Experience Stern | News & Events

In a new paper, published today in Science, Sinan Aral, NYU Stern Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences, and his co-author Dylan Walker, a research scientist at Stern, present a new method to measure influence and susceptibility in social networks.

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The eurozone is going to stand or fall on the reform programs, Tom and Sarah, in Spain and in Italy and those reforms need time to take effect and get done and so there this issue of yield that was just discussed on the program a moment ago and basically we need intervention by the eurozone core institutions and the IMF to keep these yields under control while the reform programs work. And in order to do that they're going to have to do something that's similar to buying the bonds."

Excerpt from New Scientist -- "Random selection of who gets the message allowed the researchers to avoid common pitfalls in measuring influence, such as homophily bias – the principle that we tend to make friends with people like ourselves. 'If two friends adopt a product one after the other, current methods have a hard time distinguishing whether it is because of peer influence, or rather that the friends simply have similar preferences,' explains Aral."

The Fifth Annual Society for Financial Econometrics (SoFiE) Conference was hosted by the Oxford-Man Institute and held at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford this June. Bringing together academics and practitioners from around the world, the conference featured speakers from a number of leading organizations including Banque de France, NYU Stern, Harvard, Stanford and Brown.

Excerpt from CNBC -- "I share the chairman's view. They're not really out [of ammunition], but they're cautious about using their most powerful tools. And they should be."

Excerpt from Financial Times -- "'Now it is no more than 50-50,' [Altman] told the 2012 International Risk Management Conference in Rome. 'Italy is the fulcrum country. Italy is under the scrutiny of the markets. Italy is too large to save,' he added."

Excerpt from Forbes India -- "A recent study led by Professor Arun Sundararajan of the NYU Stern School of Business showed that almost 56% of the now 200 million enrolees of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) programme did not have portable identities before."

Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -- "'In each instance, it seems reasonable to make a budgeting exception given the special nature of the spending and the low likelihood that a similar situation will recur any time soon,' the authors Abigail Sussman, a doctoral candidate of psychology at Princeton University, and Adam Alter, an assistant professor of marketing at New York University, wrote."

Excerpt from Project Syndicate -- "After all, restoring stability and growth is only partly about reviving short-term aggregate demand. It is also about structural reform and re-balancing, which comes at a cost."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "I'd say the probability of Italy making it is 50/50 at best ... but its the last hope for the euro staying together."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "'That increased the monopoly power of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s and Fitch,' said Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University’s Stern School of Business .. 'It was a bad move on the part of the government. It was a big favor to the rating agencies.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "With bank runs already under way, the immediate requirement is a euro-area Troubled Asset Relief Program like that used in the U.S. to clean up the banks during the 2008 financial crisis. The existing European Financial Stability Facility and the anticipated European Stability Mechanism aren’t up to the challenge."

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Two things need to be done urgently: to secure the necessary ratification of the eurozone countries to authorise the European Stability Mechanism and to allocate a portion of its €500bn fund to a new deposit insurance fund similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the US."

Excerpt from Financial Times -- "Mark Seasholes, a finance professor at HKUST, says many of those enrolled on the programme want to figure out the bigger picture. 'Many companies want more than just the maths. We want to teach students how to deal with the problems that are coming up in five years.'"

Excerpt from Financial Times -- "I applied to the MS in Global Finance because I believe it is a great way to bolster my qualifications, enrich my knowledge base and financial acumen, launch my career development in a new trajectory, and continue to help MetLife achieve profitable growth globally."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "In 2001, the couple moved to Harlem so that Mr. Williams could work for the Clinton Foundation. His task there was developing programs to help the local community; one that he started, in partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton and the New York University Stern School of Business, provided free consulting to small businesses."

Excerpt from Crain's New York Business -- "For Lawrence White, the Robert Kavesh professor of economics at NYU's Stern School of Business, the central issue is the state of the economy, which he sees strengthening over the next two years. And with that improvement, banks' willingness to lend to small business will also increase, both nationally and in New York City."

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "'Asking companies to remain neutral is a realistic tactic. The fact that many companies aren't doing it is quite meaningful,' Schenkler continued. 'Corporations are rarely in the forefront of raising banners to change the world.'"

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "'My father was in the academic world and was also a partner in a merchant bank in Toronto,' [Spence] says. 'He was part academic, part practitioner. He had a very rigorous mind, made sure I learned math as a kid.'"

Excerpt from Barron's -- "Two years ago, Altman and Amsterdam-based professor Herbert Rijken hatched a model that makes a 'bottom-up' prediction of sovereign risk. Their 'Z-Score' model aggregates the average probability of default of listed nonfinancial and financial companies, whose health is central to that of the sovereign. Altman's model correctly predicted Europe's current hierarchy of risk: Spain and Portugal on the bottom, with Italy a bit higher."

Excerpt from Variety -- "Simonoff and colleagues ... looked at Tony wins in what they considered "major categories" -- musical, tuner revival, play, play revival, director and lead actor and actress. Sure enough, they found that each Tony in one of those categories is associated with a 50% longer expected run, while a nom without the win was associated with a 30% longer expected lifespan."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "Well I think that the European integration has to move quickly and create a guarantee for the deposits of depositors in any European country by the ECB and not by the national banks. Because people will lose credibility. The national banks have lost credibility."

Excerpt from Project-Syndicate -- "Compared to 2008-2009, when policymakers had ample space to act, monetary and fiscal authorities are running out of policy bullets (or, more cynically, policy rabbits to pull out of their hats). Monetary policy is constrained by the proximity to zero interest rates and repeated rounds of quantitative easing."

Excerpt from Fox Business -- "'A decade isn’t very long in human history,' said Richard Sylla, an economist and financial historian at NYU who said the euro can be classified as 'kind of a failure.'"

Excerpt from CNN -- "On Broadway, 'There's that suspension of disbelief that you go in with,' Simonoff added. 'You know it's on a stage. When you watch a movie, there's still some suspension of disbelief, but it feels more jarring when people suddenly burst into song.'"