Business & Entrepreneurship

The U.S. Treasury Department has taken action to curb corporate tax inversions, making it more difficult to for U.S. companies to merge with international firms and move abroad to reduce their taxes. This move attempts to combat specific abuses within a flawed framework, according to an international tax law expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

Corporate tax inversions — reincorporating overseas by transferring assets to a smaller company in a country where the corporate tax rate is lower — have become quite popular with American companies lately, forcing the Treasury Department to issue new rules aimed at curbing them. The benefit of changing a firm’s home base to lower its effective tax rate is obvious, the study, led by Radhakrishnan Gopalan of Olin Business School finds. However, the costs of inversion are not well understood.

On Sept. 10, the Missouri legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and enacted one of the United States’ strictest waiting periods for women seeking abortion. The law will require a 72-hour delay, and that delay won’t make women safer or improve health outcomes, said two experts on health and family law from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Missouri lawmakers recently overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and passed a bill allowing school districts to designate teachers or administrators as school protection officers, able to carry concealed firearms into schools. The measure also lowered the age to apply for a conceal-and-carry permit to 19 from 21 and prohibits cities from banning open carry laws. Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law, weighs in from the point of the view of the Second Amendment.

​A new study by researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Kauffman Foundation explores how entrepreneurial hubs emerge and succeed when they are surrounded by favorable support systems. The paper is based on a case study of the St. Louis region, which has not been widely known as an entrepreneurial hub, but has seen a recent, substantial transformation of its local entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Calling all entrepreneurs, innovators and anyone interested in the future of our economy — the Rise of the Rest Road Tour is headed to St. Louis and will be hosting a fireside chat at Washington University in St. Louis at 10 a.m. Friday, Oct. 10 in the Frick Forum. The tour also features a $100,000 business pitch competition. Applications are due Sept. 21.

Washington University in St. Louis has helped to establish a new consortium of U.S. universities and leading technology companies designed to promote development and adoption of Named Data Networking, a new Internet protocol architecture to increase network security, accommodate growing bandwidth requirements and simplify the creation of increasingly sophisticated applications. Engineering’s Patrick Crowley, PhD, is principal investigator.

Linda Endecott has been hired as managing director of Washington University in St. Louis’ top-ranked Olin Business School Executive MBA Program in Kansas City. Endecott will lead the university’s efforts to continue the expansion, momentum and reputation of its Executive MBA program, which has been offered in Kansas City since 2010.

In the wake of civil rights and social justice issues that have emerged following the death of African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, the fall 2014 Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series will feature presentations by several eminent civil rights scholars and authors, including NAACP executive Sherrilyn Ifill.

Olin Business School and the Human Rights Campaign — the largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans — hosted an LGBT Workplace Inclusion Conference at Washington University in St. Louis on Aug. 14.