Legal Commentary

Exhibit A:

Michael C. Jensen was an early inventor of bigger-than-life compensation packages for corporate chief executives, and nearly 20 years later, he still believes passionately in the concept of ?pay for performance? that he championed.  But along the way more than a few things went wrong, Mr. Jensen acknowledges . . . .

?There are all kinds of mistakes, and we can do a lot better,? Mr. Jensen, a professor emeritus at Harvard?s Graduate School of Business, said in an interview at his modernistic home on Siesta Key, with its huge picture windows overlooking the Gulf of Mexico some 40 feet away. It is one of two luxury houses ? the other is in Sharon, Vt. ? that reflect an academic life marked by success not just in scholarly pursuits but as a business consultant and popular speaker as well.

Exhibit B:

When it is cold at home, or he has a couple of weeks with nothing to do but write his Times column, or when something unexpectedly stressful happens, like winning the Nobel Prize, the Princeton economist Paul Krugman and his wife, Robin Wells, go to St. Croix. Here it is warm, and the days are longer, and the phone doesn?t ring much. Here they live in a one-bedroom condo they bought a few years ago, nothing fancy but right on the beach.

And another thing: the New Yorker loves public intellectuals holding cats!

(Krugman and Wells photgraph by Tina Barney; Posner photograph by Martin Schoeller)