Media Coverage

Rudi Leuschner, an associate professor of supply chain management at Rutgers University, said getting back to pre-shortage baby formula stock levels will likely take more time than we’d like it to.

“But when it involves something like this and the impact is on babies and little kids, it’s crushing.”

Developing countries should think twice about COP27 goals

China, India and many other developing countries should be wary of the climate commitments that were pushed for at COP27 in Egypt. The entire economies of the West were built on fossil fuels, hence asking the aforementioned countries to abstain from using them is tantamount to asking them to freeze their development. Is this a backhanded way of keeping them poor under the guise of saving the planet?

CPA Evolution encompasses a new model for licensure and the CPA Exam that will subsequently necessitate some significant changes to our accounting programs. As accounting educators, we’ve been considering CPA Evolution for some time. The CPA Exam is due for an overhaul, and we are enthusiastic about the changes, but many questions remain about how best to incorporate these new topics into our programs. Curriculum changes aren’t always easy to achieve. And while we recognize the importance of the new material, we also grapple with the challenge of where to include the new material in a curriculum that is already jam-packed.

Accounting educators have been considering CPA Evolution for some time, but what about accounting students? Are they thinking about the new licensure model at all? Do they welcome the changes? Are they worried? To find the answers, I polled a few accounting majors at Rutgers Business School. Most of the students who responded to my inquiry were juniors and seniors — all of whom are likely to be affected by the new CPA Exam.

Live Oak officials did not comment, by press time, on the reasons behind their decision. Some possible motivators are suggested by Simi Kedia and Venkatesh Panchapagesan, of Rutgers Business School and Olin School of Business, respectively. In a 2004 research paper, the two cite "significant gains" a company can make by listing on the NYSE rather than Nasdaq.

Morris Davis, the Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate and the academic director of the center, said Ladell is a perfect fit for the role.

“From the time that the Rutgers Center for Real Estate was established, Ron Ladell has been an integral part of the mission of the center and successfully engaged in all aspects of the center’s activities, including academics, research, fundraising and student outcomes,” he said. “As a result, I am pleased to announce that Ron has accepted my invitation to become the next chair of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate.”

Rutgers Today asked Stacy Smollin Schwartz, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School and the founding director of its fully online Master of Science in Digital Marketing program, to shed some light on the story, which is changing by the hour.

It is not illegal for companies to pay employees through benefits instead of salaries, but those benefits must still be reported to tax authorities as income - with the exception of minor perks like free coffee at the office, said Jay Soled, a lawyer and accounting professor at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey.

NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi reporting on the U.S. House voting to avert a nationwide rail strike.

Professor Rudi Leuschner comments at 5:11. Watch the video. Full transcript available.

“Last year we had far more severe and systematic supply chain problems than this year and more significant Covid concerns,” said John Impellizzeri, director of the center for supply chain management at Rutgers University business school. “We’re in a better position than last year, but we are dealing with persistent supply chain issues.”

One of the easiest ways to optimize your digital marketing is by making a bigger investment in one type of marketing which will help optimize and lower spend on multiple types of marketing.

This type of marketing that I refer to is influencer marketing. When you look at influencers as being those social media users that publish content and have networks of friends and fans that follow their advice, you begin to see a holistic perspective on influencer marketing.

"Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry"

Dynamic inventory system with pricing adjustment for price-comparison shoppers
Wen Chen, Michael Katehakis, Qian Tang

With numerous price-comparison websites and applications, consumers today are frequently conducting price-comparison shopping. As a result, retailers face an increasing challenge in predicting consumer demand and determining the optimal product price and inventory level accordingly. To address this issue, this paper proposes an inventory model with joint decisions of price and inventory to optimize the retailer's long-run average profit under price-comparison consumer shopping.

Is it important for the average consumer to understand how the federal funds rate works? Why or Why not?

They may not need to know the details, but they should understand the role of interest rates and how it increases the cost of buying a house, mortgage or college education.

