Experience Stern | News & Events

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara recently addressed an auditorium of students and faculty from NYU’s Stern School of Business and Law School, as well as Stern alumni.

Excerpt from New York Magazine -- "Many memory researchers believe in the so-called 'end effect.' When we evaluate something that happened to us, the thinking goes, the final moments of it are disproportionately influential. ... But a new study suggests it might not be. Writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, doctors Stephanie Tully of the University of Southern California and Tom Meyvis of New York University present a set of experimental findings that, taken together, suggest the end effect may not be real."

Excerpt from The Guardian -- "A May 2015 report from the Center for Real Estate Finance Research at New York University’s Stern School of Business was blunt about the visa’s use: '[W]hen the traditional capital markets evaporated during the Great Recession, developers’ demand for alternative capital sources rejuvenated the program.' EB-5, the Stern report said, represents 'a capital source providing extraordinary flexibility and attractive terms, especially to finance commercial real estate projects'."

Excerpt from Kellogg Insight -- "In 1918, the U.S. confiscated thousands of German-owned patents under the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA). While the boom in American innovation following this period is well studied, no one has previously examined how CL affected the German inventors who lost their patents. The researchers found that, in this scenario, having a patent licensed by the U.S. actually increased innovation."

Excerpt from the Financial Times -- "David Yermack, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, conducted an analysis in 2005 that established a link between aircraft perks and inferior shareholder returns. Mr Yermack analysed a decade’s worth of data on 237 large companies and found those that disclosed corporate aircraft benefits underperformed market benchmarks by more than 4 per cent a year on average. This chief executive perk, where disclosed, 'is associated with severe and significant underperformance of their employers' stocks', Mr Yermack said."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "Beyond its well-documented troubles in China, it is also struggling in Europe. The young tech company has committed a classic globalization mistake: it naively assumed that its business model and market approach, which ultimately solidified its market-leading position in the U.S., could translate just as seamlessly to other countries."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Roy Smith, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, raises another concern about the data used by the researchers. Performance data for hedge funds is reported on a voluntary basis, 'with some firms not reporting, or reporting incorrectly,' he says, meaning it may not accurately reflect the industry, casting some doubt on the study’s conclusions."

Excerpt from El Pais -- "'Regional trade has always been a priority for every country in the world ... But in Latin America it is relevant to note that, while investment has been rising, trade has stagnated,' says Pankaj Ghemawat, economist and professor ..."

Excerpt from The Washington Post -- "Arun Sundararajan, a business professor at New York University, said the ride-sharing option could empower paratransit users, because it would give them more travel freedom. Governments can set requirements related to driver screening and accessible vehicles, he said, much like Metro is proposing. Some transit officials predict that if they provide the customers and show a growing demand, the companies will move toward building accessible fleets."

Excerpt from The Telegraph -- "Part-memoir, part-policy missive, King’s chunky 430-page volume isn’t just an elegant guide to the history of economic ideas. It also gives a genuine insider’s account of how, following relative prosperity before Western banks began imploding in 2007, 'within little more than a year, what had been viewed as the age of wisdom was seen as the age of foolishness'."

The NYU Stern Private Equity Club (SPEC) will host the 11th Annual Stern Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference, themed "Changing Gears to Create Value: Outperforming the Benchmark," on Friday, March 4.

Excerpt from TIME -- "It was just a couple of years ago that 'Africa Rising' was a hot story, as a continent best known for tragedy gained attention for rapid economic growth and real hope. The slowdown of the global economy and slumping commodity prices have dampened that enthusiasm a bit, but there are still positive longer-term trends across Africa that deserve attention."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "Bitcoin has gained attention from prominent economists and venture capitalists because it is the first platform that offers a global currency with a democratic process. 'We usually delegate this type of thing to experts—the Federal Reserve and so forth,' said Yermack. With Bitcoin, 'anyone can be an expert. This decentralized nature of the currency was part of its appeal.' The 'irony,' as Yermack says, is that this popular democratic process is leading to current problems."

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "The movie--along with some misleading criticism--prompts us to clarify what we view as the prime causes of the financial crisis. The financial corruption depicted in the movie is deeply troubling... But what made the U.S. financial system so fragile a decade ago, and what made the crisis so deep, were practices that were completely legal. The scandal is that we still haven't addressed these properly."
 

