You may recall a recent news story and photo of a young, enterprising man with a garage full of toilet paper, hand sanitizers, and other merchandise. This was early in March, and he decided to invest money in items that might escalate in value. Although there was a “run” on toilet paper, the young man certainly did not “corner the market” on these commodities. He broke no laws or used any inside political advantage. Other people were free to stuff their garages with toilet paper and hand sanitizers.
Lawrence Jepson understood the importance of global economics long before many of his peers in the 1970s. A Wall Street businessman, Jepson used to say if a Zurich banker sneezed, someone in the United States caught a cold. Jepson came to the United States as an immigrant from Denmark.
With a UNIBusiness education as a base, Becca Flynn Kettman (Marketing ’14) has been serving a larger purpose in her career track — working to improve and preserve our planet. Kettman is a fellow with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water in Cincinnati, Ohio.
If you’re prepared for each meeting with an agenda and/or classroom instruction and you’d like to take a poll, simply set one up prior to the meeting directly in Zoom. It’s easy to do and you’re able to share the results with participants during the meeting and download the results.
Zoom has become the virtual meeting platform of choice for thousands of people due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re new to Zoom, or virtual meetings in general, the idea of online meetings can be overwhelming for us who’ve never worked or taken classes from home.
A background in economics can be a launching point for any type of career, and it’s much more than a discipline focusing on human behavior and its effects on the world around us. In the business world, economics degrees typically lead to jobs in stocks, finance, banking and even government, and many of these positions don’t even have “economics” in their titles. The future is bright, as the demand for economists is expected to rise by 13% by 2030, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
COVID-19 is forcing us to make organizational adjustments that are outside of the comfort zone for some. Although it’s been reported that 43 percent of employees work remotely with some frequency, leading a team of employees from afar can feel daunting, especially if those employees are new to working from home.
A trendy idea circulating on the political left is student-loan debt forgiveness. For some graduates and non-graduates, student loans are, indeed, onerous.
The proponents are missing a fundamental ethical issue that business majors, in particular, should understand: YOU SIGNED A CONTRACT. Students and their parents sign contracts for student loans. The interest rates are often subsidized, and, in any event, given the Federal Reserve’s ongoing policy of keeping interest rates low, the terms are probably no more onerous than in the past.
Recently I’ve seen a spate of posts on Facebook—granted not the most veracious of mediums—bemoaning rich Americans’ penchant for “hoarding” their wealth. One envisions human versions of Disney’s Scrooge McDuck character defying physics by diving into treasure chests of gold coins.
Major American airlines are notorious for squeezing more passengers onto their planes. The image of sardines in a can is apt. Passengers, of course, whine. Pundits, consumer advocates, and legislators are outraged and claim airlines are only interested in increasing profits. Is it ethical to reduce costs or to increase revenues in order to increase profits?
Economists can shed light on this situation. Many ethicists lack training in economics and may misunderstand some of the nuances involved.
