Experience Stern | News & Events

Excerpt from Financial News -- "Getting rid of the troublesome investment banks leaves the parents with much diminished scale and more limited aspirations, but the parents would be able to concentrate on their commercial and retail businesses and have a chance to improve their stock prices considerably, as UBS has done, while greatly easing the minds of their regulators."

Excert from The Wall Street Journal -- "The ratio can be calculated by dividing operating income—typically defined as earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT—by its interest expense. ... 'If your coverage ratio is 1, then you have no cushion,' says Dan Gode, accounting professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. Simply: When a company’s operating earnings are equal to its borrowing costs (giving it a coverage ratio of 1.0), there is no margin for error. If the business meets a rough patch and earnings drop, then the company might not be able to pay the interest on its loans. 'If the ratio is north of 3 or 4, then you have some cushion,' Prof. Gode adds."

Excerpt from Fortune -- "Focusing on too narrow of an audience reduces its potential as a form of entertainment. Conversely, acknowledging women as part a financially viable part of the total gamer audience forces game companies to innovate their businesses."

Excerpt from Forbes -- "Insisting on clear prose analysis rather than hard numbers keeps you from sliding down the slope that Paul Romer, an economist at NYU, recently named ‘Mathiness’, i.e. economics masquerading as science through math. Avoiding the 'mathiness trap' will thereby make you more likely to examine the logic and assumptions underpinning the drivers and constraints that are driving the situation."

Excerpt from the Financial Times -- "In the US, economists John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist have found evidence that public companies invest substantially less and are less responsive to changes in investment opportunities, especially in industries where share prices are most sensitive to earnings news."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "'We’re at an incredible impasse,' said Luís Cabral, a Portuguese economist and professor at New York University. 'There are two different readings of this election, both legitimate, but with opposite prescriptions in terms of what should be done next.'"

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "Microsoft’s approach is both disturbing and admirable, he said. 'As citizens, we are getting the worst of both worlds, but under current tax laws and with interest rates as low as they are, the buybacks are very smart,' Mr. Damodaran said."

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "Rising prosperity can bring rising security, which causes changing values, which causes rising education - especially for women - which causes demographic transition, which causes shrinking population, which benefits our environment. It holds the potential to free us to find more meaning and flourishing."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "For legacy food companies to have any hope of survival, they will have to make bold changes in their core product offerings. Companies will have to drastically cut sugar; process less; go local and organic; use more fruits, vegetables and other whole foods; and develop fresh offerings."

Excerpt from LinkedIn -- "The Revolutionary Guard controls crucial sectors of Iran’s economy, and many of Iran’s largest companies are controlled by veterans of the group. The last thing they want is competition from international firms, especially American ones, over an Iranian market they’ve had cornered for nearly 30 years. Their other concern is upcoming parliamentary elections in February. The nuclear deal has given Rouhani’s approval ratings a huge lift, and has made Zarif a political superstar in the country."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "I worry a lot about the Chinese banks. ... The capital needs of Chinese state-owned banks have been increasing very steadily since the financial crisis. China is loaded with debt. It's being issued back and forth between the banks and state-owned enterprises and the municipal governments and many of these are not very credit worthy anymore. Yet everything is guaranteed by the government. So, the banks don't see it as a big risk, but the stock market doesn't see the banks as that good of an investment."

Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal -- "We acknowledge that U.S. economic performance is better than many other major developed economies. But we are unwilling to resort to a theory of 'secular stagnation' to rationalize modest economic performance and low investment. We suggest an alternative explanation that focuses on the interaction of the new conduct of monetary policy with the level and composition of aggregate demand. The importance of the policy issue demands a rigorous and open-minded discussion."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "The critical role of adaptation in responding to the realities of climate change demands a deeper analysis and more prominent discussion of the nature, effectiveness, timing and costs of various adaptation strategies. But whatever the outcome in Paris, or of future discussions of emissions and the climate, the reality is that humans must continue to adapt, as they always have."

