SMITH BRAIN TRUST – Are you ready to entrust your retirement savings to a robot? Investment advice is increasingly coming to clients from nonhuman sources, whether they realize it or not, as more money-management firms look to automated services to augment their team of human advisers and deepen the science behind stock-picking.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Gillette is shaving its prices by as much as 20 percent and focusing on its less-expensive products to compete with cheaper rivals, such as Dollar Shave Club. And the move is rattling investors, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — People who share copyrighted content on digital piracy sites don’t get paid or protected from lawsuits. So why do they do it? “The major motivation is building reputation in these online communities,” says Kalinda Ukanwa, one of 34 women PhD candidates at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “They want bragging rights.”

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — The daily deal industry — Groupon and like companies working with small retailers to give big discounts, irregularly — had its heyday in the wake of the Great Recession. Groupon in 2010 was called the “fastest growing company in history,” while smaller, D.C.-based Living Social’s value peaked at around $4.5 billion in 2011, then plunged in the low tens of millions before the company was acquired by Groupon in late 2016.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Can U.S. companies simultaneously encourage that employees get enough sleep (seven-plus hours nightly) and maintain a competitive edge? Sleep deprivation costs U.S.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — With Google gripped by a spiraling ad boycott as companies protest having their content posted alongside extremist YouTube videos, the search giant's competitors might be spotting an opportunity. Already a fresh focus has turned to the "upfronts," the annual New York City ritual in which TV networks make pitches for long-term contracts with major brands and advertising agencies based on expected audiences. And experts at the University of Maryland's Robert H.

In October 2016, C-BERC’s Associate Director Gideon Mark, associate professor of logistics, business and public policy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Have you ever filled your virtual cart while shopping online only to leave it without completing the purchase? Consumers often leave behind their virtual carts and retailers have long considered this a huge problem, figuring trillions of dollars are lost due to abandoned online shopping carts. Now new research shows that these numbers are substantially overblown.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Something inequitable happens when men and women with similar jobs get laid off at the same time from the same companies, and then move to the same new employer. The gender wage gap — whatever it was before — widens during the transition. Only one factor helps to soften the outcome. A study co-authored by professor Liu Yang at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Market makers have significant influence in financial markets, and they take on significant risk. In new research, Yajun Wang, assistant professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, helps build a market-making model that enables market participants to better understand those risks.