Experience Stern | News & Events

Dean Peter Henry and the Center for Business and Human Rights welcomed representatives from manufacturing, workers’ organizations and the governments of the United States and Bangladesh for the Conference on Bangladesh Workplace Safety, held at NYU Stern on September 9-11. This forum marked the Center’s inaugural event.

Excerpt from BBC -- "The number one lesson we learned from the current environment is we're still deeply interconnected. So what happens to the United States still matters greatly for what happens in the rest of the world, emerging economies in particular, as we see this question about when tapering will begin, if it will begin, what impact that's going to have, and we're seeing it have an effect already on currencies and capital flows."

Excerpt from Metro -- "It may not sound glamorous, but supply-chain management has emerged as one of the fastest growing – and consequently lucrative – MBA specializations in recent years, with increased public scrutiny in the social media age as well the (still) growing complexity of global business meaning that it’s essential to get it right. Among other things, NYU Stern’s specialization looks at global outsourcing strategy, business process design and implementation, and building and managing customer relationships."

Excerpt from Strategy + Business -- "I describe rivalry as a double-edged sword. One benefit that I’m investigating may be that when organizations have fierce rivals, the individuals in those organizations may be more committed and more loyal to each other. The presence of a constant rival in their minds may foster greater in-group cohesion. Other benefits include increased motivation and performance. For example, when runners competed against a rival (as opposed to against their other competitors), they ran an average of 5 seconds per kilometer faster in a race. And when we asked individuals to think about personal rivals for just a few minutes, they exhibited increased motivation and persistence on a subsequent task."

Excerpt from MSNBC -- "Fear is an immediate motivator and I think it's therefore an especially powerful tool in marketing for good and for bad...One of the big keys is if people are feeling fearful that you also give them a tool or tools to deal with that fear and you give them a sense of control...so they actually manage the fear and overcome it. Even if the chance of something bad happening is small, we want to know that it's something we don't have to worry about."

Excerpt from Business Insider -- "More information is not necessarily better information. That's the conclusion from an October 2012 New York Federal Reserve study flagged Sunday by Chris Dixon. In 'Have Financial Markets Become More Informative?', Jennie Bai, Thomas Philippon, and Alexi Savov argue that over the past 50 years, markets have not grown more efficient about how to allocate capital, at least via stocks."

Excerpt from CNN -- "The fact that we're here right now is probably evidence that this is a victory for Kenneth Cole. Whether or not this is offensive or across the line is a topic of debate. But to a certain extent, this is a victory that has caused attention and Kenneth Cole is now a big part of today's media lineup. And I think at the end of the day, I think that's a victory for him and the brand."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "On Tesla itself, I think there's been a lot of good news about the company, but it's still a small company. 1.3 billion in revenues. It's losing money. And even with an optimistic view of the future, if you think of it as an automobile company, I find it difficult to get to the $20 billion that you get as a market cap for the company right now. If you allow the revenues to go from where they are now to Audi levels, $65 billion, and the margins to improve to Porsche level margins, they are among the highest in the auto sector, you still end up with a value of about $8 billion, $9 billion, $10 billion for the company. If you want to stretch to $20 billion, you've got to give me a really good narrative as to what's going to be different about the future for this company."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "The European Central Bank will be 'tough' in the upcoming asset quality review and stress tests of the European banking sector, New York University professor Nouriel Roubini said Friday. 'I think they will be tough as they want to build a reputation' ahead of taking over the supervision of larger European banks, Mr. Roubini told reporters at a conference here. He added that he thinks the ECB's reviews will find that several Italian banks are undecapitalized, including some of the largest of the country."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "There is an economic recovery but in my view it's very fragile. GDP growth in the third quarter might be barely 2%. In the second quarter, excluding inventories, it was less than 2%. There is an improvement in the labor market, but in part it's due to a fall in the labor force participation rate."

Excerpt from the Jamaica Observer -- "Henry is the Dean of New York University's Stern School of Business and also a former Professor of International Economics at Stanford University. He is the author of the thought-provoking book Turn-Around: Third World Lessons for First World Growth, in which he posits that the secret to emerging countries' success is discipline -- sustained commitment to a pragmatic growth strategy. ... At the forum, Henry will share his thoughts on how the policy pendulum now swings toward prudence and self-control in much of the emerging world."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "'Many companies are repeating some of the mistakes of the past,' by taking on too much debt, said Edward Altman, a New York University business school professor and the creator of a well-known tool for measuring corporate health, called the Z-score. Mr. Altman said his latest forecast, which measures the probability of corporate defaults, showed overall corporate health was 'no better than it was in 2007 and by some measures worse.' The median scores, which measure corporate financial health by analyzing a combination of liquidity, earnings, solvency and stock market valuations, were 4% lower for companies rated 'junk' in 2012 than in 2007."

