Experience Faculty & Research

Detroit is a long way from Dhaka, but the American city’s effort to address blight offer lessons for cleaning up the garment sector in Bangladesh. Released in May, the Detroit’s Blight Removal Task Force’s plan (pdf) offers a practical vision for addressing the more than 78,000 dilapidated buildings that are the primary obstacle to the city’s growth and vitality. Read more

• Biography: Sarah Labowitz
• Department: Center for Business and Human Rights

Summer is normally a time to take a break from the risks and worries of everyday life, and perhaps to take stock of where we are and where we are heading. But this is increasingly difficult, because our everyday lives are becoming so much riskier and more worrying. Read more

• Biography: Professor Michael Spence
• Department: Economics

In 2009, Greece faced three significant economic problems, a huge budget deficit, large sovereign debt, and the need for structural reforms to increase competition and productivity. In 2014, thanks to enormous sacrifices of the Greek people, the state budget has been balanced and Greece even has a primary surplus (before paying interest). Sovereign debt was reduced through the haircut of private bondholders, but remains large. Structural reforms were implemented in the labor market, and we wait for reforms in other sectors. Greece was successful in re-entering the world money markets after 4 years of exile by issuing 5-year bonds at 4.75% interest. Read more

• Biography: Professor Nicholas Economides
• Department: Economics

Housing policy in the United States strongly favors homeownership, and it does so by subsidizing mortgage debt. Programs like the mortgage interest rate deduction and guarantees on mortgages bought and securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae cost the taxpayer about $200 billion in lost tax revenues each year. These policies are highly regressive, benefiting the rich with expensive houses much more than those with average homes, and amplifying inequality in society. The financial crisis illustrated the risks of policies subsidizing mortgage debt, with many households taking on mortgages they could only service as long as house prices continued to go up and they stayed employed. Read more

• Biography: Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh
• Department: Center for Real Estate Finance Research

Recent advances in technology have created an increasingly unified global marketplace for labor and capital. The ability of both to flow to their highest-value uses, regardless of their location, is equalizing their prices across the globe. In recent years, this broad factor-price equalization has benefited nations with abundant low-cost labor and those with access to cheap capital. Some have argued that the current era of rapid technological progress serves labor, and some have argued that it serves capital. What both camps have slighted is the fact that technology is not only integrating existing sources of labor and capital but also creating new ones. Read more

• Biography: Professor A. Michael Spence
• Department: Economics

Like individuals, corporations, and other private firms that rely on bankruptcy procedures to reduce an excessive debt burden, countries sometimes need orderly debt restructuring or reduction. But the ongoing legal saga of Argentina’s fight with holdout creditors shows that the international system for orderly sovereign-debt restructuring may be broken. Read more

• Biography: Professor Nouriel Roubini
• Department: Economics

BNP Paribas is expected any day to admit to criminal *violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran and Sudan. This is likely to mean that the giant French bank will pay a fine of between $8 billion and $10 billion to the U.S. government, dismiss several executives, and temporarily cease its dollar-clearing business. The case has dramatically elevated the liability of global banks to the regulatory enforcement of U.S. law. Read more

• Biography: Professors Roy Smith and Ingo Walter
• Department: Finance

Insider trading is a topic of intense public debate these days, but this debate must be framed in the context of a clear, objective definition of informed versus insider trading. Read more

• Biography: Professors Menachem Brenner and Marti Subrahmanyam
• Department: Finance

I exploited the slow stock market for several years through clever algorithms that used high-frequency data to identify short-term patterns in prices. The program had on average one losing day a month. Ironically, Reg NMS unceremoniously eliminated my advantage and conferred it on others who studied the regulation carefully, particularly the incentives it created for the different market participants and their behaviors manifested in the data. Read more

• Biography: Professor Vasant Dhar
• Department: IOMS

The U.S. government's decision to relinquish its historic role in Internet governance has set in motion a transition with no clear resolution. The Department of Commerce has asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to "convene stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan," but where this will lead is anyone's guess. What is clear is that the transition provides both the opportunity for, and the necessity of, undertaking a fundamental reevaluation of ICANN's accountability mechanisms. Read more

• Biography: Professor Lawrence White
• Department: Economics

In England, soccer loyalty is to club rather than country. For more than 50 years, I have watched and supported Aston Villa, one of the most famous, if not the most successful, clubs in the world. During that half century, there have been many ups and downs. And the same could be said of the British economy. Read more

In the world of higher education, we professors like to believe that we are free from the racial and gender biases that afflict so many other people in society. But is this self-conception accurate? Read more

• Biography: Professor Dolly Chugh
• Department: Management and Organizations

We need to create a regulatory framework for these new providers, balancing their lower risks with appropriately designed safeguards. Delegating some of the responsibility to the platforms with suitable government oversight is part of the solution. Read more

• Biography: Professor Arun Sundararajan
• Department: IOMS

The U.S. tax code is a mess, creating perverse incentives for companies to borrow more than they should, invest less than they would like to and accumulate more cash than they need. Read more

• Biography: Professor Aswath Damodaran
• Department: Finance

"What if the entire data trail of the stock market were available to everyone after the end of the trading period, such as a day or a week? Information technology disrupted the old way of trading in the last century by making markets more transparent and reducing the edge held by floor traders or market makers." Read more

• Biography: Professor Vasant Dhar
• Department: IOMS

Calls to maximize the utility of older workers — by honoring experience, providing training opportunities, and offering flexible work and retirement options — began to sound at least a decade ago. We’ve found four best practices for accommodating older workers that should serve as a model for other organizations. Read more

• Biography: Professor Hal Hershfield
• Department: Marketing

... one domestic industry is experiencing a technology-driven expansion in which American innovations have led to countless new company startups, a surge in hiring and some of the highest-paying entry-level jobs for graduating college seniors. How are the nation's universities responding so students might prepare for a promising career in this growing and intellectually challenging field? By largely ignoring it. Why? Because the industry is oil and gas. Read more

Last Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Kerry presided over the release of the annual State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This marks the 37th year that the State Department has published these reports, which now examine almost 200 countries in 7000 pages. Critics of these reports generally focus on three concerns. Read more

• Biography: Professor Michael Posner
• Department: Center for Business and Human Rights

It is an interesting time to take stock of the global economy. It used to be said that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. The events of last year suggest anything but the same. It is now the case that when America recovers, the rest of the world catches cold. This reversal is due to the fact that good news for the American economy is bad news for global liquidity. Read more

• Biography: Professor Viral Acharya
• Department: Finance

According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding. In one experiment, the social psychologists Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked eighty-three German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on the subject of transition into work life, graduating from university, looking for and finding a job.” Two years later, they approached the same students and asked about their post-college job experiences. Those who harbored positive fantasies put in fewer job applications, received fewer job offers, and ultimately earned lower salaries. Read more

• Biography: Professor Adam Alter
• Department: Marketing

Last month, when Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo at a huge loss, the techno-pundits were gloating. Wrote The New York Times: “Selling Motorola is an acknowledgment that Google is better off focusing on its core competencies — making software and selling ads — particularly as the profit margins for phones are shrinking over all.” One analyst likened the sale to “slipping the millstone off your neck.” Read more

• Biography: Professor Robert Salomon
• Department: Management & Organizations