Politics and Policy

Nobel Laureate Robert J. Shiller says that an event on the magnitude of the 2008-2009 financial crisis has to have many causes, but he sees “the spirit of the times” as a driving force behind many of them. In a lecture at Yale SOM, he described how he sees this spirit acting in everything from Fed policy to the growth in casinos.

Europe is still struggling to emerge from the financial crisis. Though recent stress tests by the European Central Bank gave passing grades to 90% of the region’s banks, critics question the transparency and rigor of the tests. Professor Sascha Steffen of ESMT European School of Management and Technology, a member of the Global Network for Advanced Management, talked with Yale Insights about the state of the banking system and the challenges of designing and implementing a single system to oversee banks across the Eurozone.

Continuing weakness in the European economy, plus squabbling between Germany and France over the direction of Europe, has sparked new concerns about the future of the Eurozone. But José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, argues that reforms made since the last financial crisis should help keep Europe afloat.

Millions of people around the world want to swim in tropical waters and take in unsullied wilderness. Can the Philippines build a productive ecotourism industry around its natural environment? The Asian Institute of Management’s Fernando Y. Roxas talks about the country’s chances of claiming a link in the “tourism supply chain.”

Modeling the economic consequences of climate change is difficult, uncertain work. In addition, any result is sure to be subjected to political attack. For decades, Yale's William Nordhaus has been developing models that can inform policy decisions.

Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero discusses Spain’s long, difficult recovery from the global economic crisis and the lessons of the crisis for the future of the European Union.

Millions of government workers in the U.S. are relying on pension plans for retirement, and yet these plans are underfunded by at least $1 trillion. Asset manager Ranji Nagaswami ’86 argues that addressing this challenge is about more than assets and liabilities—we have to look at how funds are run and, critically, how they think about risk.

In a New York Times op-ed, Professor Robert Shiller writes that efforts to prepare for climate change should include the use of private institutions of risk management, such as insurance and securitization, to share risk and smooth the unpredictable effects of future disasters.

Regulation is often a contentious issue, but most agree that some is necessary and too much is harmful. How do you find the sweet spot? Yale Insights asked practitioners to talk about regulation that impacts their industries.

Social structures, attitudes, and laws can seem unchangeable—and then in the historical blink of an eye, a society is transformed. What prompts such change? Margaret Marshall, the judge who wrote a key decision in the development of same-sex marriage in the U.S., says it takes a lot more than any one court case.