It is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Sanford Grossman and Oliver Hart’s “The costs and benefits of ownership, :a theory of vertical and lateral integration” in the Journal of Political Economy. John Moore did a spectacular job introducing the conference. He picked up the paper and said it was so bright that he had to put on sunglasses to look at it (he brought along sunglasses as a prop). He made many other jokes (“We are gathered here today to celebrate…” ) many of which unfortunately I now forget. The conference appears to be taped and perhaps some videos will be available online in the near future. One other point: John checked the Google Scholar scores of the original Grossman-Hart paper and the later Hart-Moore paper – the “property rights theory of the firm” is called the GHM theory.  Gross-Hart has approximately 5600 citations and Hart-Moore approximately 3500. Hence, in  aggregate, Oliver Hart has 9100 citations (in this area alone!).  To acknowledge the different level of contributions and renormalizing by a common factor, John suggested the theory be renamed the G8H15M5 property rights theory of the firm. While cumbersome, the name does convey some information.

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