Excerpt from eFinancialCareers -- "Roy Smith, a former Goldman MD and partner turned professor at the Leonard Stern School of Business, says there are around 2,000 MDs at Goldman out of 34,000 employees and they’re not all promoted as revenue generators. 'They are selected based on the contribution they make to the firm, which includes their contribution to profits, but also client relations, internal cooperation and teamwork, managerial activity and other qualities such as integrity, loyalty etc,' says Smith. 'They are subject to extensive 360 degree evaluation and checkings with seniors, contemporaries and subordinates. The effort, of course, is to select the best of the eligible year groups.'"

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "The baton has been passed from investment to consumption, according to Michael Spence, the Nobel laureate and economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. China’s household consumption is increasing to about 50 percent, and that’s supporting relatively high-speed growth, he said in a speech in Beijing on Wednesday."

Excerpt from The New York Times -- "One of the big trends in the United States is that firms are turning their backs on the stock market. That has a number of causes, but one of which I think is important is this notion of short-termism. This is the idea that managers feel pressured to change the way they run their firms when they go public."

Excerpt from Bloomberg -- "'It’s a validation that they can counter regulation that might be restrictive to their growth,' said Arun Sundararajan, professor at New York University’s business school who studies the sharing economy. 'Strategically, it’s a victory. Here’s a piece of regulation that wasn’t in Airbnb’s best interest and people have voted against it.'"

Excerpt from OZY -- "'It’s an uphill battle,' in general, says Anindya Ghose, professor at NYU Stern School of Business, but that’s because no one’s cornered mobile yet, not even Google. ... Ghose adds that whoever wins at mobile search could win the revenue game too: Mobile advertising has a long way to go, but when companies nail it — which he figures will come in the form of hyperlocal ads that offer you coupons based on where you are — they might nail the industry."

Excerpt from Luxury Daily -- "Mr. Alter identified five major external factors affecting consumer behavior: time, booms and busts, space, ego and hard times. Markets are attuned to the effect that time has on consumer behavior habits on a macro scale, gearing marketing differently toward people of different ages and interacting differently with long-time consumers compared to new ones. However, smaller factors, such as the second digit of a person’s age, are equally important."

Excerpt from Digiday -- "Adam Alter, a marketing and psychology professor at NYU Stern, said that customizable goods have the 'Ikea effect' — people are more attached to products they feel represent themselves. 'Anything that’s rare is going to be more popular,' said Alter. 'And when you make something yourself, you’re really going to love it.'"

Excerpt from CNBC -- "The one-child policy created several unintended consequences that have been distorting the Chinese economy. For example, China's limited social safety net meant that young Chinese face a lifetime of savings to care for themselves, their parents and their grandparents. And a Confucian preference for male offspring has led to a huge gender imbalance and a marriage market in which men and their families are in a financial savings arms race to attract a smaller potential pool of wives. As a consequence, China has one of the highest savings rates in the world, creating a massive over-investment headache."

Excerpt from Vox -- "Overall, our findings suggest that offering some basic level of copyright protection can increase both the quantity and quality of works that create revenue through repeat performances."

Excerpt from International Financial Law Review -- "'I don’t think a lot of mergers will be challenged in 2016. But in 2017 there’s going to be a new US administration, whether Republican or Democrat, and that may well lead to questions over whether there will be a new attitude to enforcement,' said Lawrence J White, professor of economics at NYU Stern. 'My prediction would be there will be more enforcement challenges in 2017,' White added."

Excerpt from The Huffington Post -- "... when the government considers the imposition of safety targets, it must estimate the cost and balance that against the prospective benefit. To do this, officials estimate the "economic value of a statistical life" by examining questions of the following form: How much would a typical person be willing to pay to eliminate a mortality risk that is 1 in 50,000? An answer of $200 implies that the expected value of reducing one fatality is $10 million. Consistent with estimates in academic studies, the Department of Transportation currently uses a value of $9.4 million."

Excerpt from Salon -- "I’ve looked at the analysis that the city of San Francisco and Airbnb did on its impact on short-term rental availability, and the conclusion I drew was that there are other factors – the growth of the population, the widespread prevalence of rent control – that have had far greater impact on the shortage of affordable rental housing than Airbnb."