nov
18
2008
The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives
Professor Michael Heller of Columbia Law School
Tuesday, November 18, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center, 23 Everett
Street, second floor
RSVP required (rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET.
Every
so often an idea comes along that fundamentally changes how we understand innovation
and the economy. Columbia Law School Professor Michael Heller has
discovered such an idea, a market dynamic no one knew existed. Private ownership usually creates wealth, but
too much ownership has the opposite effect—it creates gridlock. This free
market paradox is at the center of Heller’s new book, The Gridlock Economy: How Too
Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives. In this discussion, Heller will draw on
everyday experiences to show how the structure of ownership matters more than
people may realize. Why has America
fallen off the global leading edge in wireless broadband? How come Chuck D of
Public Enemy no longer raps over a collage of sound? Where are the cures
promised by the biotech revolution? Turns out all these problems are really the
same problem, one whose solution could unleash trillions in lost productivity
and jumpstart our ailing economy. Tim Wu says, “Heller has managed to
pull of one of the most perceptive books on property since Das Kapital.” And Larry
Lessig writes, “There are very few books that reorient a field. Almost none
that reorient many fields. This is in that ‘almost none’ category.”
About Michael
Michael
Heller is the author of The
Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and
Costs Lives (Basic Books 2008, www.gridlockeconomy.com) and the Lawrence
A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law
School. His scholarship
explores diverse ownership puzzles, ranging from Corporate
Governance Lessons from Transition Economy Reforms (Princeton
University Press, paperback 2008) to the use of Land
Assembly Districts (Harvard Law Review, 2008) as a solution for eminent
domain abuse. Prior to joining Columbia
in 2002, Heller taught at the University of Michigan Law School where he
received the school’s top teaching award. From 1990-94, he worked at the World
Bank on post-socialist reforms. Heller clerked on the Ninth Circuit and is a
graduate of Stanford Law School
and Harvard College.
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