Knowledge at Wharton

After years of declining market share and unprofitability -- and a multi-million dollar bailout by the United States government -- General Motors is once again a publicly held company. The automaker which raised some $20 billion through last week’s initial public offering is on sounder footing than it has been in years. Yet the new GM still must compete in a tough global market. So the question remains: Can the new GM perform better than the old GM? Knowledge at Wharton posed this question and others to Wharton management professor John Paul MacDuffie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Africa today contributes barely 1.5% to world trade but its future is brighter than that number might suggest. The continent has a growing middle class institutions that are investing heavily in infrastructure and in another decade it will emerge as a market of one billion consumers. Elkanah Odembo Kenya’s ambassador to the U.S. visited Wharton recently and spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about the potential rewards and risks of investing in Africa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conventional wisdom tells us that leaders are the men and women who stand up speak out give orders make plans and are generally the most dominant outgoing people in a group. But that is not always the case according to new research on leadership and group dynamics from Wharton management professor Adam Grant and two colleagues who challenge the assumption that the most effective leaders are extraverts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the dust settles on the U.S.’s midterm elections questions abound about where the country’s international trade and economic policies go from here. As it stands the U.S. is squarely ”at a disadvantage” with countries like China argues economist Clyde Prestowitz a former trade negotiator and author of The Betrayal of American Prosperity. Wharton management professor Stephen J. Kobrin and Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Prestowitz about the elections and beyond how the U.S.’s economic leadership is being undermined whether China’s development is a threat or an opportunity and what options President Obama has to take global economies off the path of ”mutually assured destruction.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the U.S. infrastructure is usually silent and forgotten -- until the power goes off the ATM stops working or a neighborhood is consumed by fire. In September a 54-year-old gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno Calif. killing eight people and damaging more than 50 homes. Seven weeks earlier an oil pipeline rupture in Michigan spilled more than a million gallons of crude. According to experts the country’s infrastructure is a huge market that holds tremendous business opportunities but the bulk of entrepreneurs and investors still wait on the sidelines because the projects are costly complicated and often risky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Groupon -- from the words ”group” and ”coupon” -- negotiates deeply discounted deals with businesses and alerts its legion of e-mail subscribers to the offer. Since its founding in 2008 Groupon has amassed 25 million subscribers in 29 countries and a host of competing sites have crowded the market hoping to tap into the potential of ”social” commerce. But are group buying sites just a passing fancy? And what should they do to stand out from the pack and achieve long-term sustainability? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The U.S. housing market has been wobbly for several years but it has shown some signs of perking up in recent months. The latest reports however indicate a setback with median home prices dropping slightly and sales well below the already depressed levels of 2009. Yet a combination of low mortgage rates and apparent home-price bargains should still be drawing some buyers into the market. Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Wharton real estate professor Susan M. Wachter about the housing market’s slow recovery the prospect of another sharp dip in prices the effect of foreclosures on the economy and what it will take to get the market back on track. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Members of Generation Y -- a group of approximately 70 million young people between the ages of 15 and 30 -- are starting their careers in perhaps the worst job market since the Great Depression. Experts say the experience creates both immediate and long-term negative impacts including lower salaries now and in the future. And while their reduced spending power is not expected to have a lasting drag on the U.S. economy it does have significant repercussions for how these young people conduct their adult lives and careers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Using tax credits low-interest loans and grants the Obama Administration reportedly plans to invest more than $50 billion in electric vehicles renewable energy and a host of other clean technology -- or ”cleantech” -- ventures by the end of next year. But to what extent is today’s fast-paced investment in cleantech a victim of irrational exuberance and the herd mentality often associated with venture capitalism? Quite a lot say experts at Wharton and in the larger investment community. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

France expels Roma Gypsies; a prominent German economist says migrants are destroying the country; a far-right party with an anti-immigration platform wins its first parliamentary seats in Sweden. Few countries in Europe have escaped the recent heated debates about immigration within their borders. Against this backdrop a growing body of research is helping Europeans understand whether and under what conditions immigration is economically and socially beneficial. As one Wharton expert notes ”It’s not a zero-sum game.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.