Penn in the News

Jessie Handbury of the Wharton School says that bargain hunting among affluent consumers is not a new phenomenon.

“I think part of what’s pushed this movement into accelerators for many founders is that U.S. venture capital has moved over time from seed- and early-stage to more growth-oriented investment,” says Valentina Assenova of the Wharton School. “It’s a lot more capital that's coming after startups are very scalable.”

“We're, once again, in the United States of America, experiencing children die of vaccine preventable disease who don't need to die from these diseases,” says Paul Offit of the Perelman School of Medicine.

Ben Jealous of Penn Carey Law School, the Annenberg School for Communication, and the School of Social Policy and Practice writes that the stereotype of absent Black fathers is contradicted by their long history of commitment to their children, despite systemic forces that have often separated Black families.

The profusion of GLP-1 medications is impacting the packaged-food industry. “Certainly if people aren’t enjoying eating as much, they aren’t going to buy as much food,” says Richard Doty of the Perelman School of Medicine.

Wharton School researchers suggest that how AI is integrated into instruction may be as important as the technology itself.

Katy Milkman of the Wharton School speaks on how people define rules and standards can wildly vary from person to person. “All of these rules, and our ability to follow them, comes from this needing to adjudicate between them,” Milkman says. “It’s like the classic devil and angel whispering into your ears problem. The devil whispers ‘Go for it! Eat all the Cheetos!’”

“The amount of wealth that is changing ownership certainly calls for integrated and holistic financial planning, and this really lies at the heart of family wealth management,” says Raphael Amit of the Wharton School. “You need to consider and balance both financial objectives and other objectives that the family has. There are multiple objectives that are not always aligned.”

“Will AI improve productivity? It better,” says Patrick Harker of the Wharton School. “Our birth rate is not replacing ourselves. Our immigration policy has flatlined. It’s the most basic rule of economics: If you want more output, you either get more workers, or better machines.”

“The only sure thing is that a merger will result in higher prices for the merged hospitals, not improved quality,” say Mark Pauly and Lawton Robert Burns, senior fellows at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.