Politicians and business leaders often make claims about why certain sectors in the economy are shrinking, such as the decline in U.S. manufacturing is due to robotics or trade with China. Such assessments are flawed, as the sectoral composition of the economy is mostly driven by preferences and not by productivity, according to a recent...
Shortages of personal protective equipment and medical devices, dairies pouring gallons of milk down the drain and delivery delays of online purchases. All are examples of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted and changed the supply chain. Mike Crum, a professor and Ruan Chair of Supply Chain Management in Iowa State University’s Ivy College of...
There is no shortage of disciplines and industries rife with sexism. The STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – are particularly well known for their misogynistic cultures. But I believe, based on my personal experience, the experiences of my fellow female economists and hard data, that there’s a strong case to be made...
– Liisa Ecola, Hui Lu, Charlene Rohr, RAND Corporation Months into the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Americans’ online shopping habits are continuing to shift. We documented changes in online shopping habits at the beginning of the pandemic, comparing patterns from January and February (before the pandemic) with patterns from mid-March and April (when lockdowns...
In Lily Tomlin’s classic SNL comedy sketch, her telephone operator “Ernestine” famously delivers the punchline, “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.” But new research finds that satisfied customers mean increased profits even for public utilities that don’t face competition. Little is known about effect of customer satisfaction at utilities. As...
What should we make of the spikes in the stock prices of companies like GameStop and AMC Entertainment? Has the pandemic suspended the laws of economics as they apply to share prices? Is there something more nefarious going on? Some brokerage firms have stopped customers from buying certain suddenly volatile stocks. Others have curtailed traders’ use of...
Early in the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment claims were largely driven by state shutdown orders and the nature of a state’s economy and not by the virus, according a new article by Georgia State University economists. David Sjoquist and Laura Wheeler found no evidence the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) affected the number of initial claims...
Organizations seeking to fill internal roles traditionally have two options: promote from within or hire externally. Internal promotions benefit from being vetted talent who possess firm-specific skills while outside hires harbor external knowledge that can infuse an organization with new energy. Though this dichotomy is often accepted as unavoidable, there is a third option: boomerang...
Researchers from University of Hawaii and University of Florida published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that argues that a biological account of human behavior, especially undesirable behavior, will benefit human welfare. This biological perspective can complement traditional psychological, anthropological, and economic perspectives on consumption, particularly with respect to the vital topic of self-control. The...
The Earth is populated by an increasing number of people who demand more and more products, which is simply not viable in the long run. Our planet does not have unlimited resources. Emissions are harming the environment in various ways. More companies thus need to switch to more sustainable production, sometimes due to pressure from...
