Where Is the Auto Industry Headed?

Self-driving cars promise a profound change to our day-to-day experience of transportation, perhaps eliminating the scourge of congestion with clever algorithms or even turning the daily grind of the commute into a leisure hour. How this nascent technology evolves will also reshape the auto industry, pitting industrial stalwarts against tech-industry newcomers. Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld spoke with former Ford CEO Mark Fields about what’s next for the car business.

MARK FIELDS 

 NOVEMBER 10, 2017

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/where-is-the-auto-industry-headed

Why Is Healthcare So Expensive?

The data covers 2007 to 2011 and more than 88 million unique individuals, or nearly one in three individuals in the U.S. with private health insurance. While it is anonymized, the data are incredibly granular. Basically, we have claims-level data for 1% of GDP each year.
There’s a lot we haven’t known about why healthcare in the U.S. is so expensive. In part, that’s because almost everything we knew came from analysis of Medicare data. Medicare covers about 16% of the population, primarily people over 65. The world of the privately insured has been a big black box, but about 60% of the country gets their coverage from private insurers and they are under 65.

ZACK COOPER FEBRUARY 12, 2016

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/why-is-healthcare-so-expensive

Can We Adapt to Climate Change?AUGUST 03, 2017

The rippling impacts of climate change are hitting businesses, governments, and society. Global Network experts offer assessments of some of the key systemic risks and challenges across geography and level of economic development.
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-we-adapt-to-climate-change

Can Social Enterprise Power Africa?

Two out of every three people in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to reliable power. Infrastructure costs put a traditional power grid out of reach for remote communities, but cheap solar home systems can transform people’s lives. Nate Heller ’09 explains the innovations that allow his social impact company to bring solar power to West Africa.

NATE HELLER 

 AUGUST 22, 2017

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-social-enterprise-power-africa

Can Blockchain Become the Infrastructure of Financial Services?

Blockchain software is best known for its role in creating bitcoin, but the distributed ledger technology could have an much larger impact as a secure, nearly frictionless replacement for the slow, expensive, arcane financial services infrastructure. Digital Asset’s CEO Blythe Masters sees a chance for that in the near future. 

BLYTHE MASTERS 

 DECEMBER 28, 2017

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-blockchain-become-the-infrastructure-of-financial-services

How Do Leaders Foster Engagement and Creativity?

Workers aren’t widgets. Companies need employees who are more than three-dimensional versions of their job descriptions. Research has shown that companies are efficient and effective when a proactive, flexible, fill-in-where-there’s-a-need ethos of “organizational citizenship” is the norm. That works best when employees can go above and beyond in ways that are intrinsically meaningful to them, according to the Harvard Business Review.

So how do leaders foster a culture where workers show engagement, initiative, and creativity? Yale Insights consulted with Yale SOM’s Heidi Brooks for guidance on techniques that bring excitement, engagement, and meaning to the workplace.

HEIDI BROOKS 

 DECEMBER 14, 2017

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/how-do-leaders-foster-engagement-and-creativity

What’s the Future of Work?

The robots are coming! A Pew Research Center survey found that 72% of Americans are concerned about robots and computers taking jobs currently done by humans—though just 2% report having actually lost a job to automation.

In a conversation with Yale Insights last year, Yale SOM labor economist Lisa Kahn said that the effects of automation are already being felt throughout the economy. In fact, the Great Recession likely accelerated the process, both by slowing demand, giving firms a chance to retool without losing sales, and by providing an excuse to lay off unproductive workers.

“We have seen the influences of automation in almost every pocket of the labor market, from the very low end of the skill spectrum to the very high end,” she said. “The future of labor essentially comes down to, where are computers going to replace us and where are computers going to augment us?”

JEFF SCHWARTZ  

 NOVEMBER 08, 2017

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-s-the-future-of-work

What can you learn from Machiavelli?

The Prince was not even read by the person to whom it was dedicated, Lorenzo de Medici. If the truth be told, this strange little treatise for which Machiavelli is famous, or infamous, never aided—at least not in any systematic way—anyone in the actual business of governing. The most one can say about The Prince in this regard is that Kissinger and Nixon preferred it as their bedtime reading. 

So why are we still reading this treatise five centuries later?

ROBERT P. HARRISON

 JANUARY 01, 2011

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-can-you-learn-machiavelli

Can Better Teamwork Save Lives?

Poor coordination among members of a healthcare team can lead to higher costs and complications including death. By gathering and analyzing real-time data about how team members interact, Yale SOM’s Marissa King and her collaborators investigated whether a dedicated care coordinator can help improve outcomes—and in the process, learned just how delicate team dynamics can be.

MARISSA D. KING

 FEBRUARY 08, 2018
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-better-teamwork-save-lives

The Agony and Ecstasy of the Gig Economy...

When we think about work, we usually picture office employees or factory workers clocking in and out of their jobs. But many people are no longer tethered to an organization. By one estimate, more than a fifth of the American labor force performs work that is not part of a traditional full-time job.

“The shape of work is shifting radically,” says Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM whose research focuses on how people experience and make meaning of their work.

In the past, most research on work identity investigated how people relate to employers. “We tended to conflate work with organizations,” Wrzesniewski says. Even when studies examined independent work, they usually focused on people who were members of occupational communities, such as freelance creative workers.

In a new study recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Wrzesniewski, Gianpiero Petriglieri of INSEAD, and Sue Ashford of the University of Michigan delved into the lives of independent workers. The researchers found that independent workers seemed much more sensitive to setbacks than typical employees. But the study participants also felt their work was more meaningful than an office job. “The lows are much lower; the highs are much higher,” Wrzesniewski says.

