Professor Merritt Fox

Merritt Fox is the Merritt Fox is an economist and legal scholar whose work in corporate and securities law is influential in setting the agenda for capital markets regulation. He is the Arthur Levitt Professor of Law and also co-director of the Center for Law and Economic Studies and co-director of the Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets.


B.A., 1968, Yale; J.D., 1971; Ph.D. (Economics), 1980. Practiced with the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, 1974-80. Adjunct professor teaching law and economics, Yale and Fordham, 1974-80. Taught at Indiana University Law School in Bloomington before joining the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1988, where he was the Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law and faculty director of the school's Center for International and Comparative Law. He is author of Finance and Industrial Performance in a Dynamic Economy (1987); The Signature of Power: Buildings, Communication and Policy (with H. Lasswell, 1979). He is also co-editor, with Michael Heller, of Corporate Governance Lessons from Transitional Economies (2006). Much of his recent scholarship is in the areas of international securities regulation, the value of mandatory disclosure, and comparative corporate governance.