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The Luddites: Crying “Stop” in the Face of Progress
This is another installment in our series of profiles of leading economists from Capitalism and its Critics. It’s our first profiling not a champion of capitalist progress but a stout opponent. Cassidy opens this, Chapter 3 of his work (“The Logic of the Luddites”)... read more +Professional Behavior Under Incentives
So this has nothing to do with the economics of law firms, but it has a lot to do with professional behavior under incentive regimes. Two economists at the University of Chicago have published a paper analyzing whether realtors (representing the seller of a...
The Blawgosphere as Distributed Intelligence
A fellow new to me, one Bruce Marcus (a self-described former Upper West Sider, I hasten to add, as well as someone with an enviable first name), alerted me to a post of his about the impact of legal blogs: "Aside from political blogs, few areas have produced...
Not for CIO’s Only
How common is this scenario?: The CIO needs to improve the quality and credibility of the firm's IT implementations, but since he lacks the money and resources he believes would be needed, he's looking for a less expensive way to boost IT's performance. If he...
Conflicts Insanity
Am I the only one being driven to the conclusion that the ethics and jurisprudence surrounding "conflicts" are insane? After reading about the tortured machinations firms go through as part of their pre- and post-merger due diligence, it's clear to me...
The Coming 21st Century Bi-Modal Market Structure
I've reviewed the merits of the Pillsbury-Winthrop/Shaw Pittman merger before, but now I want to ask a different question: What if anything does this portend for the merger/consolidation trend in general? If you believe Hildebrandt's annual merger-activity data,...