Research

Anyone experiencing the current political climate might easily conclude that our system of governing is either severely dysfunctional, even broken.  

During the financial crisis of 2007-2009, the banking industry suffered a huge decline in liquidity on their own balance sheets, decreasing the amount of money they could lend. Did banks’ efforts to absorb the liquidity shock spike a decline in overall credit supply?

Banks were hit hard during the 2007-2009 financial crisis: in a short span, interbank lending markets froze, markets for asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities collapsed, and borrowers utilized previously approved loan commitments.

This has been an eventful summer for all of us who care about the world. In June, we marked the 20^th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. In July, we recorded the hottest-ever month in the United States. In August and September, we listened to the two presidential candidates as they squared off on climate change in their respective convention speeches. And later in September, we learned that the drastic melting of the Arctic sea ice had set a new record, with ice covering just 24 percent of the surface of the Arctic Ocean.

Some cultural critics slam the mixing of art and economics, insisting that commerce cheapens creativity. For Ben Aslinger, that intersection is where things start to get interesting.

“Everything is economic in the long run,” says the assistant professor in Bentley’s English and Media Studies Department. “Our system of commodity exchange and payment actually creates the conditions for creativity.”

Boards of directors have two jobs: oversight and advising. But can too much oversight lead to worse advice?

“Once upon a time, serving as a corporate board director was a prestigious thing. Today, thanks to the intense burdens of monitoring and governance we’ve piled onto boards generally and independent directors specifically, board service is more like a pain in the backside. And now some clever academics have tried to quantify precisely how much that pain costs corporate operations” (Compliance Week, November 15, 2010).

The cover of a recent Chronicle Review sums up academic reaction to a new book by linguist Dan Everett. Rendered in caricature, Bentley’s dean of arts and sciences exchanges scowls with the man who has dominated the field for some 50 years.

“Angry Words,” reads the headline. “Is Noam Chomsky’s reign over linguistics at an end?”

Everett chuckles at the illustration but answers the question with a serious “yes.”

Business ethicists are quick to comment on sensational cases of compensation involving very high pay for CEOs and very low pay for workers in overseas factories and sweatshops. But why do they rarely discuss the ethics of compensation in general, including for “ordinary” workers?

The Boston Globe's 11/19/12 feature on selling hospice care to the public focused on the most benign aspects of that process. While it is true that hospice care in America was built through the commendable efforts of committed volunteers and grossly underpaid health care professionals, the current industry has morphed into the fastest growing “product” purchased with Medicare dollars.

Sometimes, a hearty collaboration starts with something as simple as a good lunch.

Three years ago, Bentley Assistant Professor of Finance Irving Morgan (left) had a research paper starting to simmer. He ran into Fred Ledley in the faculty cafeteria and asked the professor of natural and applied sciences to review some initial findings. Ledley liked what he saw, and suggested working together at some point.

In the face of time constraints imposed by managed care, the best physicians recognize the merit of listening carefully to their patients.

Listening is at the heart of good medicine. Indeed, patients want their stories heard. It is a simple premise, but a challenge to put into place in medicine, where the average doctor’s appointment face-time lasts only about six minutes.