MEDIA ALERT: July 26, 2011 Pitfalls of Qualified Residential Mortgages and a Simple Solution

With the Aug. 1 deadline fast approaching for comments on Credit Risk Retention and the Qualified Residential Mortgage rules, Cliff Rossi, an executive in residence, tackles the topic with his latest policy briefing. The proposed QRM provisions oversimplify the risk tradeoffs among borrower, product and collateral attributes in such a manner that is likely to raise borrowing costs and prevent a large segment of well-qualified borrowers from obtaining a mortgage.

The Academy of Management will honor Professor Emeritus Ken G. Smith with its Distinguished Educator Award in San Antonio next month. The Academy of Management, the oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world with nearly 20,000 members, selected Smith for his work developing doctoral students and junior faculty.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently replaced its food pyramid nutrition guidelines with a user-friendly plate icon to help Americans understand the proportions of foods they should be eating each day for a healthy diet. In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. Rebecca Ratner talks about how her research supports the new nutrition guidelines.

We’ve seen volatility in the prices at the pump this summer. Have we already hit the peak this summer or should we expect prices to continue to rise? In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. Charles E. Olson talks about the factors that impact gas prices.

The summer humidity hangs over Washington – along with another hot and sticky issue: What to do about the federal budget and the looming legally limited ceiling on how much money our nation can borrow. With a fast-approaching Aug. 2 deadline, lawmakers have spent months squabbling about the problem, which could have big impacts on the global economy. “The answer is clear – we have to raise the ceiling. And we need to get serious about reducing the long-term deficit,” says Curt Grimm, dean’s professor of supply chain and strategy. “There are plenty of ways to do this.”

The U.S. debt is ticking away past $14 trillion and threatens to hit the current federally imposed limit on how much we borrow to keep our economy afloat. What are the impacts if this limit is not raised in time as lawmakers squabble of the details of how to manage the country’s debt crisis?

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Cristian Dezsö talks about the wage gap between men and women and how the children of CEO come into play. The gap between wages earned by men and women is still a pervasive worldwide phenomenon. But new research finds that when an organization’s male CEO has a daughter, the relative pay for women at those firms goes up, narrowing the gap.

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business held first Marketing Academic Research Colloquium (MARC) on May 6, 2011. Speakers and attendees included faculty and graduate students from the Smith School, the Smeal College of Business at the Pennsylvania State University, the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh as well as DC area schools.

MEDIA ALERT: May 3, 2011 Business Lessons Could Hold Clues to How Bin Laden’s Death Will Impact Al Qaeda, Economy UMD’s Smith School of Business Experts Offer Insights With the 10-year U.S. manhunt for Osama Bin Laden ending in the terrorist leader’s death, the world is watching for the impacts. Lessons from business could hold clues to how the loss of the leader might impact the Al Qaeda organization and the global economic climate. Organizational Effects Professor Paul Tesluk weighs in on how Bin Laden’s death may affect the Al Qaeda organization.