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- December 2007
- Article
Private Power in Indonesia
By: Louis T. Wells
The Asian Currency Crisis led to the collapse of agreements Indonesia had negotiated for private electric power only a few years earlier. The ensuing struggle meant bad publicity and several hundred million dollars in costs for Indonesia. As Indonesia in 2007 was... View Details
- October 2007 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
First National Bank's Golden Opportunity
By: Shawn A. Cole, Peter Tufano, Daniel Schneider and Daryl Collins
Executives at First National Bank in South Africa are considering whether to launch a potentially exciting, but rather unorthodox, new savings product. Instead of paying interest, this product gives depositors the chance to win large cash prizes each month. Michael... View Details
- September 2007 (Revised October 2007)
- Supplement
Children's Hospital and Clinics (B)
By: Amy C. Edmondson, Ingrid M. Nembhard and Kate Roloff
Explores the numerous initiatives Children's Hospital and Clinics has undertaken to improve patient safety since the late 1990s--from the perspective of 2007. The case thus updates the A case by revisiting the hospital to find out what happened as a result of the... View Details
- August 2007 (Revised September 2008)
- Case
Baker & McKenzie (A): A New Framework for Talent Management
By: Boris Groysberg and Eliot Sherman
Describes the process by which the largest law firm in the world developed a unique framework for personnel management. In 2004, John Conroy is about to take the reigns as the leader of Baker and McKenzie, the largest law firm in the world by employees, with offices in... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Interpersonal Authority in a Theory of the Firm
This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm's centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager 'interpersonal authority' over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as... View Details
- May 2007 (Revised April 2010)
- Teaching Note
Duane Morris: Balancing Growth and Culture at a Law Firm (TN)
By: Boris Groysberg
- Article
Finding Lost Profits: An Equilibrium Analysis of Patent Infringement Damages
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
We discuss how a seller can appropriate rents when selling knowledge that lacks legal property rights by solving either an expropriation or a valuation problem and then analyze how seller rents increase when a portion of the intellectual property (IP) can be protected.... View Details
- February 2007
- Article
The Formation of Beliefs: Evidence from the Allocation of Land Titles to Squatters
By: Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian F. Galiani and Ernesto S. Schargrodsky
We study the formation of beliefs in a squatter settlement in the outskirts of Buenos Aires exploiting a natural experiment that induced an allocation of property rights that is exogenous to the characteristics of the squatters. There are significant differences in the... View Details
- January 2007 (Revised April 2007)
- Background Note
Note on Lobbying
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Libby Cantrill and Patricia Wu
Describes how companies engage the political and legal system and the rules and ethics associated with doing so. Focuses on the U.S. political and legal system, but also seeks to familiarize readers with lobbying norms and structures in the European Union and Japan. View Details
- December 2006 (Revised January 2007)
- Case
Restructuring Navigator Gas Transport Plc
By: C. Fritz Foley
How should creditors pursue their claims in a multi-jurisdiction bankruptcy? David Butters, Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, negotiates a restructuring of Navigator Gas Transport, a shipping company that is headquartered in Switzerland, incorporated in the Isle of... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
Goodyear and the Threat of Government Tire Grading
By: Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Dennis A. Yao and Elizabeth Raabe
In the spring of 1977, Goodyear CEO Charles J. Pilliod Jr. was looking at an internal report on government and legal events relevant to the tire industry. Two items caught his attention. First, he noticed that an industry suit to block the government's proposed system... View Details
- November 2006 (Revised March 2007)
- Case
eDonkey--Deciding the Future of File Sharing
Sam Yagan, CEO of the upstart MetaMachine, Inc., received a letter from the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) asking him to shut down eDonkey, MetaMachine's popular file-sharing system. In September 2005, more than 30 million users relied on... View Details
- October 2006 (Revised October 2006)
- Case
DLA Piper: Becoming a Global Firm
By: Jay W. Lorsch and Alexis Chernak
Focuses on DLA Piper, a global law firm resulting from the merger of the combined U.S. firm Piper Rudnick Gray Cary and the British firm DLA. At the time of the merger, the firms had similar strategies for the future and approaches to clients. While figuring out some... View Details
- February 2006 (Revised August 2006)
- Case
Investment Banking at Thomas Weisel Partners
By: Malcolm P. Baker and Lauren Barley
Thomas Weisel Partners (TWP), a San Francisco-based bank focusing on emerging growth companies, is considering its strategy in the context of regulatory, competitive, and legal changes. Blake Jorgensen, the chief operating officer and co-director of investment banking,... View Details
- Article
Policy Implications of Weak Patent Rights
By: James J. Anton, Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao
Patents vary substantially in the degree of protection provided against unauthorized imitation. In this chapter we explore a range of work addressing the economic and policy implications of "weak" patents—patents that have a significant probability of being overturned... View Details
- December 2005
- Article
Up to Code: Does Your Company's Conduct Meet World-Class Standards?
Codes of conduct have long been a feature of corporate life. Today, they are arguably a legal necessity—at least for public companies with a presence in the United States. But the issue goes beyond U.S. legal and regulatory requirements. Sparked by corruption and... View Details
- November 2005 (Revised February 2007)
- Case
Governing Sumida Corporation
By: Lynn S. Paine, Masako Egawa, Chisato Toyama and Kim Bettcher
Describes the corporate governance changes adopted by Japan's Sumida Corp. between 1999 and 2005, setting them in the context of changes in Japan's commercial code during this period. Sumida was the first Japanese company to adopt a new U.S.-inspired "committee system"... View Details
- Article
Trust and Incentives in Agency
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Daniel F Spulber
Contracts between a principal and an agent are not formed in a vacuum. Although formal contracts between a principal and an agent contain explicit incentives for performance, the relationship between a principal and an agent also involves implicit incentives. Three... View Details
- August 2005 (Revised April 2015)
- Background Note
Employment At Will: A Legal Perspective
By: Lynn S. Paine and Christopher M. Bruner
Provides a brief overview of the employment-at-will doctrine, an important concept unique to the U.S. legal system and business landscape. Briefly surveys the history and development of this doctrine and certain limitations and exceptions to it, as well as some of the... View Details
- July 2005 (Revised August 2006)
- Background Note
Deception in Business: A Legal Perspective
By: Lynn S. Paine and Christopher Bruner
Discusses several of the most important prohibitions on deception found in U.S. law, starting with the basic elements of liability for fraud and moving to important antifraud provisions in federal statutes, restrictions on "misrepresentation" in consumer and contract... View Details