Excerpt from The Irish Catholic -- "...Jonathan Haidt, whose area of academic expertise is moral psychology, has done research with a colleague, Emily Ekins, as to what causes people to vote for particular candidates in the US primaries. They draw on moral foundations theory, which was originally propounded by Haidt. In simple form, this proposes that there are six basic clusters of values, and that conservatives draw on all six, but that liberals focus primarily on individual liberty and care. The six values are firstly, care and harm: people feel compassion for those who are vulnerable or suffering. The next is fairness and cheating: people constantly monitor whether others are getting what they deserve, and whether things are balanced. They shun or punish cheaters."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "'The standard of proof will be difficult to meet,' Labowitz said, adding, 'How do you demonstrate that a particular shipment of a particular commodity was produced with convict, forced or indentured labor? The bill doesn't come with increased resources to deal with this. It's going to take a coordinated effort on the part of the brands, the suppliers, government, financial solutions. You can't just police the first-tier suppliers.'"

Excerpt from the Financial Times -- "The former governor of the Bank of England is entitled to say that we have been warned. Those who do not agree with his recommendations will still have to concede that his book is an outstandingly lucid account of postwar economic policymaking and the dilemmas we now face. For good measure he is a master of the well-turned phrase, the apposite quote and the pungent boutade. It is rare to encounter a book on economics quite as intellectually exhilarating as The End of Alchemy — a dazzling performance indeed."

Excerpt from Newsday -- "'The problem with the system was that there was one person who had two roles — one role was depositing the cash in the bank and the other role was passing on the information about the revenues that were collected the previous Sunday onto the comptroller’s office,' Dontoh said. 'Those roles should have been separated.'"

Excerpt from China Radio International -- "I think the overall jobless rate is not an issue. I mean, 4% is a relatively low number. Think of that number in comparison, for example, to the unemployment rate in the US, which is about 5% or much worse, the unemployment rates in Europe, say in France, is running at about 10%. More troubling perhaps is the 1.8 million workers that look like they're going to be laid off from the coal and steel industry."

Excerpt from Accounting Today -- "...FASB must hit the pause button on issuing new standards. Uninformative or confusing financial statements enhance share price noise and investor uncertainty. Then, FASB must seriously assess the mounting evidence on the ineffectiveness of current accounting and reporting regulations. Both investors and executives will appreciate a fresh direction."

Excerpt from The Washington Post -- "Why do so many disgruntled voters threaten to leave the country, only to see so few actually follow through? Because people overestimate how much pain they’ll feel when they experience a dreaded outcome."

Excerpt from Project Syndicate -- "Two dismal months for financial markets may give way in March to a relief rally for assets such as global equities, as some key central banks (the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan) ease more, while others (the Fed and the Bank of England) will remain on hold for longer. But repeated eruptions from some of the seven sources of global tail risk will make the rest of this year – unlike the previous seven – a bad one for risky assets and anemic for global growth."

Excerpt from The Nation -- "The sprawling lattice of local newsrooms is shrinking—105 newspapers closed in 2009 alone—whittled away by the rise of the Internet and decline of display ads, with the migration of classified advertising to Craigslist hitting particularly hard. Between 2000 and 2007, a thousand newspapers lost $5 billion to the free site, according to a 2013 study by Robert Seamans of New York University’s Stern School of Business and Feng Zhu of the Harvard Business School. Falling circulation numbers have also taken their toll."

Excerpt from HousingWire -- "'If you’re only embracing incremental change, instead of disruptive change, your path becomes narrower and narrower. By the time you’re at the end of that path your customers have forsaken you.' Williams cited the example of Blockbuster — wildly successful at the time — shunning the idea of Netflix when they were presented with it. And Blackberry, the symbol of success a few years ago, now akin to the Motorola brick phone."

Excerpt from Vox -- "It is as if, the NYU professor Jonathan Haidt has written, a button is pushed that says, 'In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant.' 'Authoritarians are a real constituency that exists independently of Trump — and will persist as a force in American politics.'"