Business & Entrepreneurship

With the support of a major gift, Washington University in St. Louis introduces new BSBA minor, The Business of Sports, in the Olin Business School.

Pharmaceutical companies have largely abandoned the business of discovering and developing antibiotics and our stock of these “miracle drugs” is beginning to shrink. Michael Kinch and his colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis are working to create new models for drug discovery that could replace the failed private enterprise model.

Several “blockbuster” cases — including freedom of speech, religious freedoms in prison, pregnancy discrimination and a possible decision on gay marriage — are on the docket for the Supreme Court, which begins its new session this month. But don’t expect any decisions until next June. New research led by the School of Law finds big cases are disproportionately decided just before the court’s summer recess.

​Presented by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Suren G. Dutia and Jas K. Grewal Global Impact Award was established last year in the belief that the power of technology can solve real world problems by giving highly motivated entrepreneurs the tools to foster innovation. ​The first recipient will be selected from a field of six outstanding finalists at an Oct. 6 reception.​​

Over the past several decades, Michael Kinch of Washington University in St. Louis says, the pharmaceutical industry has managed to dismantle itself. In a provocative series of articles and interviews, Kinch, the director of the Center for Research Innovation in Businessat the university, has been describing the history of this dismantling and its implications for the future of medicine.

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.