Experience Faculty & Research

At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Richard Edelman released the 20th Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual public opinion poll that tracks attitudes towards government, corporations, civil society, and the media in more than 20 countries. One of the key takeaways from this year’s report is the pressing need for corporate leaders to assume a more central role in addressing key societal issues, such as global warming and rising inequality.  Read More...

Financial markets were cheered recently by the news that the US and China have reached a “phase one” deal to prevent further escalation of their bilateral trade war. But there is actually very little to cheer about. In exchange for China’s tentative commitment to buy more US agricultural (and some other) goods, and modest concessions on intellectual property rights and the yuan, the US agreed to withhold tariffs on another $160bn (£124bn) worth of Chinese exports, and to roll back some of the tariffs introduced on 1 September. Read More...

Last month, Senator Marco Rubio called for what he termed “common-good capitalism.” In a speech at Catholic University that received too little attention, Rubio outlined a framework that embraces the free market but demands more from it than short-term financial gain. He called for a system that ensures dignified work for employees rather than focusing myopically on the celebration of corporate profits.  Read More...

On December 10, the United Nations will mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In an era of spreading nationalism and gross violations in places like Yemen, Myanmar, South Sudan and Venezuela, it is fair to ask whether the Universal Declaration and the global human rights movement have improved the human condition.  And given these contemporary challenges, there’s the further question of where we go from here. Read More...

This past May and August, escalations in the trade and technology conflict between the US and China rattled stock markets and pushed bond yields to historic lows. But that was then: since then, financial markets have once again become giddy. US and other equities are trending towards new highs, and there is even talk of a potential “melt-up” in equity values. The financial-market buzz has seized on the possibility of a “reflation trade”, in the hope that the recent global slowdown will be followed in 2020 by accelerating growth and firmer inflation (which helps profits and risky assets). Read More...

This past weekend several dozen journalists and activists from around the world convened in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Under the auspices of an organization called the Social Change Initiative, on whose board I sit, they came together to discuss the crisis facing news gathering and dissemination in deeply divided societies.  All of our societies seem deeply divided these days, and the declining role of newspapers as messengers of truth is an important factor. As in the U.S., newspapers in the UK and Ireland are struggling financially, upended by the disruption of an advertising model that is no longer sustainable. And as the news media decline around the world, online platforms take their place with few, if any, of the important journalistic checks to ensure truth. Read More...

So you need a little retail therapy. Time for a new suit, dress or leather jacket? Want to make your fashion a conversation starter? Read More...

A cloud of gloom hovered over the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting this month. With the global economy experiencing a synchronised slowdown, any number of tail risks could bring on an outright recession. Among other things, investors and economic policymakers must worry about a renewed escalation in the Sino-American trade and technology war. A military conflict between the US and Iran would be felt globally. The same could be true of “hard” Brexit by the UK or a collision between the IMF and Argentina’s incoming Peronist government. Read More...

Proposals for a broad tax on wealth are not new, but they are receiving renewed attention in the United States. Steadily increasing income and wealth inequality has raised social and ethical concerns, even among a subset of the wealthy. This trend, along with declining social mobility, is contributing to political polarization, which in turn leads to poor and erratic policy choices. And we know from history that rising inequality and intensifying social and political polarization can lead to more dramatic and even violent outcomes.  Read More...

They are 50 against Google and 9 against Facebook. The New York prosecutor is leading the charge against Facebook with 8 of her colleagues and  the Texas attorney has opened an investigation against Google with almost every state, but without California, where Google's headquarters is located. Read More...

Today three Senators — Democratic Sens. Mark Warner (Va.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), along with Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) — are introducing a bi-partisan bill designed to increase competition between digital platforms. The bill is called the Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act. Axios has the story here. You can read the actual bill here. Read More...

Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Economics, as it has come to be known. It was first awarded in 1969 by the Swedish central bank as an addendum to the other, much older, Nobel prizes (and is correctly known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). This upstart status subtracts nothing from the esteem, or cash, accorded to the laureates. The latest winner, or winners, will be announced Monday. Read More...

Social media inflames tribalism and makes democracy more difficult and unstable in many ways. To name just a few: It accelerates the movement of citizens into informational bubbles and then poisons those bubbles with inflammatory stories and videos; it undermines trust in institutions and in fellow citizens; it allows violent ideologies to ferment and recruit; it opens a door for easy manipulation by America’s foreign enemies. Read More...

In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post, Alex Karp, the chief executive of a data-analysis company called Palantir, warns that when Silicon Valley executives “try to impose their moral framework on America, something has gone seriously and dangerously awry.” Public policy decisions, he adds, need to be made by “elected representatives and judges, not by unelected engineers running global businesses.” But Karp fails to acknowledge that companies like Palantir decide with whom they do business and have an obligation to address the harmful consequences of their business relationships. This responsibility rests not only on tech companies but on all corporations. Read More...

YouTube has a serious problem with disinformation, but the company’s senior leadership continues to wish it away. A recent blog post by YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, exemplifies the problem. Wojcicki celebrates the many ways the company adds value to society while sidestepping it’s most difficult challenges. Not least among these challenges is the manipulation of video images on the YouTube platform to advance various political agendas. Read More...