Finance

Richard Prisinzano of the Wharton School said auditing wealthy people can be a challenge for the IRS. “An audit, even if it’s random, it takes a lot more resources than, say, someone making $25,000 a year who’s just taking the earned income tax credit,” he said.

Zane Cooper, a doctoral candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication, said all networked computation, including cryptocurrency, is powered by fossil fuels and harmful to the environment. “Bitcoin reveals a fundamental truth about the relationship between computing and energy,” he said.

Cait Lamberton of the Wharton School spoke about Robinhood, the trading app at the center of a market manipulation controversy involving GameStop and Reddit. “I don’t think they ever anticipated that they would end up being the battleground for a showdown between traditional Wall Street and the individual investor, but that’s really what they are right now,” she said.

Jill Fisch of the Law School spoke about the obstacles facing Gary Gensler, the incoming SEC chief. “We’re in a bubble, and bubbles burst,” said Fisch. “For the SEC, that’s a tough thing because investors lose a lot of money. The question is how do you regulate when you know there’s a bubble?”

Research by Matthew Killingsworth of the Wharton School exploring the link between income and happiness finds that money does indeed enhance happiness.

Lisa Servon of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design spoke about the hazards of short-term, high-interest loans, which people of color, single parents, and low-income people are most likely to rely upon. “The situation that you want to avoid is people that are getting in over their head and going into this cycle in which they’re taking out a loan, not paying it back, paying the fee again for the second loan, and again and again, until they’re paying back way more than they borrowed,” Servon said.