Experience Stern | News & Events

In an event co-hosted by Stern in Africa and NYU's Center for Global Affairs, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will discuss the role the Private Sector can play in Africa's growth.

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "Though psychologists have studied virtually every human emotion, they have only recently begun to pay attention to the complicated and varied emotion of awe. In a foundational 2003 paper, 'Approaching Awe, A Moral, Spiritual And Aesthetic Emotion,' psychologists Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley and Jonathan Haidt of New York University outlined how exactly awe works and what effect it has on us. Awe consists of two qualities, Keltner and Haidt say: perceived vastness (something we think to be greater than ourselves), and accommodation, a need to assimilate the experience of vastness into one's current mental structure."

Excerpt from Quartz -- "Managers tend to think that using a flexible schedule to be more productive is good—a sign of commitment to the organization—according to a study (pdf) from Lisa Leslie at the University of Minnesota. But when employees seek such schedules to accommodate aspects of their personal life, they see it as a sign of low commitment and dedication."

The Right Honourable Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and NYU’s first Distinguished Global Leader-in-Residence, presented a talk entitled "Global Economic Problems, Global Solutions," to more than 100 graduate students from NYU’s Stern School of Business, Wagner School of Public Service and the School of Arts & Science this fall.

Excerpt from Business Insider -- "One Chinese supplier that works with a range of European and American buyers described how Uniqlo provided him with 18-month forecasts of order volume. If the company deviated by more than a certain percentage, Uniqlo would apologise and offer to compensate him for the lost production. Other buyers, in contrast, would simply cancel orders or reduce volumes with neither an apology nor the offer of compensation. The supplier said he never accepted monetary compensation when Uniqlo deviated from its order projections. The respect the company showed him and the long-term nature of the relationship were worth more than the money."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "In principle, a Scotland operating independently over time could kind of get it right. It's a small country. It could function effectively, like Sweden, but there's an enormous transition. First of all, you have a country that has 50% of the people, plus or minus, who think it's a bad idea and 50% who think it's a good idea, so this is a fairly badly divided country."

Excerpt from Montreal Gazette -- "'At the very least, the rule needs to be improved,' said Rosa Abrantes-Metz, an economist who investigates manipulations and cheating, when told of the section of Quebec’s Act Respecting Contracting by Public Bodies that allows provincial departments and agencies, hospitals, universities, school boards and other public institutions to exempt themselves from holding a public call for tenders when they award contracts over $100,000."

Excerpt from Business News Daily -- "Business leaders who consider their audience's perspective and who are conditioned to see the world from someone else's point of view produce the best outcomes, according to a study published recently in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science."

Excerpt from Pacific Standard Magazine -- "Imagine you’re working your way through a list of chores—you might have to dust some bookshelves, vacuum the rugs, and sweep the floors. Probably you’ll check off one group—one category—of chores at a time. If you dust one shelf, vacuum part of a rug, and sweep a bit over there, you’re still left with more dusting, more vacuuming, and more sweeping, making your to-do list feel interminable... That intuition turns out to be correct, according to Anuj Shah and Adam Alter. In a series of seven experiments, they show that the average person will try to tick off categories of unpleasant tasks before moving on to the next. They’ll do the opposite for more enjoyable things. That way, there are more categories left to sample from—even if the number of things in those categories is the same, that makes it feel like the good times last a little longer."

Excerpt from CCTV -- "China's ecosystem, regulation, and government favors local players, so to seriously expand into the Chinese market, you need a big brother and basically by taking money from Alibaba, you get a big brother on the ground in China."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Policy makers and the public may wish for the comfort of certainty in their climate science. But I fear that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate science is 'settled' (or is a 'hoax') demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, retarding its progress in these important matters. Uncertainty is a prime mover and motivator of science and must be faced head-on. It should not be confined to hushed sidebar conversations at academic conferences."

Excerpt from Project Syndicate -- "The EU’s cohesion strategy is admirable and smart. Whereas such investment in the past was heavily tilted toward physical infrastructure – particularly transport – the agenda has shifted to a more balanced set of targets, including human capital, employment, the economy’s knowledge and technology base, information technology, low-carbon growth, and governance. That said, one can ask what the economic and social returns on these investments will be."