Although it’s a macroeconomic concept, how does the federal funds rate affect consumers’ personal finances?

The Federal Funds Rate mainly impacts short-term interest rates. For example, if someone runs a balance on their credit card, it increases the interest payment they owe to the credit card provider. This is one of many reasons why it is usually a bad idea not to pay your credit card off in full each month.

According to Mahmud Hassan, the director of Rutgers' Business School's Pharmaceutical MBA Program, the program is not for everybody, and the students who tend to excel in the program are those who have either an interest in the industry, or a strong technical background (some students might even already have either a PhD or a PharmD.)

“For the people who have done well, they've had science backgrounds or experience in the healthcare industry,” Hassan says, adding that “they may have worked not directly with the pharma industry, but indirectly, like as a consultant, or as a researcher.”

Parul Jain, associate professor of professional practice, Rutgers Business School: Black Friday deals may be misleading (and have a massive time cost) and Cyber Monday deals may offer better value.

A general consensus is that comparison shopping is needed, with a complete check on internet prices. It would be helpful to reduce the budget and focus on reduced lists. Additionally, everyone should make lists and avoid costly items. Also, while name brands are popular, it is important to assess quality relative to price. Plus, some brand items may be cheaper because of offbeat colors.

Kristina Durante, marketing department vice chair and professor, Rutgers Business School: Consumers were geared up for holiday cheer this year and spending started early. On the one hand, consumers are concerned about inflation and spending too much. On the other hand, they are more excited for the holidays than in prior years. Consumer eagerness for the holidays this year comes from the back-to-normal feel compared with pandemic days and wanting to control holiday spending and wrap up early before prices change again.

G. Tony Bell, assistant professor of professional practice, Rutgers Business School: Last year, we saw retailers and their suppliers operating in a just-in-time environment by minimizing their inventories as much as possible without sacrificing service. This was an overall management strategy aimed at receiving goods as close as possible to when those goods are needed.

Last year at this time, retailers had high demand, but stock was in short supply. This year, that's turned on its head. So, what does that mean for consumers? Assistant Professor of Professional Practice G. Tony Bell, Department of Supply Chain Management and Alla Valente join Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

Yla Eason, the creator of the first Black superhero figure and who is also a professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School in Newark, says she’s excited to see Afro-futuristic toys roll out this season more than ever before. Sun-Man, the Black action figure she designed in the 80s, has been growing in popularity over the last several years, an industry shift she believes is due in large part to the Black Panther fandemonium.

“For boy's toys especially, there’s a lot of Black animation, gaming that’s being developed, drawn from comic books and sci-fi. Its characters looking like you and being futuristic and magical, and mystical, it’s part of the genre right now. And I’m seeing a mass of it, not just a one-off," Eason told Rutgers University.

Yla Eason, the creator of the first Black superhero figure, says she’s excited to see Afro-futuristic toys roll out this season more than ever before. Sun-Man, the Black action figure she designed in the 80s, has been growing in popularity over the last several years, an industry shift she believes is due in large part to the Black Panther fandemonium.

“For boy's toys especially, there’s a lot of Black animation, gaming that’s being developed, drawn from comic books and sci-fi. Its characters looking like you and being futuristic and magical, and mystical, it’s part of the genre right now. And I’m seeing a mass of it, not just a one-off," Eason told Rutgers University.

Eason, who is also a professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School in Newark, founded Olmec Toys in 1985. With this company, the entrepreneur developed an entire multicultural line of action figures. Eason says that she was motivated to get to work after her three-year-old son told her he would never be able to become a superhero because he was Black.

“If you can see yourself as powerful, you can be powerful," explained Eason. “If you have to limit your fantasy world, your imagination, that’s frightening."

Yla Eason, the creator of the first Black superhero figure and who is also a professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School in Newark, says she’s excited to see Afro-futuristic toys roll out this season more than ever before. Sun-Man, the Black action figure she designed in the 80s, has been growing in popularity over the last several years, an industry shift she believes is due in large part to the Black Panther fandemonium.