Excerpt from The Globe and Mail -- "A study some years ago by David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that most people, regardless of their level of competence with a skill, perceive themselves to be better than average. And it gets worse. This concept doesn’t include those people who boast about their impressive writing skills but are in fact downright terrible writers. These folks may be suffering from 'Dunning-Kruger effect.' The same study found those who are the least skilled tend to rate their abilities higher than others. The worse they were the better they thought they were."

Excerpt from Forbes -- "Evolution is all about competition, and the dramatic effects that competition has on the structure and behavior of organisms over time. But here’s the key idea: competition occurs at multiple levels simultaneously, and the winner at any one level generally succeeds by suppressing destructive forms of competition at the level below."

Excerpt from Marketplace -- "The traditional runway show may not be cost effective for many designers who can’t afford not to turn it into a branding event, according Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. 'I think brands have realized that and are trying to figure out a way to spread some of that fabulous across their customer base via social media,' Galloway says."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- “'You can accuse me of being too pessimistic in my assumptions, but the narrative that underlies my valuation is an optimistic one,' Mr. Damodaran said in a blog post summarizing his findings. 'I am assuming that Tesla will grow to be as large as Audi, while delivering operating margins closer to Porsche’s. Even with these assumptions, I cannot see a rationale for buying the company at today’s market price, but that is just my personal judgment.'”

Excerpt from Economic Times -- "Raghuram Rajan is first and foremost a sharp observer of economies. Raghu's interests and understanding of global finance extend beyond his immediate research focus, which is on banking and corporate finance. In particular, Raghu has always been interested in the growth of economies and the institutional and political features governing law and policymaking that lead to or preclude such growth. What is perhaps Raghu's forte is connecting dots in a manner that reflects unusual depth and common sense."

Excerpt from Treasury & Risk -- “'It’s my experience that failure prediction models have done fairly poorly when it comes to financial institutions,' Altman said. 'It always seems that the latest banking crisis is caused by something fairly unique to the current situation and not necessarily correlated with prior bank crises.'”

Excerpt from TheStreet.com -- "'The possibility of truly privatizing them isn't there,' says Lawrence White, professor of economics at NYU's Stern School of Business and author of Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance. Fannie and Freddie were once credible institutions with great human capital but all of that has gone now, he says. That ship has sailed. The blow to their reputations has been too great for either [agency] to exist as their former selves."

Excerpt from CNBC -- "...Power Pitch panelist Luke Williams, Executive Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at NYU Stern Business School, was concerned about the startup's competition. 'I'm not sure if this is an app that other people can easily do...I'm not sure if the system that's behind this is actually making it all work and making it differentiate on the market.'"

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Yakov Amihud, a finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says, 'When market liquidity is expected to be lower than normal, expected return should be higher than normal. This may apply for Rosh Hashana.'”

Exerpt from LiveMint -- "At the V-Lab in New York University’s Stern Business School, we estimate the capital needs of banks in future stress. We use market data to assess the downside risk of banks and assess their gearing in a stress scenario by comparing their book liabilities to market value of equity after taking account of the downside risk. Our estimates suggest that in the event of a minus 40% correction to the global market over a six-month period, as seen in the Great Depression and the Great Recession, publicly traded Indian banks and financial firms will require over $80 billion of equity capital to maintain a market equity ratio of 8% relative to their assets."

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "The thing I’m watching for, or I think the most interesting event is Apple’s launch of a discount phone – the 5C. They’ve effectively been relegated to the high-end market. Apple became the largest market cap company on the backs of one unbelievable phenomena. They became the low-cost producer at the premium price; the biggest market share, lowest price. That would be like if Ferrari had the market share of Toyota – that’s a very powerful cocktail…"

Excerpt from Bloomberg TV -- "They registered pretty substantial market share gains, Microsoft Windows phones this quarter. That's the good news. The bad news is the number 4. That's their market share. So it's 80 - 14 - 4. Android, iOS and then Microsoft Windows-powered phones. But they do have a foothold in the market now."

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "In a paper to be published in Psychological Science, we propose that another way to influence people's behavior towards protecting the environment is to emphasize the long life expectancy of a nation, rather than its imminent downfall. ... If people perceive their country or planet's remaining time to be very short, then they rationally shouldn't place too much importance on making these present-day sacrifices. But if a long future is seen, sacrifices today for a brighter tomorrow for ourselves and our offspring make more sense."