F. Scott Kieff, primary investigator: Kieff is a Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law.  Kieff practiced law for over six years as a trial lawyer and patent lawyer for Pennie & Edmonds in New York and Jenner & Block in Chicago, where he was promoted early to the rank of Counsel, and served as law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich.  Kieff also has served on the faculties at the Northwestern University School of Law, the University of Chicago Law School, and Stanford Law School, and as a faculty fellow at Harvard Law School.  He has published numerous articles and delivered numerous speeches about obtaining and enforcing intellectual property rights, and edited the book Perspectives on Properties of the Human Genome Project (2003), and co-authored the popular treatise and casebook Principles of Patent Law (2004), now in its third edition, which is used at most of the top law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Chicago. 

His research interests generally involve the interface among technology, law, and economics, with a focus on the problems facing technology development, entrepreneurship, and innovation.  He also focuses on ADR and structuring transactions to avoid and resolve disputes and was appointed to serve on the newly created panel of mediators for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Stephen H. Haber, co-investigator: Haber is the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, where he holds appointments in the departments of political science and history.  In addition, he is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Center for International Development.  Further, Haber serves as Director of Stanford’s Social Science History Institute.  Haber consults regularly for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and is a Research Economist of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Haber’s current research focuses on the interaction of political and economic institutions, with a particular emphasis on the institutions that govern banking systems and financial markets.  Recent publications include: The Politics of Property Rights (with Armando Razo and Noel Maurer, Cambridge University Press, 2003); “Mexico’s Experiments with Bank Privatization and Liberalization,” 29 Journal of Banking and Finance 2325 (2005); and “The Political Economy of Latin American Industrialization,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (2005).  Haber serves as Director of Stanford’s Institute for Research in Social Sciences (IRiSS) Program on Governance and Institutions.

Troy A. Paredes, co-investigator: Paredes is a Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law and a Professor of Business (by courtesy) at Washington University’s Olin School of Business.  He has also been a visiting professor of law at UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center.  Having practiced corporate and securities law in San Francisco and Los Angeles before coming to Washington University, Paredes has extensive experience in the areas of corporate law and securities regulation, as well as regulatory law, with a particular emphasis on the restructuring of heavily-regulated industries.  Paredes has written numerous articles and made several presentations on a wide range of topics about corporate governance, securities regulation, and intellectual property.  He presently is the co-author (along with the late Louis Loss and Joel Seligman) of the multi-volume treatise, Securities Regulation. 

His research interests include corporate governance, with a focus on how authority is allocated among various corporate constituencies; the impact of various cognitive biases and decision strategies on corporate decision making and investor behavior; the development of corporate and securities law systems in developing countries; venture capital and entrepreneurism; executive compensation; hedge funds; and intellectual property.