For the summer of 2025, 10 students were selected for the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF), an SJNY-funded undergraduate research program that provides stipends of $4,000 for each student recipient to work on research projects, overseen by a faculty mentor.
With an overarching goal of alleviating the economic pressures that can prohibit strong students from actively engaging in academic research opportunities, the SURF program is open to students of all disciplines. Recipients conduct their research for 10 weeks over the summer and then present at the Student Research Symposium the following spring.
The Effect of Legal Uncertainty on Business
Aarohi Poudel ’26 is an economics major and political science minor on St. Joseph’s University, New York’s Brooklyn Campus — one whose curiosity regarding today’s legal processes and their effect on commerce prompted her SURF 2025 project.
“I have always been interested in finding out how legal institutions may affect economic outcomes, especially when it comes to addressing issues like innovation, entrepreneurship, etc.,” Poudel said.
For her summer research project, Poudel analyzed how legal uncertainty that stems from broadly worded laws or inconsistent interpretations of laws can affect business decisions. Focusing specifically on the United States and Germany, she cited how the U.S.’s precedent-based system, in addition to vaguely worded law, creates flexibility and ambiguity for companies. Meanwhile, Germany’s more detailed laws promote clarity yet create bureaucratic hurdles that can be costly for businesses.
“My work is essentially quantifying these factors in an attempt to figure out which system is better overall,” Poudel continued.
During the summer, Poudel spent most days reading over legal texts and past research papers. For the 2025 SURF recipient, going through academic papers and governmental reports and seeing how they all came together made for a satisfying research experience.
“I’d often have two browser tabs open, one with legal doctrine and another with economic data, startup rates, investment trends and compliance costs. I also reread sections of academic papers like the NYU Law study on legal uncertainty to break down concepts like ‘parameter uncertainty,’ then try to apply that to my Germany-U.S. comparison,” she shared.
Poudel described the best part as recognizing a pattern such as Germany’s detailed rules helping larger companies but overwhelming smaller businesses.
“It feels like I am doing meaningful work that I am actually interested in,” she said.
A Conclusive Study
In fact, Poudel’s research has significant real-world applications, as backed up by her faculty adviser, Richard Torz, M.A., Ph.D., an associate professor of Accounting, Social Sciences and Graduate Management Studies at SJNY.
“Despite the fact that the U.S. and Germany are both market capitalist economies, each nation differs in their regulatory and legal frameworks,” Professor Torz said.
He continued, “Germany has strict rules and regulations that create and impose high compliance costs and tend to discourage entrepreneurship. In contrast, the U.S. has relatively less restrictive rules and regulations, and hence entrepreneurship is relatively encouraged and compliance costs are relatively lower.
As Poudel prepares to share her research with her fellow SJNY students and faculty during this spring’s Student Research Symposium, she is grateful for the opportunity granted by the University’s SURF program.
“Being a part of SURF means I get to combine and apply the theories about economic policies learned in class and quantify those very theories to engage with complex ideas in a more sustained way. I had never been a part of college-level research before so getting to be more hands-on and build upon my own ideas is a very fulfilling activity,” Poudel concluded.
This story is part of OnCampus’ “SURF Recipients 2025” series, centered on students conducting research at St. Joseph’s University, New York in anticipation of the University’s 2026 Student Research Symposium. To read more from this series, click here.
