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Making Way (hopefully) for 5G - By Lawrence White
To the applause of economists — not to mention stakeholders in the vast wireless communications industry — the FCC has driven the transformation of America’s deeply inefficient system from one that regularly assigned spectrum use by government fiat to one based on market allocation. A substantial portion of the “airwaves” is now flexibly licensed under a structure in which the government retains formal ownership, but licensees have considerable latitude to use or transfer their “rights” to others.
—— Opinion
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What Next for China’s Development Model? - By A. Michael Spence
China’s strategy for economic growth has been a work in progress since Deng Xiaoping launched the country’s “reform and opening up” in 1978. While the last 40 years of reform have been far from error-free, the government has displayed a willingness to adapt, as well as a capacity for navigating complex transitions, supported by a healthy internal policy debate. But how is China’s development model likely to evolve in the future, as external conditions pose new challenges to economic growth?
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Hedge Funds and Newspapers: a Bad Mix - By Michael Posner
Two news stories this week captured conflicting forces at play in the struggle to preserve journalism. On the positive side, Facebook announced that it will invest more than $300 million over the next three years to help support local news organizations globally. But while Facebook was promising to help smaller news organizations “grow and thrive,” the same sort of local outlets came under existential threat from another direction.
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Intersectional Escape: Older Women Elude Agentic Prescriptions More Than Older Men - By Michael S. North
New research by NYU Stern Professor Michael S. North focuses on the generational tension over resources that inevitably arises when people are living longer, and the implications for a world that has not caught up to the fact of increasing longevity.
—— Research Highlights
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Cultures of Nonprofit Trusteeship: What Lies Beneath? - By Jeffrey S. Simonoff
Nonprofits tend to think about boards in a way that assumes that they are nonporous entities—a kind of standardized form with few variations. But the opposite is true: nonprofit boards of directors are deeply influenced by any number of “silent” factors beyond whether they happen to adhere to commonly agreed-upon standards of governance. Our research indicates that they are influenced by their geographic regions, the fields in which they practice, the social era (and theories of change) from which that field emerged, and the regulatory and funder-driven standards of that field, to name a few.
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A Candid Advantage? The Social Benefits of Candid Photos - By Alixandra Barasch
Candid photos elicit more favorable responses in the context of friendship and dating because they seem more genuine, according to joint research from Professor Alixandra Barasch.
—— Research Highlights
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By Mollycoddling Our Children, We're Fuelling Mental Illness in Teenagers - By Jonathan Haidt
We talk incessantly about how to make children more “resilient”, but whatever we’re doing, it’s not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers, and in the US universities can’t hire therapists fast enough to keep up with the demand. What are we doing wrong?
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The True Cost of Public Debt - By Thomas Philippon
Public debt in developed countries soared during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2011-2012 Eurozone crisis. The debt-to-GDP ratio is around 87% on average in the euro area, but it is close to 100% in France and Spain, and over 130% in Italy. For ten years, these countries have made considerable efforts to reduce their deficits and reduce their debts.
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Trump vs. the Economy - By Nouriel Roubini
Financial markets have finally awoken to the fact that Donald Trump is US president. Given that the world has endured two years of reckless tweets and public statements by the world’s most powerful man, the obvious question is, What took so long?
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How Inequality Undermines Economic Performance - By A. Michael Spence
About a decade ago, the Commission on Growth and Development (which I chaired) published a report that attempted to distill 20 years of research and experience in a wide range of countries into lessons for developing economies. Perhaps the most important lesson was that growth patterns that lack inclusiveness and fuel inequality generally fail.
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The Competitive Landscape of AI Startups - By Robert Seamans
Big tech companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into research on artificial intelligence (AI). Can small startups hope to enter AI markets and compete effectively?
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How McKinsey & Co Fails as a Global Leader - By Michael Posner
Few companies in any industry have built a reputation for leadership that McKinsey & Company has in the world of management consulting. Each year, the best and brightest students from the most prestigious colleges and business schools compete for the privilege of joining the firm. They do so knowing that they will receive superior training, work on cutting-edge issues with top global corporations and governments, and be able to add the McKinsey name to their resumes.
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The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control - By Hila Lifshitz-Assaf
Today, managers recognize that innovation requires a high level of work autonomy for their employees. This encourages curiosity, enables independent thinking, and provides an environment in which employees can experiment and test new problem-solving approaches with minimal fear of failure. At the same time, top-level management and shareholders expect managers to innovate at an increasingly demanding pace, putting top-down pressure on employees to channel this autonomy into productivity. The challenge for managers becomes figuring out how to balance autonomy and control in order to achieve organizational goals without jeopardizing innovation.
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How Helping Refugees Helps Brands - By Tülin Erdem, Vishal Singh and Qianyun Zhang
Report from the Tent Partnership for Refugees and NYU Stern demonstrates that when brands support refugees, American consumers – particularly millennials – are more likely to purchase their products.
—— Research Highlights
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Helping Refugees in the U.S. Turns Out To Be Good For Business - By Tülin Erdem & Selcuk Sirin
Refugees are at the center of a political debate that heated up during the 2016 elections and has only increased in intensity since the 2018 midterms and the arrival of a refugee caravan at the US-Mexico border. Despite the polarized rhetoric in these discussions, businesses have been taking a stand in support of refugees. In the past two years, more than 100 companies have publicly joined the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a non-profit with a mission to develop and implement concrete business commitments to refugees.
—— Opinion
