I picked this up off the Economic Principles site.
A conference on damages in the government's suit against Harvard University and one of its star economists, originally slated for July 19, has been rescheduled for September 9. US District Court Judge Douglas Woodlock presumably will ask all parties to file briefs on what they think they ought to be required to pay -- Harvard for breach of its $34 million contract; economics professor Andrei Shleifer and his then-assistant, lawyer Jonathan Hay, up to three times that much for the civil fraud Woodlock concluded they committed. The government has argued that the entire value of Harvard's mission to Moscow was lost when it turned out in the mid-1990s that Shleifer and Hay and their wives had been investing in Russian businesses and securities, in violation of the conflict of interest provisions of their contract. Harvard and Shleifer say that the reforms they suggested worked well. The US State Department fired Harvard when the transgressions came to light in 1996. The Russian government fired the State Department in turn, saying that the Harvard team had done nothing wrong while advising them. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