“For boy's toys especially, there’s a lot of Black animation, gaming that’s being developed, drawn from comic books and sci-fi. Its characters looking like you and being futuristic and magical, and mystical, it’s part of the genre right now. And I’m seeing a mass of it, not just a one-off," Eason told Rutgers University.

Simply put, stagflation is made up of high inflation and a slowing economy. However, conventional methods by central bankers to address either one tend to exacerbate the other. How have central bankers been dealing with stagflation in recent years?

Central bankers are trying to deal with inflation by raising interest rates, which makes many items more expensive, thereby reducing demand. They are also shrinking the money supply, which also tends to increase interest rates. However, central banks can't fix the supply chain problems or the war in Ukraine, which is another factor increasing the prices of some commodities.

“Certain toys, for example consoles and certain games more than likely, they’ll sell out quickly,” says G. Tony Bell, an assistant professor in the department of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School. “So I would say, definitely buy early. The price advantage in buying later than buying earlier is going to be minimal at best.”

The Board of Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) today announced the appointment of Joyce Joseph to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Ms. Joseph currently serves as managing director for Capital Accounting Advisory and Research, LLC and as an assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers University. Her term is effective July 1, 2023 and runs until June 30, 2028. She will then be eligible for consideration for reappointment to one additional five-year term.

“For boy’s toys especially, there’s lot of Black animation, gaming that’s being developed, drawn from comic books and sci-fi. It’s characters looking like you and being futuristic and magical and mystical, it’s part of the genre right now. And I’m seeing a mass of it, not just a one-off,’’ said Eason, creator of Sun-Man, the first Black superhero action figure, and a professor of business at Rutgers University–Newark.

“President Biden should stress that moderates on both sides won, and he can't wait to reach out across the aisle,” said Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School. “He should not demonize the Republicans, he should dangle tax cut talk for them, and they will be trapped. They really have to rise to the challenge because someone dangles tax cuts and they don't rise to that; they will then look bad because that's their big mantra — tax cuts — and they will actually help. This is not just a political thing.”

"A lot of this inflation evolution is beyond the control of the White House," said Parul Jain, an associate professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School. But the current administration "always has to answer" for tough times, she added.

This episode of Thinks Out Loud looks at the lessons the team and I have learned from ten years of running a podcast. We dive into how you can use those lessons to improve your business. We explore how you can put content marketing into action for your brand. And we take a look at where Thinks Out Loud might be going in the future—and how we can all together when we get there.

During the pandemic, more wealthy Americans “may have been caught with an unplanned estate,” said Jay Soled, a Rutgers University professor and estate-planning attorney. Another dimension is that “increases in the stock market and private equity were pretty stupendous” in recent years, he said.

Surging consumer prices are far and away the top voter concern in upcoming US midterm elections, beating out worries about crime and abortion as households feel the squeeze from pricier food, shelter and services.

All of these weigh on consumers, with today's inflation levels unheard of for those below age 40, said Farrokh Langdana of Rutgers Business School.

"For so many people, this is like a new phenomenon," he said.

“Why is this question so hard? Because it probably depends on the Fed, it depends on inflation, it depends on market sentiment,” said Davis, the Paul V. Profeta chair in real estate at Rutgers Business School. “But if you’re going to think about acquiring land and doing a development deal, you have to start thinking of: ‘What are cap rates going to be?’”

Abstract

The authors investigate potential discrimination against people with disabilities through a field experiment that sent job applications to 6,016 accounting positions for which the applicants’ disabilities are unlikely to affect productivity. One-third of the cover letters disclosed that the applicant had a spinal cord injury, one-third disclosed the presence of Asperger’s syndrome, and one-third did not mention disability. The disability applications received 26% fewer expressions of employer interest. This gap was concentrated among experienced applicants and small private companies that are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Tests suggest possible positive effects of the ADA, but not of state laws, in reducing the disability gap. Results indicate there may be substantial room for employer and policy initiatives to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

So how can a card issuer offer zero percent interest?? Well, they really cannot.

