Media Coverage

"Supply chain disruptions have a way of amplifying those issues, but they are seldom the only cause of it — unless something catastrophic happens, such as the loss of a critical supplier and the inability to find an alternative," Rudi Leuschner, associate professor of supply chain management at Rutgers University, said in an interview.

How can getting a 0% APR business credit card affect someone’s credit score? In the short run, there is typically a modest decrease in your credit score if you open up a new credit card account, explained Rutgers Business School finance and economics professor John Longo. Lines of credit are one of the components in most credit score calculations. However, if you pay off your credit card in full consistently, another component of the credit score is the percentage of credit utilized. Your total credit line will increase if you get a new credit card without closing the existing one. Hence, in the long run, there may not be a negative impact on your credit score when you add a new credit card if you pay your balance in full each month.

Amine Ouazad, an expert on climate risk in mortgage markets, said the province must spend more on disaster risk preparedness and disaster recovery.

"This is a good start but only a moderate amount given the evidence about the cost of previous natural disasters in B.C.," said Ouazad, an associate professor in finance and economics at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey.

It's prudent for homeowners to "adapt your houses" in anticipation of floods and wildfires, Ouazard said.

“The device has evolved throughout the project to become less bulky and intimidating, and more commercial and consumer-friendly,” said Mason Ameri, an associate professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School.

While the engineers refine the device and integrate AI for more advanced control, the Rutgers team is focused on the HR and policy implications. Douglas Kruse, Lisa Schur, and Hazel-Anne Johnson (School of Management and Labor Relations), along with Ameri and Terri Kurtzberg (Rutgers Business School), are studying the potential impact of the technology and how employers might react.

What are some of the key features consumers should look for in a credit union credit card for balance transfers? "I would suggest that among the key features of a credit union credit card would be no annual fee, low-interest rates for any balances not paid off in full, and rewards that correspond to the consumer's spending patterns," Rutgers Business School finance professor John Longo said.

What Technology Skills Do Accounting Graduates Need?

In accounting practice, data evolved from summarized accounting data before using computers through the development of storage and retention of complete transactions using computers, opening doors to greater insights (Miklos A. Vasarhelyi, Alexander Kogan, and Brad M. Tuttle, “Big Data in Accounting: An Overview,” Accounting Horizons, June 2015, pp. 381-396). The era of expansion in the global business environment came with data volume, velocity, and variety growth. Finally, in the wake of environmental and sustainability reporting, data points include financial and nonfinancial data. Moreover, the profession faces business Reporting 4.0, the application of technology intelligence with the ability for mass customization and reporting aligned with the needs of heterogeneous stakeholders and the multi-objective enterprise (Michael G. Alles, Jun Dai, and Miklos A. Vasarhelyi, “Reporting 4.0: Business Reporting for the Age of Mass Customization,” Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting, Spring 2021, pp. 1-15).

It’s time to get with the times.
We’ve grown tired of hearing from people who say they can’t find women to run their company, be in a top leadership role, sit on a board — or even be on a panel.
So, we’re leaving them behind.
If you haven’t caught on yet, then please stop reading. And know that history will not be kind to your outdated thinking.
The release of the 2024 ROI Influencers: Women in Business once again shows the state is overflowing with amazingly impressive female leaders who are ready, willing, able and eager to take on any role.
Just scroll through our list of honorees, take in their accomplishments and ask yourself:
Wouldn’t they be good candidates for any and all roles at a company where smarts, work ethic and leadership are required?
It’s 2024. The future is here. And it’s decidedly female.

Lisa Kaplowitz
Executive director
Rutgers Center for Women in Business

Former chief financial officer of top companies now runs a center that aims to remove barriers, build community and empower women with the confidence and skills necessary to succeed as business leaders.

It’s time to get with the times.
We’ve grown tired of hearing from people who say they can’t find women to run their company, be in a top leadership role, sit on a board — or even be on a panel.
So, we’re leaving them behind.
If you haven’t caught on yet, then please stop reading. And know that history will not be kind to your outdated thinking.
The release of the 2024 ROI Influencers: Women in Business once again shows the state is overflowing with amazingly impressive female leaders who are ready, willing, able and eager to take on any role.
Just scroll through our list of honorees, take in their accomplishments and ask yourself:
Wouldn’t they be good candidates for any and all roles at a company where smarts, work ethic and leadership are required?
It’s 2024. The future is here. And it’s decidedly female.

