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The Sacklers: Charitable Giving Does Not Excuse Improper Business Conduct - By Michael Posner
For decades many of the world’s leading art museums have been the proud beneficiaries of large financial contributions from the Sackler family of New York. Sackler wings display world-class art in the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and numerous other museums and university art collections. These donations stem from the Sacklers’ remarkable financial success in the pharmaceutical industry, which allowed them to build a family fortune now estimated at more than $13 billion.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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Understanding the Fed’s Dovish Turn - By Nouriel Roubini
The US Federal Reserve surprised markets recently with a large and unexpected policy change. When the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met in December 2018, it hiked the Fed’s policy rate to 2.25-2.5%, and signaled that it would raise the benchmark rate another three times, to 3%-3.25%, before stopping. It also signaled that it would continue to unwind its balance sheet of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities indefinitely, by up to $50 billion per month.
—- Biography: Professor Nouriel Roubini
- Department: Economics
— Opinion
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Facebook and YouTube Need to Take Down Provably False "News" - By Michael Posner
Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook will shift its focus to “private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.” While some commentators initially applauded this statement as a 180-degree turn from the company’s past, the real import is unclear because Zuckerberg didn’t mention any plan of action. As he later acknowledged, “this isn’t a product announcement, it’s a statement of principles.”
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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Why it's so Important to Close the Female Leadership Gap - By Michael Posner
International Women’s Day offers an opportunity to take stock of areas where women have made progress in the struggle for equality but also to examine the gaps that remain. In the United States, women have made notable gains politically, but far too many continue to struggle to gain economic equality, including at the highest levels of American business.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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A Money Manager’s Past Performance Matters More Than Ever - By Vasant Dhar
A common disclaimer in the investment business is that “past performance is not indicative of future results.” This is consistent with the Theory of Finance which argues that obvious advantages disappear quickly in a competitive market. Historical evidence largely supports this position: Manager performance is mostly unpredictable from month to month.
—- Biography: Professor Vasant Dhar
- Department: IOMS
— Opinion
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Strategy Needs Creativity - By Adam Brandenburger
I've noticed that business school students often feel frustrated when they’re taught strategy. There’s a gap between what they learn and what they’d like to learn. Strategy professors (including me) typically teach students to think about strategy problems by introducing them to rigorous analytical tools—assessing the five forces, drawing a value net, plotting competitive positions. The students know that the tools are essential, and they dutifully learn how to use them. But they also realize that the tools are better suited to understanding an existing business context than to dreaming up ways to reshape it.
—- Biography: Professor Adam Brandenburger
- Department: Management and Organizations
— Opinion
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On North Korea, U.S. Fails to Maintain Bipartisan Tradition of Leadership on Human Rights - By Michael Posner
As he wound down his two-day summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, President Trump was asked again to comment on the torture and murder of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who died in 2017. Warmbier had been studying in North Korea in 2015 when he was arrested and held on bogus charges for 17 months, ultimately lapsing into a coma and dying.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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The Next Wave of Improbable Innovation - By Tensie Whelan
The past 20 years have been characterized by innovation that democratizes access to information, entertainment, products and services through platform companies such as Spotify, Amazon and Facebook, as well as technologies such as blockchain. While technological and business innovation continues, there is growing backlash against some of its unintended consequences, such as growth becoming dependent on monetizing consumer data.
—- Biography: Professor Tensie Whelan
- Department: Center for Sustainable Business
— Opinion
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Stock Buybacks Are the Wrong Target - By A. Michael Spence
The surge in stock buybacks in the United States has sparked a high-stakes debate about what corporations can and should do with surpluses they have generated. It is a topic that raises fundamental questions about the role of the public and private sectors in securing inclusive growth patterns.
—- Biography: Professor A. Michael Spence
- Department: Economics
— Opinion
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Justice Thomas' Ominous Threat Against a Vital Free-Press Precedent - By Michael Posner
In 1964, the United States Supreme Court protected journalists from legal retaliation by powerful politicians and other public figures seeking to impede their reporting. The case, New York Times v. Sullivan, significantly limited the scope of defamation lawsuits that could be brought against publishers or reporters by public officials and other prominent figures, requiring proof of “reckless disregard” of the truth. Over the past five decades, the Sullivan case has empowered journalists to root out official corruption and expose wrongdoing by the powerful.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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A Mixed Economic Bag in 2019 - By Nouriel Roubini
After the synchronized global economic expansion of 2017 came the asynchronous growth of 2018, when most countries other than the United States started to experience slowdowns. Worries about US inflation, the US Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, ongoing trade wars, Italian budget and debt woes, China’s slowdown, and emerging-market fragilities led to a sharp fall in global equity markets toward the end of the year.
—- Biography: Professor Nouriel Roubini
- Department: Economics
— Opinion
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Why Journalism Urgently Needs a Domestic Marshall Plan - By Michael Posner
This week a commission of prominent experts sounded an alarm about the precarious state of the news media in the U.S. and the resultant danger to our democracy. They rightly emphasized that trust in the news media is at an all-time low and that a changing business environment has left local newspapers in dire straits. In response, they are proposing a series of practical recommendations aimed at strengthening traditional media companies and urging new digital platforms to accept significantly greater responsibility for their business conduct.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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The Truth about Rosa Parks and Why it Matters to Your Diversity Initiative - By Dolly Chugh
Mind blown. It was like when I found out who Luke Skywalker’s father was or the Wizard of Oz was. I felt the same way when I read The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis. This rigorously and vigorously researched biography invites the reader to follow Parks' story as it really unfolded. In doing so, Theoharis also invites the reader to consider why this more fascinating true story is told far less often than the children's book version which most of us know (a topic she further explores in her latest book A More Beautiful and Terrible History and through a gold mine of teaching resources for educators). February 4 would have been Parks’ 106th birthday. If you believe in what she did and why she did it, it is time you knew who she really was.
—- Biography: Professor Dolly Chugh
- Department: Management and Organizations
— Opinion
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Why the Davos Move of Major Global Companies on LGBTI Rights is so Important - By Michael Posner
There are few human rights issues in the U.S. on which public attitudes have changed more quickly and greater progress has been achieved than those relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. Though initial progress was slow, over the last 20 years, advances have been swift and dramatic.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion
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Why the UK Government Needs to Do More to Combat Modern Slavery - By Michael Posner
More than 35 million people around the world are subject to modern-day slavery, a quarter of them children. Victims include women who are trafficked for prostitution or forced marriage and people coerced into bonded or forced labor. In recent years, there has been a growing international effort to persuade governments to address modern slavery more aggressively, including by holding companies legally accountable for abuses in their global supply chains. This initiative has been led by organizations like Focus on Labor Exploitation (FLEX), Anti-Slavery International, and KnowTheChain, and it has been supported by such organizations as the Freedom Fund and Humanity United.
—- Biography: Professor Michael Posner
- Department: Center for Business and Human Rights
— Opinion