The Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance is pleased to announce the success of two projects submitted in the framework of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) CORE grant.
CORE, the central programme of the FNR, has a main objective to strengthen the scientific quality of Luxembourg’s public research in the country’s research priorities adopted by the Government on 20 December 2019. These priorities include industrial and service transformation, personalised healthcare, sustainable and responsible development and 21st century education.
Project BUGPAF
Associate Professor within the Department of Law, Martin Stierle, will be Principal Investigator for the project Building A Green Patent Framework To Foster Sustainable Development (BUGPAF). This three-year project which benefits from an FNR commitment of 478,000 EUR seeks to analyse the current patent system. Researchers will explore its potential to contribute to sustainable development and to align its framework with sustainability goals.
BUGPAF is a legal-economic project. It will investigate policy levers within the patent system to induce investments in green technologies. Moreover, the project will explore legal measures to reduce blocking effects for GreenTech implementation.
The proposed investigation will impact the discussion on intellectual property and sustainability on a national, European and international level. It will serve patent offices and legislators in their future decision-making towards a more conducive ecosystem for sustainably innovation. The project, which is part of the “sustainable and responsible development” priority and the “climate change: energy efficiency and smart energy management, resilient eco- and agrosystems” subcategory is set to begin in September 2023.
Project ACQUIT
Roberto Steri, Assistant Professor within the department of Finance will be coordinating the three-year project, entitled Applied Contracting And Quantitative Incentive Theory, or ACQUIT. Prof. Steri’s project, with an FNR commitment of 776,000 EUR was accepted within the industrial and service transformation priority.
ACQUIT, which kicks off in September 2023 aims to take a step towards closing the gap between theory and practice in the field of financial contracting. While the theory of financial contracting offers powerful tools to implement efficient decision making in private and public organisations, the applicability of the theory is still limited due to technical and conceptual challenges. The project thus takes advantage of modern computational and econometric tools to offer applications to four broad areas in financial economics, including corporate finance, auction theory, public policy and financial markets.
In corporate finance, Prof. Steri will assess the quantitative importance of managerial beliefs and optimally-designed compensation contracts in shaping corporate policies. In auction theory, he will design optimal procurement auctions for a financially-constrained buyer with implications for large-scale applications such as governmental purchases of pharmaceuticals. In public policy, he will assess whether interventions are effective to address credit market failures and stimulate recovery during the Covid19 crisis. In financial markets, he will show that the study of financial contracts between firms and external lenders provide helpful tools to track price fluctuations of financial securities.
Find more information about the CORE grant, as well as a summary of all successful projects on the FNR website.