Experience Stern | News & Events

As a part of the Conversations on Urbanization series held by the NYU Stern Urbanization Project, Economics Professor Paul Romer, Director of the Urbanization Project and the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management, spoke with Matthew Kahn, Visiting Professor at USC and author of Blue Skies over Beijing, in a public presentation on December 9. 

Excerpt from MBASchooled -- "There’s nothing more fascinating than sitting in a strategy class and having class discussions with consultants, bankers, techies, marketers, veterans, aspiring doctors, and an untold number of other experts. It really makes you think through business and organizational challenges in a way that you just cannot be exposed to without coming to a place like this."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund should be given the leeway to plow more money into real estate and further diversify its portfolio by investing a chunk of its $850 billion in infrastructure, a government-commissioned expert group said Tuesday. The fund, managed by Norway’s central bank and commonly referred to as the oil fund, should be allowed to invest up to 10% of its value in infrastructure and to raise its real-estate portfolio to 10% from a current ceiling of 5%, the group said in a report published Tuesday. The government 'should open up for unlisted infrastructure investment in the management mandate to Norges Bank to take advantage of investment opportunities unavailable in the listed space,' said the group, which was led by Prof. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh at New York University."

Excerpt from Council on Foreign Relations blog -- "No single actor can underwrite the significant costs of upgrading Bangladesh’s garment sector. Local and international participants should share the costs. Detroit provides a useful model, in which the public-private Blight Removal Taskforce successfully surveyed the city’s problem, developed a blueprint for addressing it, and raised public and private funds to meet the $800 million price tag of clearing blighted structures."

Excerpt from OZY -- "[Economides] believes Greece still has five to 10 years before it can 'convince the world that it is at a stage of recovery.' Meanwhile, having a market for their products is helping them cushion the blow dealt by the economic crisis while fueling Bulgaria’s sputtering economic growth."

Excerpt from Poets & Quants -- "A business degree is incredibly adaptable. It has helped me grow personally and intellectually as much as it prepared me for a career. The skills I learned – such as team management and professional presentation — are transferable to all aspects of my life as well as to any role I take on."

Excerpt from Poets & Quants -- "One day, I hope to be involved in a more entrepreneurial role by starting my own business or helping with the development of emerging companies."

The NYU Urban Seminar Series focuses on research with implications for urban policy.

Excerpt from LinkedIn -- "Just a few years ago, Best Buy looked like it was on its way to failure, especially as its competitor Circuit City filed for bankruptcy in 2008. The company has since turned itself around and is even considered an undervalued stock at times. A big part of the turnaround was due to CEO Hubert Joly’s 'Renew Blue' program, implemented three years ago. However, L2 data shows digital investment played a big role in preserving and improving the company’s value."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "In July, Eli Bartov, a professor at New York University Stern School of Business and two other researchers found that 'aggregate opinion' from tweets before earnings announcements could predict earnings surprises as well as market reactions for individual stocks, leading to outperformance of 5% to 10% per year."

Excerpt from The Washington Post -- "In an interview with OnLeadership, [Damodaran] calls Steve Jobs' revival at Apple something few would -- 'a great corporate tragedy' -- not because of what Apple achieved, but because of how it's been held up as a nearly impossible-to-reach model for other companies."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "We've had a lot of usury laws in history, and many people trace it back to Aristotle. You know, a very great philosopher, obviously. One of the greatest ever. But he has a curious idea that, I think the translation of the Greeks is: 'Money is barren.' Money doesn't by itself have any productivity. Therefore, interest rates should be zero. When you lend something to somebody, you should not charge them interest. And that was a view, I think, that was not widespread. But it was a philosophical view. Then it was picked up by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages and it became a part of Catholic teaching."

