D CEO: “Recruiting Strategies and Compensation Trends,” 07/25/2022
Robin Pinkley, Janet and Craig Duchossois Endowed Professor of Management and Organizations and Master of Science in Management program director, offers strategies that employers should use when recruiting new talent in a D CEO article. To attract Gen Z and younger millennials, who are more focused on work-life balance than previous generations, Pinkley recommends: “Make sure your hiring strategies and compensation packages reflect this generational shift. … Lose the rigidity in compensation packages; ask people what they care about, and structure plans accordingly. … Rethink everything and build a menu of options.”

Fox News: “Is Biden’s Student Debt Handout Worth It? Nobody Knows,” 09/07/2022
Michael Davis, senior lecturer in economics and business strategy, questions the math and rationale behind President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative. Davis wrote in an op-ed for Fox News: “We’re not going to get a nice orderly bill for all of this spending. We know spending billions for debt relief means [a] combination of reduced spending for other things, higher taxes and more borrowing. But how much of each? Nobody knows… But before we look to Big Government to solve a problem, can’t we ask Big Government to answer our questions with something other than, ‘Nobody knows’?”

Business Insider: “8 Reasons Your Grocery Bill Is Sky-High Right Now—and What You Can Do About It,” 09/17/2022
Edward J. Fox, W.R. and Judy Howell Director of The JCPenney Center for Retail Excellence and Corrigan Endowed Professor, suggests that inflation may not be entirely to blame for high grocery prices. Grocery stores have intentional marketing techniques they use to entice customers to buy. “When people walk in the store, they see key items at low prices, and that influences their perceptions of the store’s prices,” he said in a recent Business Insider article. “It sets the tone for the rest of your shopping trip.”

Dallas Innovates: “The Last Word: SMU’s Dr. Simon Mak on Entrepreneurship as a Calling,”
Simon Mak, executive director of the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship and professor of practice, guided entrepreneurs during the Cox School’s second-ever Dallas Startup Week, held Aug. 7-11. Mak’s comments about following his own calling from entrepreneurship into higher education went viral on social media after being featured in Dallas Innovates. “So my encouragement to you today is to take a chance and #FollowYourCalling, and you will experience life beyond your imagination!”

Orange County Register: “COVID’s Hidden Victim: Economic Freedom,” 09/08/2022
Robert Lawson, Jerome M. Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom, wrote an opinion piece for the Orange County Register in conjunction with the release of the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Annual Economic Freedom of the World Report, which analyzes several economic indicators including regulation, size of government, property rights, government spending and taxation. This year’s report, based on 2020 data (the most recent available), also captures the effect of COVID-19- related restrictions. Lawson and his co-authors found that the pandemic stymied “freedoms to buy, sell, move, hire, fire, invest and earn income and keep it.” Lawson writes: “I take no position on the efficacy of the various policies designed to deal with the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of public health… That is a question for epidemiologists and health economists to work out. My concern is economic freedom and its benefits for human well-being. On that margin, the new EFW report delivers a sobering message — government policies in response to the pandemic were a catastrophe for economic freedom.”

The Wall Street Journal: “What Happens When M.B.A. Students Don’t Tell Recruiters Their Grades?” 09/17/2022
Sorabh Tomar, assistant professor of accounting, partnered with two researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Delaware to explore the effects of grade nondisclosure (GND) policies in MBA programs. While proponents say GND reduces competitiveness among peers, critics say it deprives employers of a valuable tool to assess candidates. Tomar and his study co-authors found that MBAs are less likely to stay at their first job out of school for longer than a year. “If GND facilitates students’ self- discovery of their talents and interests,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “GND might lead to more stable matches by reducing student-employer mismatch.”

The Dallas Morning News: “Too Much of a Good Thing for Texas? Uncle Sam’s Pumping Up Wind, Solar and Batteries,” 08/12/2022
Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute, is cautious about the Inflation Reduction Act, a newly passed federal climate law. Projects in the ERCOT pipeline, which handles 90% of Texas’ electric load, are currently weighted toward renewables. Bullock told The Dallas Morning News, “What worries me is the lack of natural gas” coming onto the grid. “We really don’t have another choice for increasing baseload generation… And we need more dispatchable power.” Investors are eager to back clean energy projects, so if the new tax credits lead to reducing carbon in Texas’ thermal fleet, the industry would benefit,” Bullock says. “Anything that makes the economics a little more favorable will help,” he says, adding that renewables are an important and permanent part of the equation.

Financial Times: “How We Compiled the FT-Nikkei Investing in America Ranking,” 10/5/22
Dean Stansel, research associate professor in the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom, served as a source for a new ranking created by the Financial Times that measures which U.S. cities are most attractive to foreign investors. According to the publication, its new ranking “is modeled after the economic freedom index compiled by Canadian think tank the Fraser Institute and research by Dean Stansel … who also worked on the Fraser Institute’s index.”