All card issuers need to earn interest on outstanding card balances.

This means that their best customer is someone who pays the monthly minimum or slightly more and cannot afford to pay off the card balance. This allows the card issuer to earn 18% or 24% or even 29%.

The problem is how do we find those people?

And the answer is we offer ZERO percent interest on balance transfers that we match up against good FICO scores. All of those offers have a date by which the interest rate accelerates into something hurtful, like 24%. Even the zero percent consumer vendor cards, (such as Home Depot) eventually increase to a very high-interest rate. They give you 18 or 24 months to pay off the balance. A pretty good deal. Just like the zero-interest credit cards. But if you cross the line with a missed payment, or if you keep the balance for too long, you will be gladly welcomed into the world of punitive consumer borrowing.

Rutgers-Newark provost Jeffrey Robinson praised the restaurant’s concept and execution.

“It’s a fantastic example of social entrepreneurship in action, when you build a restaurant that is meeting a social need, you demonstrate the power of a double bottom line.’’

“(Managing expectations) is everything because the thing about inflation is, once that baby gets baked in to our psyche, to our thinking, it's very hard to unbake,” said Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School.

“Yale long ago abandoned the traditional 60 percent stock [and] 40 percent bond portfolio, which is having its worst year since the 1930s,” Rutgers Business School professor John Longo wrote in an email to the News. “Yale’s sizable allocation to alternative investments was likely the reason for its positive fiscal year performance.”

There is nothing illegal about receiving non-monetary compensation from an employer, but those benefits must be reported as income, with the exception of small perks like free coffee at the office, said Jay Soled, a lawyer and accounting professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark, New Jersey.

Princeton University is the latest major institution to announce it’s cutting financial ties to some fossil fuel companies — divesting almost $2 billion of its endowment tied to fossil fuel companies and disassociating from 90 corporations it says are the largest contributors to carbon emissions. It’s a major decision for the Ivy League university, which has one of the largest college endowments in the world.

Last year, Rutgers University announced that it would divest from all of its fossil fuel holdings. Professor Michael Barnett, Management & Global Business, comments at 1:50.

Other experts, including Rutgers Business School professor John Longo and School of Management professors William English, wrote to the News that Yale’s performance was good considering the market circumstances.

NJ Business Beat with Rhonda Schaffler (video recording with available closed captions)
Latinos in Business
This Hispanic Heritage Month NJ Business Beat with Rhonda Schaffler explores the economic impact of the state's Latino Business community.

Associate Professor Arturo E. Osorio comments on why 51% of Latino-owned businesses and 77% of white-owned businesses received credit, and why four times as many Latinos start businesses than the rest of the population. (12:36)

Lyneir Richardson, assistant professor and executive director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, discusses how the Black and Latino Tech Initiative program assists diverse tech entrepreneurs to get into accelerator programs where they have opportunities to attract additional capital for their businesses. (16:53)

Under Richardson’s leadership, CUEED started The Black and Latino Investment Fund of New Jersey to help fill the void of critical early-stage funding available to advance the ventures of Black and Latino founders. The investment fund plays a critical role in strengthening the efforts of the Black and Latino Tech Initiative.

“It has been a challenging fiscal and calendar year for most asset classes,” Rutgers Business School professor John Longo told the News. “In this context, the performance of Yale’s endowment is quite impressive.”

Over the ten-year period ending in June 2022, Yale’s average per annum endowment return was 12.0 percent, exceeding the mean return for college and university endowments by an estimated 3.4 percent over the same period.

According to Longo, though, the appropriate comparison for Yale is not colleges and universities in aggregate. Instead, Longo said, Yale’s endowment is better compared to other large university endowments with illiquid assets and top external managers.

