Publications

07 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 7

more likely to dissent, we do not find that academics, accounting, and law professionals are significantly more active in dissenting. We also show that dissent is consequential, to the director and the firm. For directors, dissent... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

08 Sep 2008
HBS Case

The Value of Environmental Activists

There are many methods, most financial, to measure the success of companies in meeting goals. But the question becomes a lot harder at Harvard Business School when MBAs are challenged to measure the efforts of environmental organizations like Greenpeace and the World... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Gilbert; Energy; Utilities

05 May 2003
Research & Ideas

Sharing the Responsibility of Corporate Governance

of integrity has to do it. In the same way that medical ethics do not compel a physician to do something that violates his or her own personal ethics, corporate law does not require directors to check their sense of right and wrong... View Details

Keywords: by Carla Tishler

June 12, 2023
Article

The Limits of Capacity Building for Investment Contract Negotiations

By: Karl P. Sauvant, Vanessa Sze Wai Tsang and Louis T. Wells

Developing countries must negotiate the best possible investment contracts with foreign investors at the outset. Donor organizations regularly push for “capacity building” to create technical expertise for negotiations within host country governments. But building and... View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Contracts; Negotiation

SSRN

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January 1986 (Revised August 1986)
Case

Bougainville Copper Ltd. (Condensed)

Describes a mine operated by Bougainville Copper Ltd. in Papua New Guinea and the pressures negotiating the mineral contract between PNG and Bougainville Copper. Condensed from Bougainville Copper Ltd. (B), (C), and (D) by J.S. Hammond and G.B. Allan. View Details

Keywords: International Finance; Contracts; Negotiation; Mining Industry; Oceania

22 Feb 2016
Research & Ideas

The ‘Mother of Fair Trade’ was an Unabashed Price Protectionist

publications and meeting minutes of pharmacist groups. “She was known as Mrs. Thomas Gleason until about 1934, when she begins to get introduced by her first name. In the story of California ‘fair trade’ I found this exceptional state jurisdiction for antitrust View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Retail; Health; Legal Services

March 1997 (Revised November 1997)
Case

Incidents in Foreign Direct Investment

By: Louis T. Wells Jr. and Courtenay Sprague

Presents seven examples (i.e., incidents) of conflict concerning foreign direct investment. The incidents lay the framework for discussion of issues such as the jurisdiction of the WTO and the U.S. position, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 and its political implications,... View Details

Keywords: Trade; International Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Laws and Statutes; United States

17 Nov 2003
Research & Ideas

Lessons from a Nasty Trade Dispute

to the World Trade Organization, the WTO later ruled that both Canada and Brazil needed to make changes to comply with international trade rules. Finally, in March 2003, the WTO gave Brazil permission to impose $248 million in trade... View Details

Keywords: by Cynthia Churchwell

07 Jun 2017
Research & Ideas

How an African History Scholar Became a Modern Righter of Wrongs

still a junior faculty member, focused on making tenure and writing a second book. That’s the year she got a call from the law firm Leigh Day, which was looking to sue the British government for reparations on behalf of the Kikuyu... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

10 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Counting Up the Effects of Sarbanes-Oxley

changes had any impact in the lead-up to the financial crisis. HBS Associate Professor Suraj Srinivasan and Harvard Law School Professor John C. Coates leverage the benefit of hindsight to assess research findings from over 120 papers in... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accounting; Banking

October 2001
Case

Healthcare Brands Corporation

By: David F. Hawkins

A U.K. and a U.S. firm are entering into a merger agreement. Management must decide whether the merged companies should be domiciled in the United Kingdom and account for the merger as a pooling of interests or the United States and account for the merger as a... View Details

Keywords: International Accounting; Mergers and Acquisitions; Contracts; Health Industry; United Kingdom; United States

23 Feb 2004
Research & Ideas

How Corporate Responsibility is Changing in Asia

To what extent do multinational corporations have an institutional obligation to the Asian countries in which they serve, and does that obligation include holding higher standards than Asian law requires? These questions were debated at... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

06 Aug 2024
Op-Ed

What the World Could Learn from America's Immigration Backlash—100 Years Ago

University’s Ran Abramitzky and Princeton University’s Leah Boustan—among the most knowledgeable economists on the topic of US immigration—reached a similar conclusion by examining the effects of anti-immigration laws passed in the 1920s.... View Details

Keywords: by Marco Tabellini

25 Apr 2000
Research & Ideas

Adjusting the Fit for Government

skills development." Other essentials for governments, Donovan said, are a willingness to privatize businesses, and to follow the rule of law "as opposed to the rule of individual parties and special interests." Another is... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

2013
Working Paper

What Makes the Bonding Stick? A Natural Experiment Involving the U.S. Supreme Court and Cross-Listed Firms

By: Amir N. Licht, Christopher Poliquin, Jordan I. Siegel and Xi Li

On March 29, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled its intention to geographically limit the reach of the U.S. securities antifraud regime and thus differentially exclude U.S.-listed foreign firms from the ambit of formal U.S. antifraud enforcement. We use this legal... View Details

Keywords: Crime and Corruption; International Finance; Investment; Corporate Governance; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Courts and Trials; Legal Liability; United States

SSRN

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2010
Chapter

Property Rights for Foreign Capital: Sovereign Debt and Private Direct Investment in Times of Crisis

By: Louis T. Wells

Keywords: Property; Rights; International Finance; Capital; Sovereign Finance; Foreign Direct Investment; Financial Crisis