Andrew Granato
@agranato42.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at UT Austin School of Law; legal economist. "We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price - so that we may survive." Site: https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/andrew-granato/
The New School for Social Reserach in NYC is, essentially, killing itself, killing what it was, killing what it stood for. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/n...
He Had Tenure. The New School Laid Him Off Anyway. (Gift Article)
The professor, a longtime critic of the university, was among 19 educators who lost their positions as the institution navigated financial woes.
nytimes.com
Setting up my fall-semester office hours and I'm tentatively doing half of them open season/half of them with priority to people who sign up in advance for 20-minute Calendly slots. Do profs have advice on this?
Join us on August 6 at 11:00 a.m. ET for a conference call with @agranato42.bsky.social and Pranjal Drall on "Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers." RSVP: thecapitolforum.com/events/?utm_...
Pranjal and I talked to The American Prospect about Private Credit’s State Backstop: prospect.org/2026/08/03/a...
We went on Odd Lots! @pranjal-drall.bsky.social and I on the theoretical case for the PE-backed life insurance "flywheel," the design of the insurance's public backstop, and our concerns with the way this is all playing out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UdW...
Why Private Credit Got Entangled With Insurance | Odd Lots
YouTube video by Bloomberg Podcasts
youtube.com
.@pranjal-drall.bsky.social and I will be on @capitolforum.bsky.social August 6 talking Private Credit's State Backstop. Registration link is here for anyone interested: thecapitolforum.com/events/priva....
"Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers" with Andrew Granato and Pranjal Drall - The Capitol Forum
The Capitol Forum will host a conference call with Andrew Granato, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and Pranjal Drall, a J.D.-Ph.D. candidate in Financial Economics at Yal...
thecapitolforum.com
More on the LA Dodgers PE/private credit/life insurance criminal probe. This is the exact sort of issue that @pranjal-drall.bsky.social and I flag: use of an insurer as a privileged issuance vehicle for private credit to other firms of the owner, potentially at policyholder/taxpayer expense.
Fresh evidence the private equity firms pouring money into the AI bubble could lead to the insolvency of companies behind life insurance for millions -- in which case we'll all end up paying for the bailout, as we did in 2008: paulkedrosky.com/socializing-...
Socializing Data Center Financing Risk
There is a strong new paper out about how private socializes risk via the (captive) insurance channel, with implications for data center capex, given the (now) greater than 50% reliance on external fi...
paulkedrosky.com
Here’s what Burry has been posting this weekend.
Jesse Felder@jessefelder.com · 2w ago‘PE-owned life insurers reflect a structural transformation in which an insurer supports a broader asset-management business that is designed to extract value upfront and impose losses on others.’ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
‘PE-owned life insurers reflect a structural transformation in which an insurer supports a broader asset-management business that is designed to extract value upfront and impose losses on others.’ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Thanks Odd Lots and @tracyalloway.bsky.social for highlighting our research on Private Credit's State Backstop!
New w/ @pranjal-drall.bsky.social: Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers. It's about how insurance insolvency, tax, and financial-regulation law have subsidized PE's takeover of life insurance and become the submerged law of private credit.
Really excited to see that this paper has gone public. One of the most exciting things a paper can do is show you that all sorts of scattered phenomena are actually part of a whole. Link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
To this day, one of the most unbelievable facts we’ve ever published in @boltsmag.org: Over a 40-year period, *80* percent of death row convictions in Louisiana have ended up getting reversed.
Taniel@taniel.bsky.social · last mo.Big in Louisiana today: State Supreme Court upheld decision vacating the conviction of Chris Duncan, who spent 26 years on death row claiming innocence. Context: 80% of people on Louisiana death row have been exonerated; this conviction hinged on discredited doctors. We reported on case here:
In Pung vs. Isabella Cty today, the Supreme Court held that the proper valuation method for determining "just compensation" in a foreclosure of property to make up tax debt does not have to be its "fair market value" (what a "willing buyer" and "willing seller" would achieve).
Final version is live on the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies website! Why defendant-side expert witnesses get paid systematically more in class actions (and, arguably, all contingency fee litigation) than their plaintiff-side counterparts.
Andrew Granato@agranato42.bsky.social · last yr.NEW PAPER: Expert Asymmetry. When there is a "battle of the experts," civil procedure rules mean that defendants spend more on expert witnesses. In a decade of handcollected securities litigation data, Ds spend 37% more on economist experts (avg $1,150/hour). Draft: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
@agranato42.bsky.social's 2017 investigation of the political economy of the Stanford Review remains a true banger of student investigative journalism.
capitolhunters@capitolhunters.bsky.social · 2mo agoGil's whole thread is a must-read, but just adding here a key 2017 article about how Peter Thiel amassed power by cultivating a network of hundreds of Stanford Review alums, like Theodore Gillibrand - or Josh Hawley, who he boosted to the Senate. Thiel hires them, invests in them, makes them loyal.
not sure if everyone can access this, but I just learned about some dramatic changes to SSRN from Steve Bainbridge's Substack. This is really bad; SSRN has been how I keep up with scholarship in my field from a variety of researchers www.stephenbainbridge.com/p/the-social...
