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New Course Sampler Includes Tulip Crash

Stanford's MBAs, Sloan Fellows, and PhD students have nearly 20 new or retooled courses to choose from this year. The classes cover a wide range of topics spanning clean tech, intellectual property, the wine industry, patent reform's impact on U.S. companies, and challenges surrounding succession planning at family-run firms.

Here's a glimpse into what students can learn this year.

History of Financial Crises In 2008, the nation's housing bubble burst. But long before that far-reaching financial collapse, it was tulips that soared in value before crashing spectacularly in 1600s Holland. Assistant Professor Peter Koudijs discusses past financial calamities around the world and the contemporary lessons to draw from those experiences.

Authenticity in Markets: The Case of the Wine Industry Battles over "the soul of wine" are the focus of this class taught by Professor Michael Hannan, who tackles why characteristics of a wine's producer matter as much as the wine itself. The main class text is Lawrence Osborne's 2004 book, The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World.

Succession Planning in Family Business This course seeks to understand succession planning in family business. Professors Havagreeva Rao and David Larcker use guest speakers and case studies to analyze developing talent, organizing succession planning, and other governance issues.

Ethics (Sloan core course) As scandals at Enron and fraud involving Bernard Madoff illustrate, ethics is of huge importance in business. However, says Professor Ken Shotts, "Our moral decision making, including in business contexts, is often driven by unsystematic instinct rather than systematic reasoning." Product safety, issues surrounding production of an ultrasound machine used for gender-selective abortion, accounting fraud, and micro- finance's contribution to economic justice are examined. Jim Coulter, MBA '86, cofounder of San Francisco's TPG Capital, discusses how ethics guides his company's investment decisions.