Excerpt from OZY -- "Ironically, central bankers’ renewed focus on the labor market exposes their limitations when it comes to helping the average worker. Current labor-market research tells us that sustainable wage increases don’t really depend on the Fed’s short-term interest rate decisions. Nor is any kind of long-term solution likely to come through an increase in the minimum wage. Better skills are the only way to produce sustainably higher wages — especially those skills that meet the demands of a globalized, tech-driven market."

On September 19 Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel Corporation, joined Professor Michael Posner, Co-Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, for a discussion on Intel’s conflict-free initiative in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "While buying old mortgages may not seem in line with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mission of fueling new lending, it can help encourage banks to retain loans and then to find new ones, according to Lawrence White, a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. 'Providing liquidity today, tomorrow, or five years from now is all part of the mission,' said White, co-author of 'Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance,' a 2011 book on their pre-crisis business."

Except from Bloomberg -- "This kind of tie-up between larger companies isn’t typical for U.S. investors, said Richard Sylla, a professor of economics and financial history at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and mutual funds tend to be more ideal investment vehicles, he said. 'It’s a bit more unusual in the U.S. for a company like Yahoo to have a big stock position in another firm without sort of taking it over,' he said. 'Usually, one firm buys another and they merge or something like that -- but in this particular case Yahoo was acting a little bit more like a partner or a venture capital firm.'"

Excerpt from USA Today -- "There’s an early warning system all investors need to know about — the Altman Z-Score — that’s is calling out six companies for being in a tough spot. The Z-Score — a financial indicator that predicts when companies are careening toward serious financial distress — is commonly used by investment professionals. And there’s no reason why individuals can’t use it, too."

Commuters in crowded subway trains may welcome targeted promotions on their mobile phones and are about twice as likely to respond by making a purchase as in non-crowded trains while in transit, say NYU Stern Professor Anindya Ghose, Co-Director of Stern’s Center for Business Analytics, and his co-authors, Michelle Andrews and Xueming Luo of Temple University and Zheng Fang of Sichuan University.

Excerpt from Fast Company Co.Exist -- "Lisa Leslie, an associate professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business who has studied workplace inequalities, says the EDGE approach could be help companies be proactive about not just putting a gender equality policy in place but making sure it's effective. Often, she notes, well-meaning policies have 'backlash effects.' She gives the example of a company where none of upper management will take advantage of flexible work hours, sending the signal that lower level employees will be penalized for using them. Or a policy can even have stigmatizing effects, if, say, co-workers believe that women or minorities in leadership are promoted because of who they are, rather than their merits."

Join hundreds of aspiring entrepreneurs from NYU’s student, alumni and faculty communities in Paulson Auditorium to hear about this year’s Entrepreneurs Challenge.

Excerpt from CNBC -- "I'm not getting a piece of a company,' [Damodaran] said. 'I'm getting a piece of a shell that owns a company where a politburo, basically, sets the board of directors. And if you're a trader, you really don't care. I mean, you're going to be out in six months or three months. What do you care that Jack Ma has power for life? The way I see it, traders date companies, investors marry companies. If you marry a company, you've got to be in here for the long term, and it scares the heck of me that I have absolutely no power over how this company will be run, or what can happen in the future.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The tendency of banks to rely on each other to net positions means one firm’s failure can cascade through the system. The danger that one party can’t hold up its end of the deal is known as counterparty risk. It means even if positions are netted, every trade adds risk unless it’s fully backed by collateral, said Marti Subrahmanyam, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from CCTV -- "I don't think it's a surprise, but it seems like the Fed is trying to reassure the market that nothing radical is going to happen quickly, but at the same time be firm that there is going to be a change. My feeling about this is that this change, this increase in interest rates, is going to happen faster rather than later... I would expect it to happen in the first few months of 2015, but of course people can disagree on that, and it remains to be seen."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "According to the study, commuters purchased 2.1% of the deals when the train was at two people per square meter, for example, versus 4.3% at five people per square meter. A stuffy train, the study concludes, can effectively send commuters into the hands of brands.'This was the mechanism to cope with the loss of personal space in a crowded situation,' said Anindya Ghose, co-director of Stern’s Center for Business Analytics and co-author of the paper. 'Commuters essentially escape from all of this by going to the personal mobile space.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "Here is a very thoughtful Aswath Damodaran post on the value to shareholders of corporate governance, reviewing both the theory and the evidence: 'Proponents of stronger corporate governance argue that it critical to corporate performance, but the evidence of the link between the two is not very strong.'"