Lei Lei
Dean, Rutgers Business School
Rutgers University

She is the head of the top business school in the state — and a top professor, too.

Freeman College of Management Professor Kate Suslava joined accounting professors Suresh Govindaraj, Rutgers University, and Yehuda Davis, Yeshiva University, on the research, which analyzed more than 500 Supreme Court decisions and related stock prices from publicly traded firms named in those cases between 1948 and 2018. They found that the stock price of companies that experienced positive SCOTUS opinions increased by .6% over the market average that day, while prices fell by .4% more relative to the market average among companies involved with negative decisions.

"Our mission is three-fold, and we're doing it through education, opportunity and thought leadership," said Lisa Kaplowitz, the founder and executive director of The Center for Women in Business, who is also an associate professor in the finance and economics department at Rutgers Business School. "We are removing barriers, building community and empowering women with confidence and skills."

"I think these are long-term trends," said Kalan. "It strikes me when I read the article about Macy's closing 150 stores I did not think 'Macy's is in trouble,' rather I thought 'there is a recognition here that the market is changing.' E-commerce has influenced it, demographics, population density, the aging of the population are all influencing this. This does not mean Macy's is going away ... but they did say they will look to move out of the underproducing stores, but they will reallocate into these more specialty type stores where they see the future going."

Also speaking at the CRE Outlook, Morris Davis, the Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate, professor of finance and economics, and academic director of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, similarly drew distinctions when it came to offerings on either side of the Hudson River.

“There’s two other things going on in Manhattan that I think are going to be positive for the New Jersey office market. The first is the congestion tax … And so maybe some parts of some office space will move over to Jersey so that the workers can avoid pain,” he speculated.

“The other thing that’s hard data is that New York City is starting Jan. 1 to impose taxes on buildings that have energy emissions past a certain amount … point is — about a third of office buildings in New York City are going to be taxed. … So that might be enough to shut down the older parts of the office market in New York.

“A long-term bond issue is probably the wisest thing to do at the present juncture since the current yield curve is inverted,” wrote Rutgers Business School professor John M. Longo in a statement.

“In other words, the annual yield on long-term interest rates is lower than that of short-term interest rates,” he added.

For the first two decades of this century, the IRS was the subject of congressional neglect, if not outright enmity. Even as returns processed and dollars collected grew substantially, its staff size was reduced by 25 percent. Taxpayer services and enforcement activities suffered, and dysfunction was endemic. It was an agency much in need of repair.

Fortunately, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress added $80 billion to the budget of the IRS, to be spent over a 10-year timeframe. The purposes were threefold: to offer better customer service, bolster tax compliance and modernize the antiquated IRS operating systems.

Rutgers Business School’s Kevin Kolben recommends steps for companies to locate and confront hidden labor risks in their supply chains.

Managers of globally integrated firms are accustomed to managing supply chain risk and disruptions. These include pandemics, supplier bankruptcies, contract breaches, shipping and logistics problems, payment risks, political instability, and trade wars.

The Trump-initiated and Biden-continued sanctions on China and the post-Covid-19 rush to build up supply chain resilience are but two examples of the need to remain fleet-footed in a rapidly changing market environment.

Labor is one supply chain risk, however, that’s been underestimated. US companies face new labor-related threats in today’s legal and political environment.

“The Women in Leadership Symposium highlights the legacy of excellence and advocacy for women's equity in workplaces and communities,” said Anika Rahman, CEO of the National Diversity Council.“We invite you to join us for the New Jersey Women in Leadership Symposium as we lead with heart!”

The conference will feature moderator, Keti Mehta, Senior Vice President, Gallagher and panelists, Joanne Ciulla, Professor of Leadership Ethics and Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership, Rutgers Business School; Evelyn Espinal, Global Head Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Unilever; Megan Lee, Chairwoman and CEO, Panasonic; Kathleen O'Driscoll, Vice President Human Resources - Global Benefits, Wellbeing and HR Policy, Cognizant; and Diane Waller. Senior Vice President, Bank of America.

