Elections sometimes give policy makers incentives to pander to implement policies that voters think are in their best interest even though the policy maker knows they are not, says Professor Kenneth Shotts. In general, an effective media reduces this tendency to pander, "but there are some exceptions to this general rule."
The 2008 turmoil in world oil prices was not caused by an imbalance of supply and demand, argues Professor Kenneth Singleton of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Instead there was an "economically and statistically significant effect of investor flows on futures prices."
Eliminating sales quotas boosts company profits says Professor Harikesh Nair. In one case, the new sales compensation plan without quotas resulted in a 9% improvement in overall revenues, which translates to about $1 million of incremental revenues per month.
Policy makers need to understand how early-stage companies in their own area work, rather than try to create another Silicon Valley, says Stanford management professor George Foster. He is coauthor of a new report published by the World Economic Forum.
Young companies that adopt structured systems to run their operations in their early years grow three times faster than competitors and have a lower rate of CEO turnover, according to an award-winning research paper.
In the business world, women who are aggressive, assertive, and confident but who can turn these traits on and off depending on the social circumstances get more promotions than either men or other women, according to a recent study by Olivia O'Neill and Charles O'Reilly.
Observers of Silicon Valley have always assumed that the most successful companies get their competitive edge by paying their star employees more than the competition to fuel innovation. Now research, co-authored by Professor Kathryn Shaw, and using the academic field of insider econometrics, has been able to prove that this assumption is indeed true.
Permissive bankruptcy laws, not bad business downturns, seem to be the greatest cause of corporate bond defaults, according to Professor Ilya Strebulaev, co-author of a study that researched 150 years of figures.
The likelihood of temporary shocks, such as the 2006 contamination that shut down spinach growers, contributes in previously unexplored ways to CFOs? conservative approach to debt financing. In fact, says coauthor Ilya Strebulaev, managers should be even more focused on risk management.
Stanford experts have concluded that in the event of a nuclear detonation, people in large metropolitan areas are better off sheltering-in-place in basements for 12-24 hours than trying to evacuate immediately, unless a lengthy warning period is provided.