As the U.S. continues its breakneck pace of rate hikes, more people are incentivized to return their money, which harms foreign economies as the dollar grows in value and makes it more expensive to repay debts or purchase imports.

That is devastating for the foreign countries because when capital leaves their countries, investors dump foreign currency and they switch back to dollars, so that makes the dollar even stronger, and that collapses the pound, collapses the yen,” said Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School.

John Kerry, Al Gore and the New York Times wrap themselves in a toga of morality for their position on climate change. They ought to visit India or Africa or South America to see the naked truth—what the lack of affordable energy does to the lives of the poor.

To date, “smart contracts” have had only limited use. Nevertheless, they have the power to be transformative, particularly when combined with artificial intelligence (AI). The authors examine the possible combination of these two technologies and the potential opportunities it offers to resolve asset valuations, a perennially thorny issue between taxpayers and the IRS.

“The problem with redlining is it denies access to opportunity,” said Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School in Newark and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“You can’t get a mortgage. The appraisals will be off. The insurance is higher.”

“It has been a challenging fiscal and calendar year for most asset classes,” Rutgers Business School professor John M. Longo wrote in an email. “I would be surprised to see Harvard or any large endowment generate meaningful positive returns in the current reporting cycle.”

Why do car insurance rates (and even providers) vary so much from state to state?

Auto Insurance is regulated on a state (not federal) level, usually by state commissions. The sometimes-large variations occur because the experiences seen by the insurance companies also vary, and some areas (often with higher levels of congestion) experience more incidents where car insurance comes into play, thus forcing those companies to charge more to cover these higher expenses.

Rudolf Leuschner, an associate professor of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School, likens that plant shutdown to draining 40% of the water from a river.

"It came back online and they're producing again, but again, you have to start filling up that river with water. So it's not going to be like, 'OK, we start producing, everybody's happy and everybody can find everything.' It's going to take just as long as it took to wind down, if not longer," he said.

The professor predicts a slow, painful recovery from this shortage, saying it could take several more months to return to normalcy on the formula aisle.

“For many years, certain companies have basically been able to avoid paying U.S. income taxes — and now, in the worst case, they’ll have to pay in at a 15% rate,” said Jay Soled, a Rutgers Business School distinguished professor and director of the Master of Accountancy in Taxation.

“Many of these targeted companies park their profits overseas in low-tax jurisdictions to avoid U.S. taxes, so I do not think the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax will decimate manufacturing.”

With scarcity comes inflated prices. Morris Davis, a professor of finance at Rutgers Business School, pegs national residential land to cumulatively be worth more than $20 trillion. Davis estimated land accounts for 47 percent of home values, up nine percentage points from a decade ago.

Even in cities such as New York and San Francisco, where populations shrank during the pandemic, land is far more expensive today than it was decades ago. U.S. residential land alone is now estimated to be worth more than $20 trillion, according to Morris Davis, a professor of finance at Rutgers Business School who studies land values.

This historic land boom has provided a windfall for homeowners. Land now accounts for 47% of U.S. home values, estimates Mr. Davis. That is up from 38% in 2012 and less than 20% in the early 1960s. The rising value of land is responsible for almost all of the surge in home values in recent decades, he said.

The US Census reported that 18.7% of the U.S. population was Hispanic as of April 1, 2020. In New Jersey, recent estimates suggest that about 20.4% (nearly 1.8 million) are Hispanic, which ranks the state seventh among the top ten states with the largest Hispanic/Latino population in the nation.

As reported by the New Jersey Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (NJ-SHCC), the Garden State is home to over 120,000 Hispanic-owned businesses, which in turn create thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars in tax revenues – an essential component to funding municipal services and shoring up social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

“The Council on the Green Economy is an opportunity for New Jersey to imagine local supply chain resiliency and its influence on increasing economic development, innovation and workforce opportunities while significantly reducing our collective environmental impact,” said Kevin Lyons, Ph.D., Rutgers Business School.