Teaching Staff
Prof. Louis Visscher, LL.M. is Professor of Legal Economic Analysis of Torts and Damages at the Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE). He holds an economics degree (international economics, 1993) from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, as well as a law degree (civil law, cum laude, 1994) from the same university. He has written his Ph.D. dissertation in Rotterdam on the economic analysis of Dutch tort law (2005). In EMLE, Louis teaches in the course ‘Economic Analysis of Private Law’, and in the course Microeconomics he provides (video-)lectures on Game Theory and on Risk. He coordinates the Rotterdam second-term Moot Court course and also provides a session there. In the Rotterdam bachelor of law he coordinates and co-teaches the course ‘Law, Economics and Society’ and he provides guest lectures on torts, damages, insurance and enforcement in the bachelor and master curriculum. He also provides lectures on Law and Economics for the Dutch Academy for Legislation. Louis has published on the topics of international trade, tort law, contract law, insurance law, the law of damages, civil procedural law (including collective litigation), law enforcement, consumer law, criminal law, labour law and harmonisation of law.
Prof. Ann-Sophie Vandenberghe is herself an EMLE alumna (1997), she obtained a PhD at Utrecht University (2004) by defending a thesis on ‘The economic analysis of employment law’ and is currently employed as an associate professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Since her own EMLE experience, she has been devoted to develop better ways to teach law & economics wisdom to EMLE students and to other audiences. In her courses she uses historical and comparative legal examples to highlight the role that legal systems, which govern property and the transfer of property, can and should play in promoting the efficient use of scarce resources, in avoiding the waste of valuable resources and in avoiding inequality. The idea is that the L&E universal wisdom of the past may help equip students to get hands of today’s societal challenges and to structure the problems of the future. The lectures take place at the Erasmus School of Law (ESL), and are spirited by the values of Roger Van den Bergh, the founder of the Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE), and those of Desiderius Erasmus, the name-giver of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (EUR). It means that we should have fun and that we recognize the fact that we are only humans who hope for the best but can nevertheless prepare for the worst.
Prof. Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko Prof. Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko holds two bachelor degrees in law and psychology from the University of Haifa; two master degrees: LL.M. from the University of Haifa and the degree of European Master in Law and Economics (EMLE, cum laude) from the University of Hamburg, University of Ghent and University of Vienna. She obtained her PhD degree from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Hamburg (summa cum laude) and the University of Bologna. Elena is also a qualified attorney in Israel and has worked in the past as a criminal prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office in Israel. She taught Introduction to Law in the EMLE programme at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (2013) and is a lecturer of the course Public Law and Economics and Introduction to Law (tutorials) in the EMLE program since 2015-2016. Elena’s main research interests are criminal law and economics and behavioral law and economics.
Prof. Franziska Weber is a Professor in Law and Economics at Erasmus School of Law, more concretely within the Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics. She obtained her PhD in the European Doctorate in Law and Economics in 2012 and was junior professor of Civil law and Law & Economics at Hamburg University (2013-2020). Her main research interests concern competition, consumer and data law. Her approach is comparative legal and interdisciplinary (including experimental). As another core qualification she successfully completed her Habilitation trajectory at University of Hamburg on 26/02/2021, obtaining a venia legendi for law & economics, European private law, comparative law, German civil and civil procedural law same as economic law. She is eligible to the German and Spanish bar and fluent in German, English, Dutch, Spanish and Italian.
Mr. Drs. Ibrahim Jabri Professor of Introduction to Microeconomics at Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE). He holds a master degree in Tax Law, a master degree in Data Science and a master degree in Economics of Taxation, all three obtained at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Besides his teaching at RILE, he is a Professor Tax Law at the Erasmus School of Law. In this program, he coordinates and teaches the course ‘Fiscal Accounting Appliances’ and he (co-)teaches the course ‘Business Profit’. His main fields of interest concern data, (tax) law and economics. Currently, he is researching the implementation of Artificial Intelligence within the Dutch judicial system, as a replacement of the human judge.
Dr. Alexandre Biard is an affiliated researcher at Erasmus School of Law. He graduated from Sciences Po Paris (2009), holds a master degree in public economic law from the University Paris-Sorbonne (2010), and a Ph.D in Law and Economics (Rotterdam University, Bologna University, Hamburg University, 2014). He was admitted to the Paris bar (France) in 2015 and worked as a practitioner in several law firms in Paris and in Brussels. From 2016 to 2019, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam focusing on new ways to access justice in the EU, ADR/ODR, collective redress, and consumer law enforcement. He works at BEUC – the European Consumer Organisation in Brussels as a senior legal officer.
Prof. Niels Philipsen is Professor of Shifts in Private and Public Regulation at RILE, Erasmus School of Law (0.2 FTE). He is also Associate Professor in Law and Economics and Vice-Director of research institute METRO at Maastricht University (0.8 FTE). In the latter capacity he has coordinated and contributed to many academic and policy-related research projects, mostly in the domain of Law & Economics. His research expertise includes competition policy, regulation of professions, torts and insurance, and environmental regulation. From 2017 until 2021 he was also Adjunct Professor at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), and in earlier years Visiting Professor at Peking University, Visiting Researcher at the University of Illinois, and a Temporary Agent at the European Commission/DG Competition. In EMLE he coordinates and teaches in the course ‘Advanced Economics of Regulation’. At other universities (UM, CUPL, Hasselt University) he teaches courses in Law and Economics, Competition Law, and EU State Aid Policy.
Prof. Dr. Patrick C. Leyens, LL.M. is a Professor of Civil Law, Corporate and Commercial Law at the University of Bremen, is part-time appointed at the Chair of Empirical Legal Studies at Erasmus School of Law. He served as a senior research fellow at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute for Comparative Private and International Private Law, Hamburg, as a junior professor at the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg, and as a professor at the University of Graz. His main fields of interest concern the law and economics of corporate, commercial and capital market law, especially corporate governance.
Prof. Dr. Pieter Desmet is Professor of Quantitative Empirical Legal Studies at Erasmus School of Law. He has a background in Economics and Psychology and holds a PhD from Rotterdam School of Management. Pieter has a special interest in behavioral law and economics and conducts experiments and quantitative empirical legal research. His research focus is on decision-making in a variety of legal domains, including the decision making of victims, perpetrators, judges & jurors, as well as behavioral ethics, organizational and consumer behavior, and nudging. His research is interdisciplinary, award winning and has been published in top tier journals in different domains. Pieter Desmet is also Co-director of the Erasmus Centre of Empirical Legal Studies.
Prof. Van den Bergh is Professor of Law and Economics at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. His main fields of interest are the economic analysis of competition law, harmonisation of private law, and safety and security in society. From 1987 until 2001 he was President of the European Association of Law and Economics. From February 2000 until February 2005 he was Director of the EMLE Programme. He has been the Erasmus Mundus Coordinator of the EMLE Programme from 2004 to 2012.