Business & Entrepreneurship

After it rules on the highly contested health-care debate and makes other momentous decisions this term, will the U.S. Supreme have sufficient stores of legitimacy to weather the inevitable backlash? Yes, but barely, says a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.

Whether surfing in his native Hawaii, promoting the rule of law in a newly independent country or navigating difficult issues in legal education and theory, Brian Z. Tamanaha, JD, JSD, the William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law, approaches each adventure with thoughtful consideration.

With the cost of filing for bankruptcy going up, many cash-strapped American families are using their tax rebate to pay for it, finds a new study by Jialan Wang, PhD, assistant professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School. The study is published as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Wang and colleagues at Columbia University and the University of Chicago.

Washington University in St. Louis students interested in a unique summer internship experience as a “mini-CEO” at Answers.com in St. Louis are invited to attend a Career Center event at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 29 in the lower level of Mallinckrodt Center.

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.”