Experience Stern | News & Events

There are more than 7,000 garment factories in Bangladesh producing for the global fashion industry, 65% more than previous estimates. More than half of these factories are small and medium-sized indirect sourcing factories, meaning their workers produce for foreign brands through other, larger factories. These factories operate in the shadows. The result is that millions of workers in subcontracting factories fall outside the protection of international safety-improvement initiatives, and are especially vulnerable in a country where unsafe working conditions are a chronic problem. While global brands, governments in North America and Europe, and international lenders have announced commitments of more than US$280 million for the garment sector in Bangladesh, to date, only a handful of factories have been fixed.

Excerpt from Commercial Observer -- "'The U.S. real estate investment is a rainy-day fund and hedge against both risks about the Chinese market slowdown but also uncertainty about fears of being swept up in the anti-corruption campaign,' said Joseph Foudy, an economics professor at New York University. 'Keeping a percentage of their net worth outside the country and safe is more important than a particular financial return on their real estate investment.'"

Excerpt from Inc. -- "And small businesses could feel the pain more acutely if interest rates go up too rapidly, says Thomas Cooley, professor of economics and former dean of the New York University Stern School of Business. 'A lot of new jobs are generated by small and mid-sized businesses, and if the interest rate increases dramatically, it could slow investment to this sector,' Cooley says, adding that the increase in interest rates is also likely to further strengthen the dollar. That in turn could hurt exports."

Excerpt from WIRED -- "The Copyright Royalty Board is supposed to set fair rates that reflect songs’ hypothetical market value if a truly open marketplace existed. 'The numbers they have chosen in the past have been wildly controversial, but in a world of zero marginal costs, it is difficult to set rates that make obvious sense,' says William Greene, a New York University professor, who researches the economics of the entertainment and media industry. 'The CRB is casting about for a set of numbers that cause as little disruption as possible.'"

Excerpt from WalletHub -- "While I think that there are reasons to be optimistic about technological innovation that will drive growth in the U.S., these gains will be modest for the time being. As for underlying problems, although there are a couple areas of disquietude, they do not seem large enough to trigger a downturn in the near future. External factors are a significant source of uncertainty for the U.S. in the coming year, the greatest of which is the risk of a bigger slowdown in the Chinese economy. While I think the chances of this are high and that it would have a significant impact on the U.S., that impact would contain offsetting features."

Excerpt from Reuters -- "'It is a market that is a regulatory thicket designed to protect the taxicab business,' said Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business."

Excerpt from Diario Del Puerto -- "... the Indian economist Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University and at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, ​​has provided information that would show that only 2% of all phone calls in the world are international; only 9% of investments are global; only 15% of all Facebook friends are foreigners; less than 20% of data traffic on the Internet is between different countries and exports account for only 20% of world GDP. ... According Ghemawat, the pace of globalization is not as fast and the overall level of global connectivity has not yet returned to its historical high of 2007."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "I think part of the reason we use forecasts [is that] it makes us feel better. I think that's basically it. It's like comfort food. You know it doesn't work, but you still listen to it. It's great storytelling."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "One of the dilemmas that the Fed is facing right now is that there is a bit of an asymmetry. Suppose that they move too fast, too soon. Then the economy could be stalling, maybe because of external shock... and then going back to conventional monetary policy is a mistake. Suppose they were a bit more cautious and you start later and more slowly. If the economy is too strong and inflation picks up, you ... can tighten a little bit faster. So this asymmetry between the risk of moving too soon or too late suggests that, actually, you want to be cautious."

Excerpt from TheStreet.com -- "For GOP candidates, the Fed will likely be more important as a talking point than anything else. History has shown that while Republicans may like to talk a big game on Fed oversight, they haven't been overly eager to act in the Oval Office. Under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, 'I don't think we see a lot of big change with respect to the Federal Reserve,' said White."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "'Suppose that you are a bit more cautious and you start moving slowly and the economy becomes too strong and inflation picks up, you’ll be behind the curve but still you can tighten a bit faster,' he said in an interview in Dubai. The dilemma facing the Fed is that 'labor market data suggest it’s time to start hiking, but there is no sign of inflation in the economy,' Roubini said."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "'If we keep inflation under control, maybe we’ll enter a period like the ’50s,' said Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University and co-author of 'A History of Interest Rates.' 'Those were normal rates, and they were accompanied by a slight amount of inflation, 1 or 2 percent. That worried people then, where now it’s a target to be reached.'"

