All Insights Articles

Why is a venture capital firm encouraging the employees in a company it funds to give free music lessons? They’re trying to prove the thesis that companies that engage with their communities also reap a business advantage.

Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico and a scholar at Yale, argues that overreacting to fears about sovereign wealth funds could hobble the global financial system. But he also points to the real risks inherent in the global imbalances that have fueled the recent growth of SWFs.

Catherine Labio, an associate professor of comparative literature and French at Yale, studies the relationship between economics, fiction, and art. She teaches a course called Fictions of Capital, which explores the depiction of money and the economy from the 17th century to the present.

A firm of financiers, technologists, and policy mavens is bringing capital to bear on projects around the world that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They hope to help turn the tide against climate change — and make a healthy profit.

By 2006, the subprime market had grown to 20% of the total U.S. mortgage market, and 75% of these loans were securitized and sold off to investors around the world, facilitating an influx of capital. With credit easily available, more people than ever before were able to buy homes — but then the market seized up.

What used to be the new capital?

The Dubai International Financial Center was established in 2004 as a “gateway” to the capital of the oil-producing countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Yale SOM’s Ira Millstein and Jonathan Koppell spoke with a group of experienced investors in the region about the DIFC and the role of capital in the GCC.

The wealth generated by the dot-com boom of the 1990s produced a new generation of philanthropists, determined to use their capital and their business savvy to solve social problems. A decade later, have they transformed the world of philanthropy?

A South African government program aimed at addressing deep historical inequities enabled a union-owned investment fund to build up enough capital to reach around the globe. The mostly black workers in the union now own a piece of a hotel chain in the Middle East and a clean-energy company in Pittsburgh. How much can be learned from this success?

Q(n) readers offer a variety of perspectives on the question.