Friday, January 10

BUSINESS

For Investing More In Health Care During The Pandemic – Credit Ratings Are Punishing Poorer Countries
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BUSINESS, HEALTH & WELLNESS

For Investing More In Health Care During The Pandemic – Credit Ratings Are Punishing Poorer Countries

Ramya Vijaya, Stockton University Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic depends on sustained investment in health care and social services. But while rich countries like the U.S. can borrow and spend relatively easily, low-income nations face a major obstacle: their credit ratings. A credit rating, like a credit score, is an assessment of the ability of a borrower – whether it’s a company or a government – to repay its debts. Lower credit ratings drive up the cost of borrowing. This threat prompted some poorer countries to avoid tapping investors for vital financing during the pandemic, while other governments that made plans to spend more on public services were hit with credit ratings downgrades from private companies. My forthcoming research shows that when credit ratings fal...
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When Boards Are Deciding What To Pay Nonprofit CEOs Keeping Them Out Of The Room Yields Good Results
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BUSINESS

When Boards Are Deciding What To Pay Nonprofit CEOs Keeping Them Out Of The Room Yields Good Results

Ilona Babenko, Arizona State University The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Keeping nonprofit chief executive officers out of meetings when members of their boards discuss or vote on compensation can lead to these CEOs making less money and working harder. This is a key finding from a study of nonprofit pay I recently completed with two fellow finance scholars, Benjamin Bennett and Rik Sen. We reached this conclusion after reviewing data for more than 14,700 nonprofits across the country from paperwork most nonprofits must file with the Internal Revenue Service every year, known as Form 990, and the associated Schedule J, which includes compensation. We zeroed in on 1,698 nonprofits located in New York to see if their CEO pay changed after ne...
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For Decades The Government Has Fallen Short On Contracts With Woman-Owned Businesses
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BUSINESS

For Decades The Government Has Fallen Short On Contracts With Woman-Owned Businesses

Historic barriers have blocked women-owned small businesses from winning federal contracts, according to a new report. Chabeli Carrazana Originally published by The 19th Nearly three decades ago, the Small Business Administration set a goal of granting 5 percent of federal contracts to women-owned small businesses. It has only met that goal twice, in 2015 and 2019, according to a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center and Goldman Sachs. Survey data shared exclusively with The 19th by Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses Voices program, which helps advocate for small business owners, found a widening gender gap for contracts at the federal level that shows how women-owned small businesses have been shut out from the largest contracts. At the local level, women- and men-owned s...
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How The Act Of Speculating Became A Financial Mania – From Tulips And Scrips To Bitcoin And Meme Stocks
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BUSINESS

How The Act Of Speculating Became A Financial Mania – From Tulips And Scrips To Bitcoin And Meme Stocks

In the late 1990s, America experienced a dot-com mania. In the 2000s, the housing market went wild. Today, there are manias in everything from bitcoin and nonfungible tokens to SPACs and meme stocks – obscure corners of the market that are getting increased attention. Whether these are the next bubbles to burst remains to be seen. The sudden rise of all these relatively new asset classes – or the astronomical heights they’ve reached – may seem irrational or even enchanted. Describing them as speculative manias implies that individuals are lost in forces beyond their control and needn’t take responsibility for the actions of the crowd. But, as I learned while researching my book “Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI,” which will be published in June 2021, financial specul...
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Canada’s Cannabis Clarity, What The United States Can Learn
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BUSINESS, VIDEO REELS

Canada’s Cannabis Clarity, What The United States Can Learn

The inherent contradictions of American cannabis laws seem to appear in the news almost every week. At the state level, for example, Virginia recently became the latest jurisdiction to allow adult cannabis use, effective this July 1. But just days later, a court upheld United States federal tax laws that treat state-licensed cannabis businesses as illegal drug traffickers. To resolve conflicts like this, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he’ll introduce legislation to “decriminalize” cannabis federally. In drafting his bill, he should draw inspiration from Canada. Congress might be too divided for full legalization this year, but it can begin providing the clarity that Canada’s approach offers. U.S. contradictions Congressional action is clearly needed, as federal law has f...
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Politically Conservative Airbnb Hosts, Uber Drivers And Waiters Get Slightly Higher Ratings And Tips
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BUSINESS, IN OTHER NEWS

Politically Conservative Airbnb Hosts, Uber Drivers And Waiters Get Slightly Higher Ratings And Tips

BUSINESS   The big idea Customers give higher ratings and tips to politically conservative Airbnb hosts, Uber drivers and waiters than to ones with more liberal leanings, according to new peer-reviewed research I co-authored. That’s despite evidence we found that consumers may actually expect the opposite. To reach the first conclusion, a colleague and I conducted four different studies. The first involved poring over about 50,000 Airbnb listings in 16 U.S. cities. We examined average ratings and compared them with the percentage of Republican voters in the city, based on recent elections. We found that Airbnb hosts in cities with a greater share of Republican voters tended to have higher ratings. Specifically, an increase of one percentage point in a city’s proportion of Republican...
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For Recent Grads Student Loan Debt Is Costing Much More Than Just Money
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BUSINESS, IN OTHER NEWS

For Recent Grads Student Loan Debt Is Costing Much More Than Just Money

President Joe Biden promised to forgive up to US$10,000 in student loan debt during his 2020 campaign. Now, a few months into his presidency, over 415 organizations have urged him to use his executive authority to cancel all federal student loan debt. We assembled a panel of academics to talk about the effects student loans have on recent graduates. How much student loan debt is too much? Kate Padgett-Walsh, associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University Student debt is too much when it threatens the physical and mental health of young borrowers. Today’s college graduates now finish school with almost $30,000 in student loan debt, on average, an increase of over 300% from 1970 after adjusting for inflation. Research shows that the burden of this debt causes poorer mental heal...
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Not Humiliating Poor People – An Advantage Of The Government’s New Payments For Families
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BUSINESS, POLITICS

Not Humiliating Poor People – An Advantage Of The Government’s New Payments For Families

The US$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package President Joe Biden signed in March 2021 will expand the child tax credit for one year. Instead of providing families with up to $2,000 per child under 17, the government will distribute a total of $3,600 for each child under 6 and $3,000 for kids under 18. Some economists predict that these payments, which will go to all but the wealthiest parents in two ways – monthly starting in July 2021 and as a lump sum when parents file their taxes in 2022 – could cut U.S. child poverty by nearly 50%. Today, about 1 in 7 U.S. children live below the official poverty line. I’m a law professor who researches the often-humiliating and punitive hurdles that poor families face when they apply for some government benefits. From my perspective, this new appr...
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The US Isn’t Prepared To Counter Russia Competition As It Heats Up In The Melting Arctic
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BUSINESS

The US Isn’t Prepared To Counter Russia Competition As It Heats Up In The Melting Arctic

For decades, the frozen Arctic was little more than a footnote in global economic competition, but that’s changing as its ice melts with the warming climate. Russia is now attempting to claim more of the Arctic seabed for its territory. It has been rebuilding Cold War-era Arctic military bases and recently announced plans to test its Poseidon nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed torpedo in the Arctic. In Greenland, the recent election ushered in a new pro-independence government that opposes foreign rare earth metal mining as its ice sheet recedes – including projects counted on by China and the U.S. to power technology. The Arctic region has been warming at least twice as fast as the planet as a whole. With the sea ice now thinner and disappearing sooner in the spring, several countries have ...
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