Ep.61 – Andrew Verstein on Insider-Trading Motives

Andrew Verstein, professor of law at UCLA, joins the Business Scholarship Podcast to discuss his forthcoming article Mixed Motives Insider Trading. In this article, Verstein observes that individuals often have proper and improper motivations to trade securities (e.g., needing cash for a child's tuition while being in possession of material non-public information about bad financials results), which complicates liability analysis for insider trading. To resolve that complication, he proposes a mixed-motives approach that balances the need to hold illicit traders accountable with the need to permit labor-intense market research. This episode is hosted by Andrew Jennings, a teaching fellow and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School.