AMY WRZESNIEWSKI

 FEBRUARY 20, 2018

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-the-gig-economy

What is neuroeconomics?

Neuroeconomics tries to bridge the disciplines of neuroscience, psychology, and economics. I think of economics and psychology as really, in some sense, one discipline. I know that that's a strident statement to make, but they really are siblings separated at birth. Psychology and economics are complementary disciplines, in many cases studying the same phenomena: decision making, value-based judgment, heuristics. One side approaches it from a phenomenological, experiment-driven perspective and the other from an abstract, theoretical perspective. 
J. Cohen...
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-is-neuroeconomics

Introduction to Neuroeconomics: How the Brain Makes Decisions...

Economics, psychology, and neuroscience are converging today into a unified discipline of Neuroeconomics with the ultimate aim of creating a single, general theory of human decision-making. Neuroeconomics provides biologists, economists, psychologists and social scientists with a deeper understanding of how they make their own decisions and how others decide. Neuroscience, when allied with psychology and economics, creates powerful new models to explain why we make decisions. Neurobiological mechanisms of decision-making, decisions under risk, trust and cooperation will be central issues in this course. You will be provided with the most recent evidence from brain-imaging techniques (fMRI, TMS, etc.) and introduced to the explanatory models behind them.

https://tr.coursera.org/learn/neuroeconomics

Financial Inclusion...

The Financial Inclusion Global Initiative (FIGI) is a three-year program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to support and accelerate the implementation of country-led reform actions to meet national financial inclusion targets, and ultimately the global ‘Universal Financial Access 2020’ goal.  
Financial inclusion is a critical enabler for poverty reduction and inclusive growth. Access to transaction accounts opens up a pathway to broader financial inclusion, whereby people and firms can make financial transactions more efficiently and safely, access funds (whether payments, credit, savings, or other) invest in the future, and cope with economic shocks. Access to transaction accounts also enables participation in the digital economy, and is a critical building block for digital development too.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/financialinclusion/brief/figi

World Bank & Financial Inclusion...

Around 2 billion people don’t use formal financial services and more than 50% of adults in the poorest households are unbanked. Financial inclusion is a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity. WBG President Kim has called for Universal Financial Access (UFA) by 2020.

Behavioral Science for Development...

Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD): Using the Behavioral Sciences to Fight Global Poverty and Reduce Inequality

Policymakers are increasingly turning to the behavioral sciences to tackle intractable policy challenges, including increasing student learning, raising savings rates, promoting energy and resource conservation, increasing productivity, improving sanitation practices, strengthening institutions, and reducing corruption.

Behaviorally informed policy emphasizes the importance of context for decision making and behavior. It examines a wide set of influences, paying attention to the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect what people think and do. It addresses details in bureaucracies, technologies, and service delivery that are often overlooked in standard policy design but that dramatically influence the effectiveness of development programs and projects, especially in low-income contexts. Behaviorally informed policy can provide creative solutions to difficult challenges, often at low cost. Finally, it helps policy makers themselves avoid some of the decision traps and biases that affect all individuals.

The Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD), the World Bank’s behavioral sciences team, works closely with project teams, governments, and other partners to diagnose, design, and evaluate behaviorally informed interventions. By collaborating with a worldwide network of scientists and practitioners, the eMBeD team provides answers to important economic and social questions, and contributes to the global effort to eliminate poverty and increase equity.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/embed

WorldBank & Poverty...

There has been marked progress on reducing poverty over the past decades. The world attained the first Millennium Development Goal target—to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015—five years ahead of schedule, in 2010. According to the most recent estimates, in 2013, 10.7 percent of the world’s population lived on less than US$1.90 a day, that’s down from 35 percent in 1990.

http://www.worldbank.org/

Promoting a More Inclusive and Sustainable Development for China...

BEIJING, February 22, 2018—China can achieve more inclusive and sustainable development with coordinated reforms across a broad range of areas that maximize development impact and address its development challenges, says the World Bank Group’s new Systematic Country Diagnostic for China.

“China’s remarkable progress in reducing extreme poverty has significantly contributed to the decline in global poverty,” said Hoon S. Soh, World Bank Program Leader for economic policies for China, "The World Bank Group will continue to support China’s goals to eliminate extreme poverty and ensure inclusive and sustainable growth."

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/02/22/

Sustainable Development...

Sustainable development recognizes that growth must be both inclusive and environmentally sound to reduce poverty and build shared prosperity for today’s population, and to continue to meet the needs of future generations.


The three pillars of sustainable development – economic growth, environmental stewardship, social inclusion – carry across all sectors of development, from cities to agriculture, infrastructure, energy development and use, water, and transportation. The question facing countries, cities, corporations, and development organizations today is not whether to embrace sustainable development but how.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/sustainabledevelopment

Global Economy to Up to 3.1 percent in 2018 but Future Growth a Concern

WASHINGTON, January 9, 2018— The World Bank forecasts global economic growth to edge up to 3.1 percent in 2018 after a much stronger-than-expected 2017, as the recovery in investment, manufacturing, and trade continues, and as commodity-exporting developing economies benefit from firming commodity prices.

However, this is largely seen as a short-term upswing. Over the longer term, slowing potential growth—a measure of how fast an economy can expand when labor and capital are fully employed—puts at risk gains in improving living standards and reducing poverty around the world, the World Bank warns in its January 2018 Global Economic Prospects.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/01/09/

Infant deaths remain common in the developing world http://econ.st/2onHJ1T