The Social Science Research Network Has Jumped the Shark
Significant and unwelcome changes to what had been legal academia's major open source scholarly repository and notice system
stephenbainbridge.com
NEW: Xinjiang has the highest detention capacity in the world, according to FT analysis - enough space for almost 1 in 40 people in the region - more than five years after the Chinese govt announced the camps had closed.
15 years of entry level law prof hiring:
Sarah Lawsky@sarahlawsky.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe first draft of the law school entry-level reported hiring report is up. This year mostly looks very similar to the previous 4 years. I will continue to revise and to add hires throughout the next few months. www.lawskyprojects.org/entry-level-...
Conflicting Values in Judicial Valuations is now forthcoming at the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies! Thanks to the reviewers, discussants, and conference participants who have helped the paper.
Andrew Granato@agranato42.bsky.social · 12mo agoI am on the legal academic job market! My job talk paper is on how courts in tax, corporate, and bankruptcy law spheres value business interests systematically differently, such that the same asset is "worth" different amounts of money depending on the substantive underlying law.
AI has genuinely useful applications in law but 1) you need a large knowledge base to use it effectively and 2) law schools need to focus on providing that knowledge base. My worry is future lawyers will trust automated judgments over their own.
Nathan Kalman-Lamb@nkalamb.bsky.social · 3mo agoUC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.
I’m not sure why this isn’t being mentioned more, but: IRS policy for 50 years has been that the sitting president & VP get audited every year, in an effort to reassure the public they’re not corruptly abusing the office to enrich themselves.
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 3mo agoTrump and sons to be ‘forever’ exempt from tax audits ft.trib.al/ePJ9DiF
We’re live! Huge thanks to the editors. repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_bus...
After the “Partner Run”: the Dewey & LeBoeuf Diaspora
“Partner runs”—mass, near-instantaneous departures of partners from distressed law firms—are a distinctive feature of the American legal profession, produced by an interaction of legal ethics rules, p...
repository.uclawsf.edu
Andrew Granato@agranato42.bsky.social · 7mo agoA couple years ago, for my professional responsibility class I wrote up a paper on what happened to the lawyers at Dewey & LeBoeuf and the implications for partnership governance in the legal industry. It'll be formally published in the UC Law Business Journal! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
I will get access to my faculty office this summer and am now deciding how I should decorate it! Would love to hear from faculty about how they have used the physical design of their offices to make their lives easier/aura farm
Breaking news: Indiana University plant microbiologist Roger Innes has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders. The move comes after Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs. https://scim.ag/4tsDqRr
After USDA request, Indiana plant biologist locked out of lab by school
Move comes after Roger Innes complained about the government’s prosecution of Chinese postdocs
scim.ag
🚨 Sens. Murray & Wyden release text of landmark "Fair Trusts Act for Fiscal Responsibility" featuring annual 1-3% tax on net worth of tax-avoiding trusts. One-page summary: www.murray.senate.gov/wp-content/u... For more in-depth coverage of this approach see this thread: bsky.app/profile/bdge...
murray.senate.gov
Brian Galle@bdgesq.bsky.social · last yr.New WP alert! Taxing Dynasties with @davidgamage.bsky.social and @azboblord.bsky.social (forthcoming U. Pa. L. Rev.) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Long summary thread incoming. 1/15
Not going to hold my breath waiting for a retraction from every publication that treated this study as proof that YIMBYism doesn't work.
Ned Resnikoff@resnikoff.bsky.social · 3mo agoWoof. I've been critical of this Urban Institute study since it first dropped, but it turns out that the methodological errors were even more serious than I understood. econjwatch.org/file_downloa...
In 2008 we absolutely saw runs on shadow banks, but we also saw runs on actual banks! They just didn't come from depositors: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Who Ran on Repo?
(May 2020) - The sale and repurchase (repo) market played a central role in the recent financial crisis. From the second quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009, net repo financing provided to US...
aeaweb.org
Justin Wolfers@justinwolfers.bsky.social · 3mo agoTwo things can be true at once: private credit isn't identical to 2008-era shadow banking, and some of the same vulnerabilities may be creeping back. Similar enough to inspect closely.
