Assistant Professor of Law Hajin Kim recently received the 2026 Best (Empirical) Paper Prize from the American Law and Economics Review for her 2025 article, “Does ESG Crowd In or Out Public Support for Regulation?,” written with Joshua Macey of Yale Law School and Kristen Underhill of Cornell Law School. The award recognizes the best empirical paper published in the journal during the preceding year.

The article addresses a question that has become increasingly important as corporations take on more visible roles in addressing social and environmental challenges: Do voluntary corporate efforts reduce public demand for government regulation, or do they increase support for regulatory action?

Previous research had produced conflicting answers. Some scholars suggested that when companies voluntarily address issues such as emissions reductions or plastic waste, the public may view regulation as less necessary. Others argued that such actions can signal the seriousness of a problem and demonstrate that compliance costs are manageable, potentially increasing support for regulation.

Kim and her co-authors theorized that these competing effects would largely offset one another. To test that prediction, they conducted two preregistered randomized controlled studies involving more than 2,800 participants. Drawing on real-world corporate communications about voluntary social and environmental commitments, the researchers found no economically significant effects on public support for regulation in either direction. Their findings help reconcile a body of prior scholarship that had reached divergent conclusions and challenge assumptions that voluntary corporate action reliably shapes public attitudes toward government regulation.

Kim, an expert in empirical legal studies and law and economics, joined the Law School faculty in 2020. Her research examines how legal institutions, markets, and organizations influence individual and collective decision-making.

The award was presented at on May 15 at the annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, which was held at the University of Chicago.