Knowledge at Wharton

Philadelphia-based Comcast the largest cable company in the U.S. has made a bid to merge its operations with NBC Universal -- home to the NBC television network Universal Studios and popular cable channels including Bravo USA CNBC and MSNBC. If the deal goes through it would create a programming giant allowing Comcast to produce and distribute content throughout its cable networks and on web sites...

Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski in late September outlined principles of net neutrality to promote more open use of the Internet. What will these developments mean for business in the U.S. and other parts of the world? In a new interview format called Five Questions Rajesh Jain CEO of India-based Netcore asks Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin W...

Unlike micro lending -- the better-known side of micro finance -- micro insurance has been a hard sell among the world’s poor. The reasons why include a lack of understanding of how insurance products work a general reticence on the part of poor populations to part with their meager financial resources badly designed products and a shortage of localized risk management knowledge among providers. W...

According to some estimates high-frequency trading by investment banks hedge funds and other players accounts for 60% to 70% of all trades in U.S. stocks explaining the enormous increase in trading volume over the past few years. But critics of the practice worry that those profits are coming out of ordinary investors’ pockets. Defenders on the other hand say high-frequency trading improves market...

On September 14 President Barack Obama gave a speech in New York to mark the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers failure. It was a year ago when -- during the course of a single jaw-dropping week -- the investment bank declared bankruptcy; Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch; and the U.S. federal government bailed out American International Group. How has Wall Street changed during the past yea...

For cable TV companies in the U.S. August 28 was a day to celebrate. Ending several years of regulatory battles a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals came down in favor of Philadelphia-based Comcast which sought to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s contentious 30% market share limit on cable TV operators. Not everyone is happy about the ruling fearing it will lead to cable monopolie...

Thailand’s Bumrungrad International Hospital is one of a growing number of institutions making a name for themselves among ”medical tourists” by offering patients from Boston to Bahrain a combination of lower-cost state-of-the-art medical care along with service worthy of a five-star hotel. But what will it take for such hospitals to gain acceptance among national policy makers major insurers and...

When the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became a nation in the early 1970s it had neither a formal education system nor a university to call its own. Today however with new private and public universities springing up across the emirates the UAE sees a larger role for itself as a promoter of peace and economic development through education according to Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan the nation’s mi...

Entrepreneur Farhad Mohit is hardly resting on his laurels although he could. In 1996 he launched BizRate a consumer rating site and then in 2004 Shopzilla a shopping search engine. His latest venture is DotSpots a service that lets people update the news in real-time with dots or distributed objects of thought. These could include mini-blog posts containing text videos images documents perspectiv...

Although some upbeat economic news in recent weeks might indicate the beginning of the end of the recession there’s still plenty of ”wreckage” to deal with says Wharton real estate professor Peter D. Linneman. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the housing and commercial property sectors which have taken one of their worst beatings ever. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Linneman draws...

What’s in a name? Plenty when you’re an entrepreneur starting up a new business says Tayeb Kamali who recalls the struggle to convince others in the early days of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) that the United Arab Emirates’ new government-sponsored university needed a name that would be associated with leading-edge education in the Arab region. However as HCT’s Abu Dhabi-based vice chanc...

Economic progress ethics and social entrepreneurship are three themes that have long had a place on the agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF) well before phrases like ”subprime lending” had crossed the lips of bankers and Wall Street investors. But how can these and other global topics remain relevant during today’s market turbulence? To answer that question Knoweldge@Wharton spoke with Gilbert...

Following a high-profile career in finance in which he became one of the first well-known hedge fund managers Michael Steinhardt began the Taglit-Birthright Israel program a philanthropic enterprise which has provided free 10-day trips to Israel for some 220 000 Jewish youth to learn more about their heritage. Steinhardt spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about how the program helps to improve the co...

Anyone who follows current events sees images of Israel that suggest a country defined by conflict and violence. Yet Israel has also made substantial contributions to the global marketplace in such industries as technology and medicine. The challenge for Israel going forward is to make the world more aware of its hospitable business environment. Marketing professor Yoram (Jerry) Wind and David Pot...

Early reports show that Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has managed to draw more users than its predecessor Live Search. According to Wharton faculty however  while Microsoft’s campaign to promote Bing has been successful so far it is unclear whether its well-funded effort will make significant inroads in a market dominated by Google. On the other hand they believe the campaign helped pressure...

Ford reported its first sales gain in 20 months thanks to the U.S. government’s ”cash for clunkers” rebate program that gives consumers a rebate of up to $4 500 to trade in older cars for new and more fuel-efficient models. Other manufacturers said their continuing sales declines would have been worse without the program. All in all the officially named Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) provided...

From California to Connecticut the global recession has squeezed state finances forcing many state governments to slash services raise taxes or find unusually creative ways to close the gap. According to experts the widespread budget shortfalls -- expected to continue through at least 2011 -- threaten to put a drag on the nation’s economic recovery and undermine President Obama’s stimulus plan. ”T...

Why is Hollywood in love with tried-and-true sequels and established franchises rather than producing original scripts? According to Wharton faculty the industry’s embrace of the sequel is an attempt to minimize its risk during an uncertain time when the motion picture business finds its usual sources of funding and revenues under pressure from the recession. ”If studio [executives] launch a movie...

According to Wharton finance professor Richard J. Herring more than half of the lending to households over the last five to six years ”has come from the securitization market not from banks’ balance sheets.” For that reason Herring and Allen Levinson founder and principal of Credit Risk Advisors say that the Obama administration’s efforts to resuscitate the ailing economy should be focused not onl...

As the global recession drags on new concerns are rising about commercial real estate. Loans taken out during the boom years are coming due but commercial property owners are contending with higher vacancy rates lower rents and a less-than-receptive environment for refinancing their obligations. Industry analysts and politicians suggest that commercial real estate is about to become the next high-...

The cable television industry’s answer to the increasing threat from Internet video sites such as YouTube and Hulu focuses on a clear-cut strategy: Make cable subscriptions portable to any Internet accessible device such as a laptop computer or even a mobile phone for no additional charge. Experts at Wharton say the move is a promising early step in meeting the Internet video challenge but they ex...

Corporate leaders in the United States often draw leadership lessons -- good and bad -- from the examples set by American presidents. But in looking to the White House it’s important to recognize that history’s take on presidential performance is subject to change according to presidential historian Richard Norton Smith who spoke at a recent Wharton Leadership Conference. He offered 10 rules for p...

Financial advisors face difficult challenges given the global economic and financial crisis. Yet advisors can not only survive the downturn but also thrive during it according to the authors of a new book Marketing for Financial Advisors: Build Your Business Bring in Clients and Establish Your Brand. Indeed Wharton marketing professors Eric T. Bradlow and Patti Williams and Keith Niedermeier direc...

In separate interviews Wharton finance professors Franklin Allen and Jeremy J. Siegel offered contrasting reactions to the large second-quarter profits at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Allen said that while the firms’ quarterly results reflected overall gains on Wall Street  ”by and large you can’t make large sums of money without taking risks.” He worries that the government’s intervention in th...

In their new book titled Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities Wharton professors Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich point out that identifying new opportunities shouldn’t be seen as a luxury but a necessity. They note that creativity and process-driven rigor can go hand in hand when it comes to vetting and managing new ideas. One way to do this they explain is...