2026 Working Paper Prizes

ECGI is delighted to announce the winners of the best papers in the Working Paper Finance and Law Series published in 2025.

The 2026 ECGI Finance Prize sponsored by WRDS for the Best Paper in the ECGI Finance Working Paper Series has been awarded to Jason Chen (Auburn University), Jakub Hajda (HEC Montréal) and Joseph Kalmenovitz (University of Rochester) for their paper: “Escaping Pay-for-Performance” (ECGI Finance Working Paper 1055/2025).

Selected by the Working Paper Series Finance Editorial Board, the paper contributes to the literature on incentive design and corporate governance by studying the compensation of the top executives of the federal government who lead regulatory agencies overseeing firms and financial markets. It shows how the structure of executive pay can simultaneously affect effort, career choices, and the composition of the leadership responsible for monitoring firms. In doing so, it extends core governance questions about executive compensation and incentives beyond firms to the public-sector executives responsible for overseeing them.

The 2026 Law Prize sponsored by WRDS has been awarded to Luca Enriques (Bocconi University and ECGI), Matteo Gatti (Rutgers Law School and ECGI) and Roy Shapira (Reichman (IDC) and ECGI) for their paper on: “How the EU Sustainability Due Diligence Directive Could Reshape Corporate America” (ECGI Law Working Paper 817/2025).

Selected by the Working Paper Series Law Editorial Board, the paper traces how a single piece of European legislation — the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, or CS3D — interacts with the American legal system in ways that could fundamentally change how large US corporations govern themselves on human rights and environmental issues. It bridges two bodies of law that rarely speak to each other: EU regulatory law and Delaware corporate law. The paper shows that their combination is more potent than either alone, and it identifies a new mechanism through which European regulation can reshape not just what companies sell, but how they operate across their entire global supply chains.

Referring to the awards, Professor Marco Becht, ECGI Executive Director said: 

“The winning papers this year cross borders — between the public and private sectors, and between European and American law. Both ask who really governs corporations, and both arrive at answers that should prompt serious reflection among policymakers, practitioners, and scholars alike.”

The 2026 winning papers sponsored by WRDS are available on the ECGI website:

Law prize: “How the EU Sustainability Due Diligence Directive Could Reshape Corporate America”

Finance prize: “Escaping Pay-for-Performance”

More about ECGI Prizes, sponsors and past-winners.