At its board of governor’s meeting this week, Rutgers University confirmed an interim leader to succeed Nancy Cantor as chancellor in Newark.

A vote during the Feb. 19 meeting affirmed Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Robinson for the role, effective July 1.

Cantor’s decade-long tenure as chancellor of Rutgers-Newark ends with her second term June 30. Robinson was announced as interim leader in October 2023.

Ajai Gaur, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers, explained how a parent company “doesn’t have much control” over its franchises, which can also “engage in social movements like charity.”

“Even if the head office could do something, what would they do?” Gaur said, arguing that more transparency could help companies avoid attacks long-term. A parent company could show, for example, “whatever number of franchisees it has in Saudi Arabia, how many local people are employed there, what the business, profit, employment, and benefits are for the local community—and what the costs of the boycotts are.”

Saymah Nah, Executive Director of Gateway U, discusses Gateway’s mission of providing pathways to education; Arturo Osorio, Ph.D., Secretary of the Board at Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, highlights the Hispanic community’s impact on the U.S. economy; Rhonda Auguste, Founding Executive Director of The Wight Foundation, discusses their educational opportunities & incentives for students.

Video, Professor Arturo Osorio's segment begins at 10:28

At the inaugural BlackDoctor.org Community Voices in Health Equity Summit, Rabin Martin Partner, Terri Jackson moderated a panel discussion on Understanding the Provider/Patient Dynamics with Compassionomics Playing a Role. She was joined by Jeana Wirtenberg, Executive Director at the Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation, Michelle Anderson-Benjamin, Metastatic Breast Cancer Survivor and Certified Mental Health Coach and Trainer, Teresa Redmond, Director, US Oncology Pan Franchise Consumer Marketing at Merck, Bryan Buckley, Director, Health Equity Initiatives at NCQA and Assistant Professor in Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and Fatima Scipion, VP, Global Patient Affairs at Blueprint Medicines.

Video 35:56

“The RBSCryptoLab is a resource for the Blockchain Hub members, enabling Rutgers students to build, run, and maintain mining equipment,” said Professor Mark Guthner, leading the initiative at Rutgers. “In addition, it facilitates the learning process by merging theory with practice. Students learn how blockchains work and how decentralized networks perform their important functions. The RBSCryptoLab’s latest acquisition is the Apollo Bitcoin node and mining machines designed, manufactured, and sold by FutureBit.”

“This kind of stuff goes on regularly and generally has no lasting impact on companies — sentiment can change very quickly,” said Michael Barnett, professor of management and global business with a focus on corporate social responsibility, at Rutgers Business School. 

But he warned that while most boycotts ended in customers returning to their old routines, they had the potential to bring lasting consequences if they went on for “long enough to cause people to shift their buying patterns”.

“You might switch to something else that you find is a good substitute — it might be cheaper or something that you enjoy more, and you just establish a new habit.”

In addition to the creative collaboration with Newark School of Fashion and Design, the Office of Communications has also established a partnership with Rutgers Business School Marketing Professor Yla Eason, who is based on the Newark campus. She is renowned as the creator of Sun Man, the first African American superhero action figure and now resident of Mattel’s Masters of the Universe collection.

Undergraduate students enrolled in Eason's marketing class will play a central role in orchestrating the grand unveiling of the Scarlet Raider Fox.

“Professor Eason is a pioneering entrepreneur who broke new ground in multicultural marketing, creating characters with strong identities, first marketing them on her own and later through a major manufacturer. She is the perfect person to lead us in further imagining Rutgers-Newark’s new mascot,’’ said Kimberlee Williams, Rutgers-Newark Director of Communications and Marketing in the Office of Communications.

The jury is still out on whether remote work hobbles productivity, and working from home employees' contributions to a company's bottom line. Some reports say yes, some say no. Meanwhile, tech firms like Zoom and Apple are unveiling new systems that could be pitched as boosting remote workers' powers, such as meetings in virtual reality formats, which might make a digital meeting more like a face to face encounter.

What may be more true is that managing remote staff is actually hard, and requires managers to step up, learn new skills, and work harder. Terri R. Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School, recently noted that it takes effort for a manager to figure out "How do I make sure that we have presence with each other, as a manager? [How do I] redesign my evaluation systems to not have to rely on this gut sense of, 'Oh, I know they work hard because I've seen it'? And that's an active role. It's not a passive role."

