Category: Finance

When the NFL draft comes to town, the host city’s hotels, bars and restaurants fill, while its downtown gets three days of national exposure. Detroit’s 2024 draft drew more than 775,000 fans and generated a reported US$214 million in economic impact, including $161 million in visitor spending, according to The Associated Press. Visitor spending is […]

When Michael Jackson died in 2009,his fairly straightforward 5-page will left everything he owned to a family trust – an estate planning technique for giving away property that allows for privacy. The trust benefits Jackson’s three children and his mother, but nearly two decades later, Jackson’s estate, now worth an estimated US$2 billion, still hasn’t […]

Can giving homeless people US$750 a month to use any way they choose help them move into long-term housing? I am the director of the University of Southern California Homelessness Policy Research Institute. My research team, in partnership with Miracle Messages, a San Francisco social services nonprofit, set out to answer that question in a […]

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expected to soon become a public company in what may be the biggest initial public offering in history. But my new research suggests that investors who buy shares of the company are unlikely to see the explosive growth that past IPOs had. The rocket and satellite maker, which confidentially filed to […]

Given that fewer Americans are donating and volunteering and that people in the U.S. appear to be losing trust in one another, it may seem like generosity has eroded in the United States. The nation’s political, social and economic divides might only strengthen that impression. But my recent research suggests that this belief would be […]

About 1 in 10 American workers are earning a living as a gig worker. That means they find their customers through Lyft, DoorDash, TaskRabbit and other digital platforms, or do another form of what the IRS and others call “on-demand work.” As a certified public accountant, attorney and tax professor, I study how new tax […]

Americans are skipping restaurant dinners, delaying car purchases and scouring for grocery deals. Amid tariff anxiety and broader stress over affordability, consumer confidence has dropped to levels not seen in over a decade, according to The Conference Board, a business think tank. At this point, it’s wealthier consumers who are powering the bulk of spending […]

Entrepreneurs displaying narcissistic behavior are better able to convince investors to give them money when their grandiosity comes across as confidence as opposed to defensiveness or arrogance. That’s what we learned from watching 12 seasons of the popular reality TV show “Shark Tank” to better understand how an entrepreneur’s psychological profile affects their ability to […]

When the NFL draft arrives in Pittsburgh in April 2026, city officials are sure to tout projected economic impact figures. They will likely point to the US$73 million generated by Green Bay, Wisconsin, and the surrounding area in 2025, the $213 million generated by Detroit in 2024, or the $164 million by Kansas City the […]

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 […]