Knowledge at Wharton

Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach recently worked with the Obama administration’s transition team on a review of the Federal Communications Commission and related technology and telecommunications issues. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton he says that advances in technology and the urgent need to restart the economy require the commission to rethink its role -- not just as a regulator but as an agency that creates jobs and encourages investment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Heartland Payment Systems a credit card processor may have had up to 100 million records exposed to malicious hackers. Payment processors CheckFree and RBS Worldpay and employment site Monster.com have all reported data breaches in recent months as have universities and government agencies. Experts at Wharton say that personal data is increasingly a liability for companies and suggest that part of the solution may be minimizing the customer information these companies keep. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

U.S. stocks raised eyebrows this week and last closing higher in six of seven trading days including four in a row from March 10 to 13. But how does the market look for the longer term? In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Wharton finance professor Jeremy J. Siegel says he was pleased to see consecutive gains after so many declines. He adds that history provides lots of evidence that stocks remain good long-term investments especially when they are down 50% from their peak. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The hedge fund industry’s long history of avoiding tougher regulation may be coming to an end as the Obama administration and Congress look for ways to avoid another financial meltdown. Although it is not clear that hedge funds actually played much of a role in the current crisis the industry’s sagging performance combined with investors’ and regulators’ heightened demand for transparency will likely cause big changes in the way these secretive investment pools operate according to several Wharton faculty members. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giving products away -- think Adobe Reader or access to online news -- has become a legitimate business model on the Internet and even beyond. Once companies accept that price need not be tied to the cost of production and begin thinking creatively new possibilities emerge -- even for offline products according to Wharton faculty and others. Welcome to the world of ”freeconomics.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The world financial crisis is unraveling the gains made by many Central and Eastern European economies during their post-Cold War resurgence. With the region no longer isolated an economic collapse could reverberate in the West as Central and Eastern European borrowers default on an enormous volume of loans that Western banks were all too eager to grant just a few years ago. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Getting customers to spread the word about a new product through their social or professional networks is a hot strategy in the marketing world. But how do companies find the right individuals to deliver the message? New research by Wharton marketing professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe Van den Bulte finds that traditional targets may not be so influential. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite evidence that ambitious goal setting can hurt productivity damage a company’s reputation and violate ethical standards its use has become endemic in American business practice and scholarship even spilling over to the debate on how to improve America’s public schools. A new paper by Wharton operations and information management professor Maurice E. Schweitzer and three co-authors documents the hazards of corporate goal setting and concludes that it is overprescribed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nine months ago a group of Wharton students launched an online site called Givology.org whose purpose is to raise money for scholarships and education projects in the developing world. Givology’s vision according to chief development officer Catherine Gao is that of a global community of individuals connected through their belief in the power of education to change people’s lives. The group which so far has attracted more than 200 lenders has partnerships in China India Uganda Ecuador and Kenya. Gao and Maria Davydenko the site’s chief creative director spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about Givology and why they each donate more than 10 hours a week to this project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When governments around the world spend vast sums to stimulate their economies it seems only reasonable for each to invest at home. Why should the American taxpayer pay for steel from Canada when U.S. steelmakers are struggling? So it was hardly a surprise that the $787 billion stimulus plan just signed by President Barack Obama included protectionist language. But economists and political leaders in the U.S. Europe and elsewhere worry that such sentiments threaten free-trade principles that are crucial to any global economic recovery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.