Anastasia Litina, Hillel Rapoport, Eva Sierminska, Skerdi Zanaj