SMITH BRAIN TRUST — The car you rented as part of your auto-share club reeked of cigarette smoke and a cross-country roadtrip worth of crumbs littered the seats and floor. There was a slight and mysterious stickiness on the gear shift. It made you wonder: Why are some vehicles in the car-sharing club kept meticulously tidy while others arrive icky?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — With lenient return policies common, about 9 percent of purchases at brick-and-mortar stores are returned and 25 percent to 30 percent of online orders are sent back yearly in the United States. Where do these items end up? In many cases, the likes of market vendors, wholesale liquidators, eBay Power sellers, and "mom and pop" stores purchase the goods via online auctions and resell the merchandise.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Corporate gender gaps have narrowed in recent years, but men continue to dominate high-level positions. Among Fortune 500 companies, for example, women held only 20 percent of all board seats in the 2016 Board Diversity Census published Feb. 6, 2017, from the Alliance for Board Diversity in partnership with Deloitte.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — When employees break the rules at work, it might not be mischief. It might be monotony. A new study finds that employees whose tasks are organized in a more routine and repetitive way are more likely to fall prey to ethical lapses and break rules to make their workday easier. But there's good news. The researchers found that shaking up the order in which employees perform tasks — even without changing the tasks themselves — can reduce rule-breaking.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — People who study financial economics regularly assume that the markets in which firms sell their products are perfectly competitive, or alternatively that firms operate in isolation. This all-or-nothing thinking is unrealistic.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — The gender pay gap, widely cited for full-time workers in the United States as women earning 79 percent of what men earn, drew 100 businesses to sign on to the White House Equal Pay Pledge in 2016. It also prompted professor Margrét Bjarnadóttir at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Researchers can discover creative solutions to complex problems when they combine know-how from different disciplines, but they should understand the potential penalties involved. A new study, co-authored by Christine Beckman at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, shows risks and rewards for multidisciplinary research.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — In the global economy, team leadership is often not as simple as gathering employees into the conference room to talk over a project or plan the next set of goals. The team is likely to span time zones and continents, presenting particular challenges for leaders.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Millions of government employees are counting on the funds from their pension plans to get them through their retirement years. But a potential economic crisis looms.  Many state and local pension systems teeter on the brink of financial disaster. What is more, there is no federal oversight of the asset managers controlling the $3 trillion in these funds.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Consumers via online communities are sharing information and connecting with each other at unprecedented levels. But to what extent can this phenomenon affect healthcare? A recent study led by Ritu Agarwal at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business identifies two advantages of online communities toward closing the rural-urban gap in access to quality healthcare.