Experience Stern | News & Events

On Wednesday, NYU Stern attended a convening at the White House hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls and the Council of Economic Advisers. 

Excerpt from CNBC -- "If the program is implemented correctly, Greece will grow and re-enter the financial markets in 2017. In 2014, despite many errors by previous governments, and despite the ruthless and misleading opposition of Syriza, Greece had the fastest growth in the euro zone. Moreover, Greece succeeded in issuing new bonds at a yield of 3.5 percent only two years since it imposed a haircut of 74 percent to its bonds in 2012! These achievements occurred without structural reforms and despite the increasing political uncertainty because of the ascent of Syriza."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "Classifying drivers as employees would result in higher prices, and fewer Uber drivers overall who must work longer hours, said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. The higher costs would be passed on to consumers, with reductions in drivers' income and Uber's cut of their fares, he said. The effect on Uber’s global revenue would likely be small, Sundararajan said. 'I think the real risk is that if they lose in California, other states will follow,' he said."

Excerpt from CNN -- "I think there is a recession that is getting deeper in Greece and Greece needs the agreement with the Europeans as fast as possible and it needs the money from the Europeans, the loans from the Europeans, as well as the rehabilitation of the banks. The reason why the banks are the worst performing stocks right now is because the shareholders are going to lose a lot of their value once the banks get recapitalized. Still the banks need to be recapitalized as soon as possible."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "I think that traditional metrics are a sign of laziness...You have to look at what will create the earnings in the first place. In Facebook, it's a user base and how well they're working at converting that user base into earnings. And you have to give them credit - they've taken the 1.5 billion users they have and they've been incredibly creative about making money off those users. In contrast, you look at Twitter with a 300 million user base - it's not figured out a way to convert that user base into earnings. As an investor when I look at these companies, I'm looking at what they can do to create earnings and whether they're working to put the pieces in place to create those earnings and then I look at the price at which I'd be able to buy them."

Excerpt from Marketplace -- "'[Bundling] makes it hard for people to switch off a particular service and that reduces competition in markets across the board,' says Nicholas Economides, economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He says companies are less inclined to offer better prices or service when it’s troublesome for you to choose another option."

Excerpt from CityLab -- "But as that $15 number mobilizes voters from Seattle to New York, scholars have suggested that other metros wait and see how these large hikes actually impact minimum-wage workers before adopting it themselves. Meanwhile, as Brandon Fuller pointed out on CityLab in June, the nation’s priciest cities (ahem, New York and Los Angeles) can do more to improve the lives of low-income residents, such as increasing housing stock and advocating for tax policies that reward work."

Excerpt from Harvard Business Review -- "In research by Frances Milliken of New York University and two colleagues, the majority of 40 employees at knowledge companies reported having concerns about such issues as workflow improvement and ethics — but not speaking up about these issues to their supervisors. The belief that raising the issues would make no difference was the third most frequently cited reason. Said one employee: 'Even if I did comment on the issue, it was unlikely to change anything.'"

Excerpt from Business Insider -- "The average American understands that things are not going well for America outside of our borders. When you look outside the US, you've got failed states across the Middle East, you've got the most powerful terrorist organization that just dealt us a setback, you've got more refugees than at any point since World War II, you have Putin telling us to go scratch whenever we say we want him to do something. These are enormous challenges, and we have our allies that are unnerved by this, and they're hedging."

The Executive MBA Class of 2015 celebrated their completion of the program at a Graduation Celebration in August.

Excerpt from PBS NewsHour -- "The fundamental innovation is in tapping into underutilized capacity: repurposing what used to be residential real estate and sort of converting it into a new form of mixed-use real estate where for some of the time it is short-term accommodation, and for the rest of the time it’s residential."