“These panelists and audience experts will represent various roles in the fact pattern and attempt to put the failing, half-built project on a path to completion,” said Zangari, a member of Sills Cummis and member of the Center for Real Estate’s executive committee.

“This discussion could not be better timed. In each real estate recession, restructuring experts work themselves out of a job by the end of the downturn — leaving a talent vacuum when the next recession happens.

“We’re at that point now,” he added. “Many of the professionals in commercial real estate and lending today were in high school or college during the last crisis 15 years ago, so there’s knowledge void. What better venue to fill that gap than the Rutgers Center for Real Estate?”

The program included a presentation by Richard Barkham, CBRE’s global chief economist, head of Global Research and head of Americas Research, who described the current global, regional and local economic climate. JLL Vice Chairman Robert Kossar also moderated a panel discussion of the challenges and opportunities the current economy presents for the state’s CRE industry. Participating in the conversation were Morris A. Davis, Rutgers Center for Real Estate; Will Irving, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; and Otteau Group’s Jeffrey G. Otteau.

On Feb. 7 at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, leading figures in the sector will participate in a case-study program entitled: “Your Mixed-Use Redevelopment Project Is in Distress. Now What?”

The event, put on by the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, aims to provide insights for developers, lenders, investors, commercial real estate professionals and community leaders.

The event will feature a panel of experts playing various roles in a fictional case (that will hit home for many). The case was authored by Ted Zangari of Sills Cummis & Gross and George Jacobs of Jacobs Enterprises.

Infertility treatments aren’t cheap, with a single round of in vitro fertilization costing upwards of $20,000.

The good news is that the IRS says some of these expenses are tax deductible.

The bad news? The rules are hazy, and tax experts say it’s not always clear which procedures are tax deductible to which taxpayers. Some assisted reproductive technology procedures – especially those used by single men or LGBTQ+ couples – may be considered ineligible.

"Mostly wealthy clients are the ones who itemize their deductions,” said Jay Soled, director of Rutgers Masters in Taxation Program. For most taxpayers, “it's not going to mean anything.”

What’s working against these workers? Mainly, the fact that leaders are still trying to figure out how to manage workers who aren’t right in front of them, says Terri R. Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School.

The apparent disadvantages for remote workers present an important challenge for employers managing these kinds of employees, Kurtzberg says. “Connection doesn’t happen unless you make it happen,” she says. “It takes effort to figure out: How do I make sure that we have presence with each other, as a manager? [How do I] redesign my evaluation systems to not have to rely on this gut sense of, ‘Oh, I know they work hard because I’ve seen it’? And that’s an active role. It’s not a passive role.”

"Technology played a role, but this was also a function of pent-up consumer demand and business needs to meet an age-old preference for the convenience of restaurant delivery," said Gary Minkoff, a professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick. "It just wasn’t something that was a focus for restaurants, for various operational reasons."

“The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a radical shift in how much people worked from home, which in turn boosted the productivity of working from home due to mass adoption of remote-work technologies,” said Morris Davis, the paper’s lead author. “The increase in productivity is predicted to lead to higher lifetime incomes for those workers in occupations with tasks that are most easily accomplished at home -- predominantly high-skill workers – and thus a side consequence of the increase in productivity of working at home is a widening of income inequality. The change in work-from-home productivity also increased the demand for housing, consistent with the increase in house prices we observed between 2020 and 2022.”

Stacy Schwartz, a marketing expert from Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, told Patch that many product crazes discovered “by accident” are short-lived without smart marketers who know how to harness the power of social media and build on previous successes in the market.

Stanley clearly has reined in something valuable.

“You … can’t ignore the importance of culturally relevant timing,” Schwartz said. “While the Stanley tumbler is a big craze right now, it was not the first metal water bottle to be viewed as a fashion accessory. Stanley benefits from the work that S’well, Yeti, Hydroflask, and other fashion-forward refillable water bottle brands have done to prepare the market for this moment.”

Lisa Kaplowitz
Executive director
Rutgers Center for Women in Business

The center aims to remove barriers, build community and empower women with the confidence and skills necessary to succeed as business leaders.

