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Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the founder and former CEO of Apple, died this morning.  He has rightly been described as a visionary and genius.  Apple is one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations thanks to Steve Jobs.  This raises a whole bunch of questions of interest to economists.  First, are public companies which are run by their founders more successful than those run by professional managers?  Second, how do public companies address succession issues whenever a founder CEO steps down?  Third, how can an economy encourage innovation and innovators?  For an interesting view on this from an historical perspective, see this recent paper by Tom Nicholas and others.

  

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