Excerpt from Mumbai Mirror -- "Prof Subrahmanyam and his colleagues found that shockingly 26 per cent of mergers and buyouts were accompanied by evidence of insider trading. Using sophisticated statistics, they showed that the chance of such abnormal buying, happening just by chance, was 3 in a trillion! The record of actual investigation and prosecution for insider trading (like the Rajat Gupta case) is woefully short of 26 per cent. Even that takes more than two years to secure conviction (considered fast track by US standards). So this problem is acute. But Prof Subrahmanyam and his team seem to have put fresh tools in the hands of SEC to go after the rogues."

Excerpt from Bloomberg View -- "Here we should turn to the research of New York University economist Paul Romer, one of the most influential theorists of economic growth. Much of Romer's research is about 'excludability,' or the degree to which companies can stop other companies from learning their secrets. Excludability means that new technologies don't necessarily flow from one company to another. Romer has shown that excludability is, at least in theory, very important to economic growth."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "Microsoft’s 'grand scheme was to have a single platform that ran on PCs, laptops, tablets and phones, and to be able to sell applications that run Windows,' said Nicholas Economides, an economics professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University who specializes in network economics and electronic commerce. 'That failed.'"

Excerpt from The Globalist -- "Presumably, the reason for Greece to move closer to Russia would be to get access to loans. Despite being the smallest of the BRICs, the Russian state does have wealth due to its abundant natural resources (primarily oil and gas). However, while Mr. Putin might ordinarily love the idea of offering financing galore to fix Greece’s problems, Russia has troubles of its own. Its economy is generally expected to shrink at least 3% in 2015, on the back of falling oil prices and economic sanctions."

Excerpt from CNNMoney -- "The circuit breakers are in place on some assets in the U.S. and appear to be in place in China now as well. It gives a short cool off period for traders. But it's 'of limited effectiveness,' argues Sylla, 'because what's going to happen overnight that would change people's attitudes?'"

Excerpt from Politico -- "'There’s nothing in the code that says you can’t stay in business, but the code also says that a company should not be permitted to emerge from bankruptcy if there is a substantial likelihood they will need to file again or will need restructuring,' says Altman. That makes Trump 'the great Houdini,' he says. 'No matter how poorly the companies perform he always manages to resurface and do it again.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "Well, in the case of the Fed, we're beginning to see the rate normalization starting sometime this fall, but if you look around the world between the DOJ, ECB and other central banks, we're still in totally unconventional monetary policy: zero-policy rates, negative policy rates, quantitative easing, credit easing, forward guidance, and you name it."

Excerpt from Investment Magazine -- "According to Brown, a perfect storm which started in the GFC led to a misunderstanding of the value proposition of hedge funds. Returns in recent years in hedge fund strategies have been poor compared to the market, but he emphasised they are meant to be uncorrelated, and a diversified hedge fund strategy still made sense for intuitional investors. 'People worry about fees, people worry about expenses, but after all that, after they are all accounted for, they remain a value proposition. This was true before the crisis and they remain a value proposition after,' Brown said."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "[In] the next quarter, if Twitter shows negative user growth, which we haven't seen across any social media platform that's still around, you could have a chill that could set off an incredible decrease in valuations, not only across social media, but across the market. I think Twitter is about to play a more important role in the markets than people think."

Excerpt from Fox Business -- "The first principal of investment is diversifying your portfolio. You cannot put all your eggs into one basket. … there are a huge amount of investment opportunities around the world. For example, this year Japan and Europe have done much better than the United States…"

Excerpt from Project Syndicate -- "As China’s markets expand – the capitalization of the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets is on the order of $11 trillion – they are increasingly outstripping policymakers’ capacity to manage prices and valuations. The only practical way forward is for the Chinese authorities to focus on regulatory and institutional development, while following through on their commitment to allow markets to play the decisive role in allocating resources."

Excerpt from BusinessBecause -- "'Companies now need marketing managers who are comfortable with data analytics,' said Anindya Ghose, professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Australian Banking & Finance -- "'Although the hedge funds' big selling feature was that was that their strategies were uncorrelated with the market, the truth is their risk profile is half that of the S&P500 so hedge fund managers have underperformed.'  So systemic risk is not a issue with hedge funds, Brown concluded."