Morris Davis
Academic director
Rutgers Center for Real Estate Studies

The Rutgers Center has established itself as the preeminent real estate school in the state, thanks to Davis — an incentive to ensure the next generation of commercial real estate pros matches the diversity in our state.

[Miriam Brickman and her brother Buzzy Brickman] said they are facing a learning curve in running an eatery, but they’ve literally done their homework. Miriam was enrolled in an entrepreneurial program at Rutgers, where she was able to secure some seed money for the business. Buzzy, in his last semester as a business school and Honors College student studying business analytics and information technology, is folding the launch of Crunch Cafe into a class project.

Two of the world’s most vital shipping routes are currently compromised. Since November, the Panama Canal has had to reduce crossings by 40% due to a severe drought. More recently, the Suez Canal—which usually accommodates 30% of global containers—has become a battleground, as the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, have ramped up attacks on ships.

“They are separate issues, but the interaction between them certainly affects the logistics and transport on a global level,” says Arash Azadegan, department vice chair of Rutgers Business School who focuses on supply chain disruption.

When Panama alone was an issue, Suez could pick up the slack. “If you hurt your left arm, your right arm should be available to pick things up a little bit more,” Azadegan says.

Investment firms and funding organizations are being struck with complaints, and in some cases, federal lawsuits, over the constitutionality of financially supporting BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and other people of color) entrepreneurs.

Most recently, the American Alliance for Equal Rights — a conservative activist organization that opposes affirmative action — initiated a lawsuit against the Fearless Fund, which awards $20,000 Strivers Grants to Black women entrepreneurs. The suit claims that the Fearless Fund violates the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of racial discrimination in business contracts because other races aren’t being considered for venture funding.

This new impediment to securing financing opportunities for BIPOC entrepreneurs is disconcerting. It’s made even more complicated by the alarming statistic that of the $214 billion in venture capital funding allocated in 2022, a slim 1.1% went to companies with minority founders. Plus, entrepreneurs of color who seek debt financing are still likely to be offered inferior loans, even when they’re stronger applicants than their white peers, according to the Journal of Marketing Research.

Confronted with these challenges, angel investors and investment groups that fund BIPOC entrepreneurs must remain committed to keeping vital early-stage capital flowing.

Two of the world’s most vital shipping routes are currently compromised. Since November, the Panama Canal has had to reduce crossings by 40% due to a severe drought. More recently, the Suez Canal—which usually accommodates 30% of global containers—has become a battleground, as the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, have ramped up attacks on ships.

“They are separate issues, but the interaction between them certainly affects the logistics and transport on a global level,” says Arash Azadegan, department vice chair of Rutgers Business School who focuses on supply chain disruption.

Stanley tumblers are filling our social media feeds and stories about the high demand for the popular quenches are dominating the news cycle. How did a water bottle manufactured by a company that has been around for more than 100 years become a cultural phenomenon? Stacy Schwartz, a marketing expert from Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, talks about how a product becomes the item of the moment - and whether that is good for business.

Claudine Gay wraps herself in Harvard’s toga of integrity. It simply won’t work, not for herself nor for Harvard. Plagiarism allegations are serious, especially for an academic researcher — or for a president of a leading academic institution. The best she can do now is to leave gracefully, without excuses or explanations.

The law grants seasonal employers and those with six or fewer workers until 2026 to reach $15 an hour. Still, those employees' pay will increase by 80 cents next year, to $13.73.

“You want to cut them a little bit more slack so they can organize themselves a bit better, but they’re not exempt from the law,” said Parul Jain, who teaches finance and economics at Rutgers Business School.

Lisa Kaplowitz, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, said women get stuck in “non-promotable work in the office, like note-taking, running the employee resource groups, taking on the emotional labor of the office, as the support role. Women are viewed as not as ambitious, which is just not true. Outside of the office, women still take on the majority of housework and child care at home.

“There’s the assumption that she doesn’t want the promotion, the assumption that she doesn’t want to travel, the assumption that she isn’t committed to her job. All of that is a false narrative,” Kaplowitz continued.

