Faculty Viewpoints

China’s remarkable economic expansion has cooled recently, but it remains a fast-growing and fast-changing marketplace. Yale China expert Deborah Davis gives a sociologist’s view of the cultural environment in which Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs compete.

Professor Ravi Dhar runs through how recent research in psychology helps explain how we all make decisions when shopping. When are you impulsive? When do you really think things through? When do you make the good long-term choice? And when do you go for the junk food?

In the Boston Globe Magazine, Professor Edward Kaplan writes that although more Americans report being worried about terror attacks, we are safer than we often feel. He cites his research that estimated the number of hidden terror plots being planned in the U.S. at any given time.

Poor healthcare can do more than degrade quality of life; it can have a negative impact on a country's economic well-being. Elizabeth Bradley, professor of public health and director of the Yale Global Health Initiative, argues that when leaders make choices to improve public health they can foster virtuous cycles improving both health and economics. She also discusses the challenges facing China, the world's most populous nation, as it seeks to improve its healthcare system.

In the New York Times, Professor Robert Shiller writes that the United States should reduce government subsidies for homeownership, while finding another way to promote household saving.

Can laws created to rein in the monopolies of the industrial age still work in the information age? After spending a year as the top antitrust economist at the U.S. Department of Justice, Professor Fiona Scott Morton describes the state of antitrust regulation today.

In a New York Times op-ed, Professor Robert Shiller writes that President Obama’s proposal to change how inflation is measured in Social Security benefit calculations “…solves the wrong problem, and, in doing so, undermines the integrity of the Social Security system.” One alternative, suggests Shiller, is to link retirees’ benefits to GDP per capita, in current dollars, which would align the interests of the retired with those of society as a whole.

Professor Rodrigo Canales discusses his research into the trade-offs inherent in social enterprises and argues that people interested in the field should pay closer attention to the challenges of achieving both social good and market success.

In a New York Times op-ed, Senior Associate Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld writes about the call to separate the chairman and CEO roles at JPMorgan Chase. “While the model can work on occasion, it is surely no panacea that ensures good economic results or good governance,” he argues.

In an excerpt from his Policy Modeling class, Prof. Edward Kaplan walks through how statistical models can clarify questions about the best ways to fight terror plots.