Excerpt from Forbes -- "Reverse mentoring can be a fun and enlightening experience for both parties. It frees Marketing execs of the embarrassment of looking and being out of date and out of touch, and importantly for the business, helps execs understand and adopt new approaches (assuming they’re better) more quickly. It’s a win/win way to infuse new perspectives in the organization."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "The junk-bond default rate rose to 2.6% from 2.1% this year and will likely jump to 4.3% in 2016, breaching the 30-year average of 3.8% for the first time since 2009, said New York University Finance Professor Edward Altman, inventor of the most commonly used default-prediction formula. ... 'In most high-default periods we’ve seen in the past, the rise in default rates precedes a recession,' said Mr. Altman, who has been studying the subject for more than 50 years."

Excerpt from The Washington Post -- "'Her speech there is the kind of thing she would talk about in class,' said Tom Pugel, an economics professor at New York University who took Yellen’s course in macroeconomics when he was a young doctoral student at Harvard University. 'You’re still seeing someone who comes at this from a professorial point of view.'"

Excerpt from International Business Times -- "'This time the FCC used like a bazooka, the most strong and wide-ranging section of the act, the Title II. It’s extremely unlikely that, on the same grounds [as 2014], it will be ruled against. I expect it will be upheld,' said Nicholas Economides, a professor of economics at NYU Stern School of Business who has defended the regulations on regulations before Congress in October."

Excerpt from Poets & Quants -- "'There’s what you learn and there’s what you take away from the program,' Long says. 'What I learned is a lot of powerful techniques in working with data and how to present it in a way that is meaningful for the business. What I took away from the program was not just that but really this new awareness of all of these topics to learn more about.' ... Stern was driven to add a master of science in accounting to respond to a need from both prospective students and employers. Members of the admissions team were constantly hearing from people who wanted an accounting MS that would give them the required educational preparation to become CPAs, says Isser Gallogly, assistant dean of MBA admissions at Stern, and head of admissions for the accounting program."

Excerpt from Engineering News-Record -- "The ENR Top 250 International Contractors survey provides an annual snapshot of the cross-border activities of the world’s largest contractors. Here, we take a longer perspective, using data from the 2005-15 surveys to analyze the globalization of the world’s largest contractors and identify actionable strategy implications."

Excerpt from Credit.com -- "'We find that regulatory limits on credit card fees reduced overall borrowing costs to consumers by an annualized 1.7% of average daily balances, with a decline of more than 5.5% for consumers with the lowest FICO scores,' the paper said."

Excerpt from Reuters -- "Despite promising in early 2013 to be a global service by 2014, the company has yet to open offices outside the United States. Lyft is currently in about 150 U.S. cities. 'I don't think Lyft wants to or can,' become a global ride service, said Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business. 'It is a company with much smaller ambitions.'"

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "An independent central bank is a device to overcome the problem of time consistency: the concern that policymakers will renege in the future on a policy promise made today. Keeping inflation low and stable requires a credible policy commitment to price stability that will, from time to time, be highly unpopular. When inflation rises, the central bank must promptly raise interest rates. And, should deflation threaten and the policy rate hit the zero bound, the central bank must respond by using its balance sheet flexibility. In this way, an independent central bank improves economic performance: it can achieve lower and more stable inflation rate without sacrificing long-run economic growth."

Building a World Changing Startup: A talk with Michael Baum, CEO of Founder.org

Excerpt from The Street.com -- "Enron's collapse was driven by governance weaknesses, auditing inefficiencies and accounting problems, and significant strides were made afterward in correcting the first two of those problems, said Baruch Lev. An accounting and finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, Lev testified before Congress after Enron's fall and has written five books including Winning Investors Over, published in 2012. 'Corporate boards are now more independent than they used to be, and they have committees that are completely composed of independent board members, like the audit committee,' he noted."

Excerpt from Salt Lake City Weekly -- "The study points out that Salt Lake City's lack of density is essentially the cause of lack of vibrancy. Downtown currently has an estimated population of just over 5,000 residents. But, according to the study, nearly 58,000 more residents would move downtown from nearby metro areas if it were feasible."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The coal mine of Yahoo has canaries dying everywhere. Everyone that has watched [Marissa Mayer's] tenure really closely, whether it's her senior managers, her colleagues, or the hedge fund guy who put her in the CEO spot, they've either sold all their shares and headed for the hills or they've left the company, and the numbers speak for themselves."