Excerpt from CNBC -- "Certainly, defaults on high-yield bonds have been rising. The trailing 12-month default rate on high-yield bonds was 2.3 percent in the third quarter, up from 1.97 percent as of the middle of the year, according to the NYU Stern Salomon Center for the Study of Financial Institutions, which expects the rate as of Sept. 30, 2016, to reach 4.3 percent."

Excerpt from CoinDesk -- "Authored by New York University (NYU) professor David Yermack, the second working paper by the US non-profit explores how the widespread adoption of distributed ledgers could impact investors, shareholders, auditors and other participants in corporate governance. Citing recent proofs-of-concept at major stock exchanges, the NBER paper explores a future where blockchains are used to record equities in corporations, providing real-time insight into corporate share transfers."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "'If we keep inflation under control, maybe we’ll enter a period like the ’50s,' said Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University and co-author of 'A History of Interest Rates.' 'Those were normal rates, and they were accompanied by a slight amount of inflation, 1 or 2 percent. That worried people then, where now it’s a target to be reached.'"

Excerpt from Marketplace -- "[Junk bonds is] such a negative term, junk, and in some ways misleading, said Edward Altman, a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. 'We’ve got junk mail, junk food, junk yards,' Altman said, but many companies that issue high-yield debt are growing and adding jobs, 'And, indeed, this is a very good way for them to raise capital, especially, of late, in the low interest rate environment.'"

Excerpt from The New Yorker -- "Faced with a string of these superficial decisions, many people become introspective. They begin to question whether their lives are meaningful. At the same time, they sense that meaningfulness comes from the margins of human experience—that it flowers during times of great joy, pain, frustration, or hardship. For this reason, even those who are privileged feel compelled to court new challenges. Some of us decide on a month without alcohol, or undertake an act of charity, or set out on a ten-kilometer run. Ashprihanal Aalto, Trishul Cherns, and Michael Bielik pursue meaningfulness in a different way: by running, running, and running some more."

Excerpt from WNYC -- "In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the industry-backed repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a 1930s law which barred overlap between commercial and investment banks. After that repeal, Sylla said, the phrase-du-jour was 'financial innovation.' 'We were in an era of de-regulation,' Sylla told me. 'There was a notion that the 1930s had regulated us too much and therefore the solution was to deregulate.'"

Excerpt from Forbes -- "Over the past few years, the trend that started with Paris-based Ladurée and Pierre Hermé innovating with an unprecedented range of exotic macaron cookies and fillings, has escalated geometrically to include new innovators who are 'blowing out' other traditional sweet categories in previously unimaginable flavors, designs, colors, and textures. Many of these pioneers already have beautiful cookbooks. Paris food retail is getting more and more specialized, and customers are making the effort to travel considerable distances and happy to wait in line to buy a single-type of product, as long as it’s the best of it’s kind and there’s a 'wow' factor and sense of discovery. Here are 7 of the best sweet category dedicated shops, with an eighth example in the condiment category: French mustard."

Excerpt from Reuters -- "Beyond featuring women, the company appears to be tailoring some of its messages to females, said Alvin Lieberman, a marketing professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. In a four-minute comedy sketch on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live,' Harrison Ford and Chewbacca resolved a purported feud with an endearing, hug-it-out moment. 'That is not what your high-adrenaline, action-oriented male population is looking to see,' Lieberman said of the video, which has been viewed more than 1.1 million times on YouTube. 'It sells the characters.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "We are expecting a lot of volatility this week, but in fact we saw it last week, I think. In the run up to the Fed's decision, I think a lot of pressures that were already building in the high-yield bond market really came to a head on Friday, and we had a pretty big bloodbath ..."

Fifteen members of the NYU alumni community were among the nominees in nine categories when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced its nominations for the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards on December 10, 2016. All nominees heralded from the Tisch School of the Arts with the exception of Aziz Ansari, an alumnus of the Stern School of Business.

Excerpt from BusinessBecause -- "'It is not just about cutting direct costs,' says Professor Anindya Ghose, director of NYU Stern’s Center for Business Analytics. 'It is about identifying high-performing employees, predicting their next performance milestone, and carving out their trajectories and rewarding them.'"

Excerpt from Fortune -- "Network neutrality has contributed very significantly to the fast and vigorous growth of the high technology sector in the US while ensuring a level playing field in competition. Hopefully the rules will be upheld by the Court of Appeals."

Excerpt from PBS NewsHour -- "Haidt convened a group of policy people from across the political spectrum to talk about issues of concern to each side, and discovered that one issue everyone really cared about was poverty. The group worked together for more than a year to produce a report, released last week, entitled Opportunity, Responsibility and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream."