In this episode of Trusts Talk, Mark Bennett and Adam Hofri-Winogradow are joined by Felix Chang, the Robert J. Watkins/Procter & Gamble Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, to discuss his chapter, "Economic Analysis of Trust Law," in the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws, co-edited by Adam and Mark with Lusina Ho and Richard Nolan. Felix traces an arc from microeconomic to macroeconomic analysis of trusts, from John Langbein's contractarian account and Robert Sitkoff's agency costs theory, through to work treating the trust as an input into the wider economy and a vehicle for entrenching wealth inequality across generations. The conversation ranges across asset protection trusts and settlor-retained powers, the asymmetry between contractual and tort creditors, the long-running contract-versus-property debate, and how American legal education folds trusts into estate planning. Felix also reflects on his path into trusts and estates scholarship, and on open questions at the intersection of trusts, race, and public fiduciary duty. References Felix B. Chang's Selected Relevant Work

• Felix B. Chang, "Economic Analysis of Trust Law," in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Trust Laws (Oxford University Press).
• Felix B. Chang, "Asymmetries in the Generation and Transmission of Wealth" (2018) 79 Ohio State LJ 73.
• Felix B. Chang, "How Should Inheritance Law Remediate Inequality?" (2022) 97 Washington LR 61.
• Felix B. Chang and Lusina Ho, "Intestacy and Inequality under China's Revised Succession Law" (2023) 72 American Journal of Comparative Law.

Other Scholarship mentioned

• John H. Langbein, "The Contractarian Basis of the Law of Trusts" (1995) 105 Yale LJ 625.
• Melanie B. Leslie, "Trusting Trustees: Fiduciary Duties and the Limits of Default Rules" (2005) 94 Georgetown LJ 67.
• Robert H. Sitkoff, "An Agency Costs Theory of Trust Law" (2004) 89 Cornell LR 621.
• Henry Hansmann and Ugo Mattei, "The Functions of Trust Law: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis" (1998) 73 NYU LR 434.
• Allison Anna Tait, "Inheriting Privilege" (2022) 106 Minnesota LR 1959.
• Allison Anna Tait, "The Law of High-Wealth Exceptionalism" (2020) 71 Alabama LR 981.
• Eric Kades, "Of Piketty and Perpetuities: Dynastic Wealth in the Twenty-First Century (And Beyond)" (2019) 60 Boston College LR 145.
• David Horton, "Wills Law on the Ground" (2015) 62 UCLA LR 1094.
• David Horton and Andrea Cann Chandrasekher, "Probate Lending" (2016) 126 Yale LJ 102.
• Reid Kress Weisbord, "Wills for Everyone: Helping Individuals Opt Out of Intestacy" (2012) 53 Boston College LR 877.
• Bridget J. Crawford and Anthony C. Infanti, "A Critical Research Agenda for Wills, Trusts, and Estates" (2014) 49 Real Property, Trust and Estate LJ 317.

Books

• John Chipman Gray, Restraints on the Alienation of Property (2 ed, Boston Book Company, 1895).
• Brooke Harrington, Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent (Harvard University Press, 2016).
• Brooke Harrington, Offshore: Stealth, Wealth, and the New Colonialism (W.W. Norton, 2024).
• Emilie Connolly, Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States (Princeton University Press).