Business & Entrepreneurship

Yossi Aviv, PhD, was installed March 5 as the Dan Broida Professor of Operations & Manufacturing Management at Olin Business School. The professorship was established in 1984 by Roma Broida Wittcoff, an alumna and trustee emeritus of Washington University in St. Louis, in memory of her first husband, Daniel Broida, who died in 1981.

Experts on youth advocacy and school desegregation will come together March 22 and 23 for a series of events as part of the Youth Justice Program at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. Events are free and open to the public and will be held in the Bryan Cave Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310.

Demand for specialized master’s programs at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis has been growing exponentially during recent years, mirroring an international trend toward specialization in business education.

Narayana Kocherlakota, PhD, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, will present “On the Limits to Monetary Policy” for the second-annual Hyman P. Minksy Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 20 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Jeff Cannon (right), associate dean and director of undergraduate programs at Olin Business School, chats with Kathleen Robbins of Indiana University March 9 following the corporate panel of the National Undergraduate Business Symposium at the Knight Center.

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.