Business & Entrepreneurship

Olin Business School has announced the appointment of Paula Crews as associate dean and director of marketing and communications for the undergraduate and graduate business school at Washington University in St. Louis.

The recent Budweiser can redesign probably won’t do much to reinvigorate sagging sales of the iconic brew, say marketing professors at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Estate planning with Fido in mind? Better be careful, says a trusts and estates expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The issue has been in the news recently. British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February 2010, left a sizeable sum of money to his beloved dogs; Trouble, the recently deceased dog of “The Queen of Mean,” Leona Helmsley, famously inherited $12 million. Beyond celebrities, a powerful pet inheritance constituency thrives. Between 12 percent and 27 percent of owners have provisions for their pets in their wills. But what happens to the inheritance when the pet passes?

Unlike the majority of workers, domestic workers — such as housekeepers and paid caregivers of children and the elderly — remain invisible, laboring in the private setting of the home. This situation can lead to exploitative labor conditions. The International Labour Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency that promotes opportunities for workers to obtain decent and productive work, recently agreed to a Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, establishing international standards to improve working conditions for as many as 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the majority of whom are women and young girls. “Although delegates from the United States played a leading role in rallying support for the convention and advocating strong protections on behalf of domestic workers, it will take a Herculean effort to achieve decent work for domestic workers in the United States,” says Peggie Smith, JD, employment law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “At present, none of the major pieces of federal labor legislation in the United States comply with the standards in the convention.”

Sales of luxury goods, which analysts say could spike as much as eight percent this year, are soaring thanks to expanding personal wealth in China, says a luxury retail expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

What’s the best way to pay off debt? It’s simple. After making required payments to avoid penalties, pay down the loan with the highest interest rate. But consumers take a slightly different approach, according to a consumer behavior expert at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s reality-TV offering Sister Wives have thrust polygamy into popular culture in the United States. Estimates are that somewhere between 50,000-100,000 families in this country are currently risking criminal prosecution by practicing plural marriage. Proponents and detractors of polygamy use same-sex marriage to support their arguments, but that’s just a distraction, says Adrienne Davis, JD, an expert on gender relations and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “While the gay analogy may make for splashy punditry and good television, it distracts us from the main legal issue — polygamy challenges the regulations inherent in the conventional two-person marriage,” Davis says. “Putting aside whether you think polygamy is ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ it is important to look at whether U.S. law is up to regulating marital multiplicity.” She proposes some default rules that might accommodate polygamy, while ensuring against some of its historic and ongoing abuses.

Discussion of the federal debt ceiling has dominated the front page recently. Several Washington University in St. Louis faculty experts, all members of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, have offered their opinions to the news media on the history of the debt ceiling and what may happen if a deal is not reached.

There’s a better way to help banking customers than the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that opened for business July 21, says a banking expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law is offering a Washington, D.C., area intellectual property field placement opportunity for students pursuing a career focused on the preparation, filing and prosecution of patent applications. Students in the externship will work at the law firm of Oliff & Berridge in Alexandria, Va., for one semester. “Our students will be expected to perform as a first-year associate,” says David Deal, JD, director of WULAW’s Intellectual Property & Technology Law Program and co-director of the Intellectual Property and Nonprofit Organizations Legal Clinic at WULAW. This program is designed to immerse WULAW students in a law firm environment and facilitate the transition from law students to competent and productive practitioners.