Category: Finance

Economist Larry Summers will resign from his tenured job as a professor at Harvard University, the school announced on Feb. 25, 2026, following heightened scrutiny of his ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers will leave at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, with a new title: president emeritus. It’s a […]

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen died on Oct. 15, 2018, he left behind an estimated US$26 billion that he wanted to largely leave to charity. Allen died at 65 of septic shock after a yearslong cancer battle. He’s back in the news because his estate is finally selling an asset that represents nearly a quarter […]

It’s a familiar experience for many Americans: You’re watching your favorite show and suddenly you’re ambushed by an ad for a drug whose name sounds like a Wi-Fi password, before a relentlessly cheerful voice tells you to “Ask your doctor” and then blasts through a side-effect list that’s laughably long. But that might soon change. […]

Have you ever received some money through a GoFundMe campaign or Venmo or CashApp transfers after a medical emergency, natural disaster or other crisis? If so, you may have also gotten an unwelcome surprise: a federal tax form that treats what you got as a gift as if it were earned income. And receiving this […]

President Donald Trump’s economic agenda took a major hit when the Supreme Court struck down many of his most sweeping tariffs. While Trump has options to restore some of the tariffs, he’s losing his most powerful tool to impose them almost at will as a bargaining chip with other countries. In a 6-3 decision on […]

If the government had found a way to save US$10 for every dollar it spent helping low-income people get healthier, wouldn’t it make sense for it to keep doing that? Well, that’s exactly what the U.S. government did when it piloted the SNAP-Ed program in 1977. This U.S. Department of Agriculture program persisted for nearly […]

Immigration to the U.S. is often framed as a problem to be managed, controlled or punished. Immigrants are often derided for crossing the border without authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. citizens. This rhetoric has intensified when Donald Trump has been in the White House. Trump and officials in his administrations have repeatedly characterized immigrants […]

OpenAI, the maker of the most popular AI chatbot, used to say it aimed to build artificial intelligence that “safely benefits humanity, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” according to its 2023 mission statement. But the ChatGPT maker seems to no longer have the same emphasis on doing so “safely.” While reviewing its […]

Do women board members make a company more innovative or risk averse? The answer is both, according to our recent study. It all depends on how the company performs relative to its goals. Professors Małgorzata Smulowitz, Didier Cossin and I examined 524 S&P 1500 companies from 1999 to 2016, measuring innovation through patent activity. Patents […]

For the past decade I have volunteered at St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Kensington, for those not from Philly, has long had a reputation for potent but affordable street drugs. Interstate 95 and the Market-Frankford elevated commuter train line provide easy access to the neighborhood for buyers and […]