Morris Davis, the Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate and the academic director of the center, said the night is made by the generosity of donors, including ICSC/Glenn and Mary Rufrano, the Hasan family, the Inspired Co., the Hampshire Cos. and the Wilf/Tanzman and Kokes families.

“The center awards so many scholarships thanks to the generosity of the advisory board, Leaders Council and the many supporters we have, and we are so grateful to them,” he said.

The scholarships are well-deserved, Davis said.

“This year, we have taught some of the strongest students in the program,” he said. “Several of the students participated in real estate case competitions and won or placed against large, well-known universities.”

Lei Lei, dean of Rutgers Business School, said the evening was special.

“The celebration of these scholarship recipients reflects the commitment of Rutgers Business School to reward excellent students,” she said. “It was heartwarming to see the appreciation the students and alumni had for the donors who work closely with the Center for Real Estate.”

On this episode of "Bloomberg Equality," Lisa Kaplowitz, finance professor at Rutgers University and the co-founder and executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, looks at how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women in the financial-services industry. She speaks with Bloomberg's Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn.

Financial analysts, like journalists, split their time between deskwork and roadwork: meeting executives, inspecting operations, tasting the local cuisine. Are these escapes into the outside world worth it?

In a new paper Azi Ben-Rephael of Rutgers University, Bruce Carlin of Rice University, Zhi Da of the University of Notre Dame and Ryan Israelsen of Michigan State University investigate the benefits of travel. They track 336 analysts of American stocks from 2017 to 2021, estimating the length of their office days from the time they spent logged in to their Bloomberg terminals. Analysts who did not log in during a workday were assumed to be traveling for work.

Logging off and getting out has some costs: peripatetic analysts issued fewer forecasts. But their stock recommendations made more of a splash, moving the market by more than their peers’ picks. They were also more likely to be rated as “star” analysts in the rankings published by Institutional Investor, a magazine.

Was this prestige deserved? Escaping from the office does, after all, give a stockpicker more time to schmooze with the institutional investors who contribute to rankings. And it fills their sleeves with more seductive tales to tell.

On the other hand, the paper shows that the forecasts of well-traveled analysts were also significantly more accurate than those of their peers.

Financial experts have concerns, especially as pandemic savings dwindle, and America’s collective credit card debt sits at a record $1 trillion.

“We’re creating a society of indebtedness,” said Marc Kalan, an associate professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School.

He looks at buy now, pay later as a much smaller-scale version of mortgaging a home, but for a secondary product, one that won’t gain value over time. Today’s consumer, however, often isn’t thinking long-term. If they were, he added, they would save up for these smaller purchases in advance.

“We are being trained for quick and instant gratification,” he said. Buy now, pay later “can make for short-term excitement. … I’m not sure how the feeling will be in the first quarter of ‘24 when the first payments are coming due.”

Parul Jain, who teaches finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, said tipping got a huge boost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

People used to tip on the basis of performance, she said. Now, the near ubiquitous use of touch screens at places where we'd never previously think of tipping applies enormous pressure.

"You feel guilt or misery," Jain said, adding that during COVID when many eateries were struggling, it was not uncommon to tip 30%.

In its questions to experts, MoneyGeek asked, Are there any drawbacks that businesses should be aware of when using balance transfer cards? "Businesses should keep meticulous records, so the owner(s) should look at the monthly and year-end reporting features of balance transfer cards and seek low-interest rates and attractive rewards programs," said John Longo, a distinguished professor of professional practice in finance at Rutgers Business School.

Some of the larger realities impacting food prices extend beyond the United States. The war in Ukraine as an example of factors abroad that hit consumers’ wallets more locally. Labor is also an issue. “The reality is that we still have a labor shortage,” Rutgers University finance and economics professor Arthur Guarino said Tuesday. “If there aren’t enough workers to pick the crops, farmers can miss out on delivering goods to market. Meanwhile, the cost of labor has shot up, as well.”

A single verdict, however, is not the last word on any issue, particularly in an industry as vast and profitable as real estate. “Somebody will overturn this, and it will go away,” said Morris A. Davis, the academic director of the Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School.

Seventy-five years of public policy coupled with a powerful real estate lobby have created an entrenched marketplace resistant to significant reforms, he said: “I just don’t see a world in which we’re willing to blow that up.”