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Hungary Closes a University: Lessons on the Creeping Decline of Democracy - By Michael Posner
On Monday, the Central European University was forced out of Hungary, the latest victim of Prime Minster Victor Orban’s increasingly authoritarian rule. Founded in 1991 by Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist George Soros, the CEU has become one of the leading universities in Central Europe, with world-class programs in politics and international studies. In recent years, Orban has targeted the CEU and Soros as part of his broader efforts to undermine democratic institutions in Hungary.
—— Opinion
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Financing the Response to Climate Change - By Jeffrey Wurgler
In “Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds,” Professor Wurgler, with co-authors Malcolm Baker and George Serafeim of Harvard Business School and Daniel Bergstresser of Brandeis University, analyzed pricing and ownership patterns of green bonds. They hypothesized and confirmed that they are priced at a premium compared to ordinary bonds, with higher prices at issue and therefore lower returns to bondholders.
—— Research Highlights
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What Lawmakers Need to Do to Police Online Content - By Vasant Dhar
Platforms with laudable mission statements of making the world a better place and doing no evil now find themselves dealing with the dark side of human nature associated with the connected world they have created. Their content can be malicious, aimed at covert manipulation or stirring up dark emotions that trigger violence. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter realize this danger and are scrambling to keep bad content off their platforms. They have employed armies of humans, roughly 20,000 in Facebook’s case, to police platform content.
—— Opinion
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The Digital Key to Inclusive Growth - By A. Michael Spence
Some observers interpret the trade war that US President Donald Trump has initiated with China as a tough negotiating tactic, aimed at forcing the Chinese to comply with World Trade Organization rules and Western norms of doing business. Once China meets at least some of Trump’s demands, this view holds, mutually beneficial economic engagement will be restored. But there are many reasons to doubt such a benign scenario. The long China-US trade war is really a manifestation of a fundamental clash of systems.
—— Opinion
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The Climate Won’t Crash the Economy - By Steven Koonin
Headlines warned of economic doom after the U.S. government released its fourth National Climate Assessment last week. Yet a close reading of the report shows that the overall economic impact of human-caused climate change is expected to be quite small.
—— Opinion
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Government Can Do More to Support Science and Innovation - By Paul Romer
The U.S. government is divided and so are the people. But perhaps we can all agree that the economic growth of the 20th century, driven by robust markets and technological innovation, was good for everyone. The government can do more than most policy makers realize to sustain this long-term, broadly shared growth through investment in science.
—— Opinion
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Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Destroy Cryptocurrencies - By Nouriel Roubini
The world’s central bankers have begun to discuss the idea of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and now even the International Monetary Fund and its managing director, Christine Lagarde, are talking openly about the pros and cons of the idea.
—— Opinion
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Confronting Facebook's Growing Pains - By Michael Posner
On Wednesday, The New York Times published an in-depth account of Facebook’s poor corporate responses to political disinformation, hate speech and other harmful content on its platform. The Times described the company’s approach as “delay, deny and deflect.” A day later, Facebook issued a sharp rebuttal, insisting that it is making progress on these challenges, such as recent improvement in its efforts to take down hate speech.
—— Opinion
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US Should Not Abandon Leadership on Asylum - By Michael Posner
President Trump signed a proclamation on Friday that contains draconian restrictions on the rights of refugees seeking asylum in this country. The president’s action undermines a 50-year U.S. commitment to providing safe haven for those fleeing ethnic, religious or political persecution. The proclamation invokes “national security” concerns and responds to what the president calls the “overloading of our immigration and asylum system.” Under the new rules, immigrants who do not enter the country legally through official border crossings will be ineligible to apply for asylum regardless of the merits of their cases.
—— Opinion
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How Investors Can Drive The Shift From Shareholder Primacy to Stakeholder Capitalism - By Tensie Whelan
Imagine the United States economy as Company USA, a corporation that is publicly owned. Just 20% of the country’s citizens are shareholders in Company USA. The company is managing to short-term stock-gain metrics in response to activist investors and quarterly analyst demands, even though most of its shareholders own their stocks through large index funds (which are passive investors) and are in the investments for the long term.
—— Opinion
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On the Board, ‘Twokenism’ Is the New Tokenism - By Dolly Chugh
California recently passed historic legislation mandating that the boards of public companies based in the state include at least one woman. With just over 20 percent of S&P 500 company board seats occupied by women, it’s no surprise that progressive legislators are putting pressure on companies to diversify their boards. This pressure is part of a larger wave of growing public scrutiny over board composition. A reasonable question, however, is whether this kind of public scrutiny is likely to move the needle meaningfully on boardroom diversity. To what extent is board composition shaped by outside pressure and inspection?
—— Opinion
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Why International Brands Want Cambodia to Meet EU Demands - By Michael Posner
Earlier this month, the European Union put Cambodia on notice that its preferred trade status is at risk.
—— Opinion
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Stop Blaming Computer Programs for Steep Drops in the Stock Market - By Vasant Dhar
Since the crash of October 1987, sharp selloffs and volatility spikes in the stock market invariably raise the same question: are computer programs the culprit?
—— Opinion
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Why Anti-Semitic Attacks Are Human Rights Violations - And Should Be Treated That Way - By Michael Posner
The mass murder of 11 Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue has brought home to America the scourge of anti-Semitic violence. For decades, European countries from France to Denmark and from Hungary to Greece have experienced violent extremist attacks on Jews. But now Americans also must come to terms with a rising tide of anti-Semitic rhetoric and action here at home. As the Anti-Defamation League and others have carefully reported, anti-Semitic hate has surged in the United States in recent years, fueled by social media extremism. That hatred spilled over into Saturday’s carnage.
—— Opinion
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Globalization in Year 2038: Change and Continuity - By Steven A. Altman and Phillip Bastian
Amid heightened volatility in international trade and capital flows since the 2008 global financial crisis and political backlashes against globalization in many countries, it would be folly to extrapolate recent trends to predict how globalized the world will be 20 years later. Instead, we focus this article on predictions about the nature of globalization that are likely to hold across a range of scenarios for the expansion or contraction of international flows. We begin with three predictions about what will change over the next 20 years, followed by three predictions about what will not change.
—— Opinion
