Business & Entrepreneurship

Social Security’s cost of living adjustments (COLA) are designed to protect against the erosion of retiree purchasing power when prices go up, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). “Now Social Security self-styled ‘reformers’ seek to lower COLA every year based on their claim that COLA overstates inflation,” says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security. The proposed substitute for the current CPI formula, ‘Chained COLA,’ is based on the assumption that benefit recipients substitute lower-priced goods as prices go up. “This the assumption is unrealistic for those millions who only have access to convenience stores that typically offer fewer choice and higher prices,” says Bernstein, the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “And, further, it is not reasonable to assume that most consumers can outwit the wiles of merchandising experts.”

Lee E. Ohanian, PhD, professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, will present “Depressions, Crises, and Economic Policy: The 1930s and Today” at Washington University in St. Louis for the inaugural Lloyd Cole Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 3, in the Danforth University Center, Room 276.

Eighteen Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate students will have the opportunity to spend their spring break in a unique way — a 10-day immersion in various aspects of the Israeli economy, from innovation to government to high-tech start-ups.

Rebecca Dresser, JD, the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and professor of ethics at the School of Medicine, was diagnosed with head and neck cancer six years ago. For perspective, she reached out to other medical ethicists, who had either had cancer themselves, or had a spouse diagnosed with the disease. The group’s meetings became the basis for the book, Malignant: Medical Ethicists Confront Cancer.

Stephen M. Nowlis, PhD, was installed Feb. 23 as the August A. Busch Jr. Distinguished Professor of Marketing in Olin Business School. Nowlis joined Olin Business School in July 2010 after spending many years at Arizona State University, where he was the AT&T Distinguished Professor of Marketing.

The current controversy over the Barack Obama administration’s birth control policy is not, contrary to some arguments, a matter of constitutional law, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. It is however, a matter of Constitutional principle, Magarian says.

The U.S. Constitution’s global influence is on the decline, finds a new study by David S. Law, JD, PhD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Other countries are increasingly turning to sources other than the U.S. Constitution for guidance in establishing human rights provisions and for general structural provisions in creating their constitutions,” he says. Law, with co-author Mila Versteeg, DPhil, associate professor of law at the University of Virginia, analyzed 60 years of data on the content of the world’s constitutions. “The data revealed that there is a significant and growing generic component to global constitutionalism, in the form of a set of rights provisions that appear in nearly all formal constitutions,” Law says. “Our analysis also confirms, however, that the U.S. Constitution is becoming increasingly out of sync with these global practices.

Mike McLaughlin has had a difficult life. The MBA student at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis was emotionally and physically abused as a child at the hands of his mother and stepfather — a tragedy in its own right but one in which he says helped prepare him for his next big challenge: through-hiking the Appalachian and Ozark trails back-to-back.

Will stock in Facebook, which recently filed for initial public offering (IPO), drop significantly following the end of its IPO lock-up period later this year? It might if the company follows recent trends, finds a new study by graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis.

The American public exhibits deep partisan divisions about the direction that federal fiscal policy should take, finds a new national survey from the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University in St. Louis. The American Panel Survey will take place monthly, and will measure shifts in attitudes over time.