Friday, October 22, 2010

Business Firms and Stakeholder Theory


This is the full version of the clips we discussed in class today. There is another video featuring Milton Friedman's views on this blog (follow this link) together with some commentaries on a recent WSJ piece reviving Friedman's thesis. Enjoy it!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Scanlon at Harvard on "Individual Morality and the Morality of Institutions"


Tim Scanlon is arguably the most important political philosopher alive. He has also published important work on freedom of speech, equality, tolerance, foundations of contract law, and human rights. This is a recent talk at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

RIP Philippa Foot


The "grande dame of philosophy", who introduced the thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem and one of the founders and main contributors to virtue theory, died this past week at her home in Oxford, England, the very day of her 90th birthday.
In addition to a great philosophical mind, Philippa Foot was a honorable person. She was a lifelong socialist and supporter of the Labor party. And she was one of only four academics to vote to prevent U.S. President Harry S Truman - the architect of Hiroshima - from having an honorary Oxford degree.
Here you can find link to the obituaries from the NYT and the Guardian.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The Costs of Whistle-blowing


The man in the video is Ilya Eric Kolchinsky, former executive of Moody's Investors Service. At Moody’s, Mr. Kolchinsky oversaw the ratings assigned to subprime mortgage collateralized debt obligations, many of which turned out to be troublesome despite their triple-A ratings.
Mr. Kolchinsky has testified before Congressional panels twice in the last year about his concerns over Moody’s ratings. Since then, Kolchinsky says, Moody’s has tried to damage his reputation through its statements in the media, which have caused him to be “blacklisted by the private sector financial industry.” Last month, he filed a suit against Moody's.
You can find here a link to the NYT coverage and details about the lawsuit.