Armin Steinbach

Armin Steinbach

Jean Monnet Professor of Law and Economics at HEC Paris

Visiting Professor at London School of Economics (LSE)

Non-Resident Fellow at Bruegel (Brussels)

Specializing in Law and Economics, Economic Policy, European and International Law, Constitutional Law, Legal Theory

About

Armin Steinbach holds the Jean Monnet Chair and the HEC Foundation Chair of Law and Economics, European Law and International Law at HEC Paris. He is also Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn and non-resident Fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. Previously, Armin held academic posts as Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Oxford University's Nuffield College, Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, visiting professor at University of St. Gallen, and Harvard University's Center for European Studies. As government official for more than ten years, Armin headed the financial policy division in the German Ministry of Finance, the economic policy division in the Ministry of Economic and Energy Affairs, and served as ministerial secondment in the German parliament. He also worked at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva and as lawyer with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels. Armin sits on the WTO list of panelists serving the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. With his mixed background in academia and public service, Armin's research aims at interdisciplinary inquiry and bridging academic research and policy-making. Besides his academic publications, Armin has been a contributor and commentator to BBC, CNBC, Le Monde, Les Echos, Financial Times, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Handelsblatt. Armin obtained his Habilitation from University of Bonn, for which he was awarded the Science Prize of the German Society of Legislation. He also holds a Doctor of Laws from University of Munich, Doctor of Economics from University of Erfurt, Master of Laws from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Master in Economics from Humboldt University Berlin.

Publications

PUBLICATIONS

Recent books

Niemandsland

Les Éditions du Crieur Public (2024)

In his debut novel "No Man's Land", Armin Steinbach tells of origin and family, of youth, love and the middle of life. What can hold us together when life gets out of sync? What do we really need in life?

Berlin 2035. The climate crisis has been defeated thanks to technology. A general belief in progress prevails. Karl, too, is gliding smoothly along. Things are looking up, both in his career and personal life. But then a wave of refugees breaks into Fortress Europe. The wave also sweeps Karl along. His own family history, of flight and displacement, catches up with him. Something begins to slip.

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EU Law and Economics

Oxford University Press (2024)

The intersection between law and economics is a dynamic field of research. Yet, European law has so far not been the subject of comprehensive, systematic economic analysis. EU Law and Economics closes this gap, providing an overview of the application of economics to the institutional, procedural, and substantive aspects of European law. Drawing on various branches of the economic sciences – including rational choice and game theory, and institutional and behavioural economics – this book goes beyond conventional methods of EU legal scholarship to expand our understanding of EU law and its effects. This book devotes attention to EU Treaties and secondary law, as well as their adjudicative interpretation, while using economic theory to explain their core legal principles such as conferral, subsidiarity, and mutual recognition.

Coming soon

Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures

Brill Nijhoff (2024)

This book explores strategies for limiting transnational market failures, governance failures and constitutional failures impeding protection of the universally agreed sustainable development goals like climate change mitigation and access to justice and transnational rule-of-law. Can multilevel democratic and judicial protection of fundamental rights and public goods across frontiers be extended through plurilateral agreements? Can transnational economic and environmental constitutionalism be reconciled with ‘constitutional pluralism’ and with democratic constitutionalism depending on individual and democratic consent of free and equal citizens? Will judicial challenges (e.g. of EU carbon border adjustment measures) and countermeasures lead to further disruption of UN and WTO law?