Business & Entrepreneurship

Experts from the St. Louis Federal Reserve and around the country will be on the Washington University campus Friday, Feb. 5, to discuss the Federal Reserve’s role during the recent recession and future directions for policy. The free public conference, “Monetary Policy Amid Economic Turbulence,” begins at 2:30 p.m. in the Bryan Cave Moot Court Room, Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Don’t be fooled by a company’s recent attempt to market smokeless tobacco as “harmless,” says Douglas Luke, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Tobacco Policy Research at the Brown School. “Part of what we’re seeing here is the tobacco industry trying to position smokeless tobacco products so that they either do not come under the new Food and Drug Administration regulations or they come under weaker regulations,” Luke says.

“High-quality research is the lifeblood of a great research university,” says Olin Business School Dean Mahendra Gupta.  It’s also how faculty create knowledge, inspire their students and transform business.  Abstracts and links to the lastest research from Olin’s faculty have just been published.

Dancing classrooms, online philanthropy, a resale shop, produce market and programs to empower youth are among the projects in the final round of this year’s social entrepreneurship competition.  The YouthBridge SEIC competition will award $155,000 in April to the business plans with the most promise and solutions to help resolve social issues. 

Entrepreneurs with business plans to make the world a better place will have 90 seconds to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at 6 p.m. tonight in the next-to-final round of the annual YouthBridge SEIC (Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Competition) in May Auditorium, Simon Hall, on the Danforth Campus.

C.J. Larkin, J.D., senior lecturer and administrative director of the School of Law’s Dispute Resolution Program, and several law students were instrumental in helping a team-oriented mediation address issues of perceived citizen disenfranchisement in Kirkwood, Mo.

WUSTL faculty from law and political science were quick to offer opinions to the news media about implications of a controversial Jan. 21 ruling by the The U.S. Supreme Court that will allow corporations and unions to spend freely in elections, a decision many expect to shift the balance of political power.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn campaign spending limits for corporations “strikes a serious blow against efforts to stem the dominance of corporations in our political process,” says Gregory  P. Magarian, J.D., constitutional and election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.  “The Court overruled a longstanding decision that had struck a sensible, carefully drawn balance between the self-interest of corporations and interests of integrity and fairness in the political process.“

Banks and borrowers went on a leveraged consumption binge that led to the financial crisis in 2008 according to Anjan Thakor. And the entire economy is still feeling the hangover pain from the credit-fueled party that caused bank failures and forced foreclosures across the country. Thakor’s new research examines the cycles of leveraged borrowing by banks and consumers as a possible cause of the crisis. His new theory of ‘infectious leverage’ could help prevent future financial meltdowns.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke coined the phrase “the Great Moderation” back in 2004 to refer to the relative stability of the U.S. economy over the previous two decades. Many believe “The Great Recession” of the past two years has jolted the economy out of its moderate mode and back into a state of high volatility. Washington University in St. Louis economist James Morley disagrees. He argues the Great Moderation is alive and well and will help the economy recovery from this latest financial shock.