Rafael Di Tella and Alejandro Lagomarsino (Harvard) and Juan Dubra (Montevideo): Meet the Oligarchs: Business Legitimacy, State Capacity and Taxation. Carola Frydman (BU) and Dimitris Papanikolaou (Northwestern): In Search of Ideas: Technological Innovation and Executive Pay Inequality. How the Twinkie made the superrich even richer: Behind the financial maneuvering at Hostess, an investigation finds a blueprint for how private equity executives have amassed some of the greatest fortunes of the modern era. Corporate executives are making way more money than anybody reports. Why C.E.O.s are getting fired more: Companies treat — and pay — top executives as if they were all-powerful — so when things go bad the boss is shown the door.
Business leaders and the mixed feelings they inspire: The combination of suspicion and reverence that people feel toward the financially successful isn’t unique to the modern era, but reflects a deep ambivalence that goes back to the Roman empire.
