UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

UCLA Anderson Launches New Online Journal Spotlighting Current Research

Across disciplines, UCLA Anderson’s faculty enhance the school’s relevance through cutting-edge research that is highly applicable to the economy, business and the wider world. The weekly UCLA Anderson Review chronicles for a broader audience the research our faculty publish in leading academic journals.

UCLA Anderson Review launched with articles examining retirement savings, including Americans’ aversion to annuities and the hot topic of decumulation — illustrating how, under a single roof at Anderson, faculty members are individually and collectively expanding understanding of how to solve one of the country’s biggest financial and societal problems.

The Review joins other leading graduate business school publications in making available to a global audience of business leaders, fellow academic researchers, policymakers and others the substantial intellectual capital UCLA Anderson possesses and adds to each day.

UCLA Anderson Board of Advisors Member Jamie McCourt Appointed U.S. Ambassador to Belgium

UCLA Anderson Board of Advisors member Jamie McCourt was appointed by President Donald Trump as the United States ambassador to Belgium. The official announcement was made by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.

McCourt is a Los Angeles-based business leader focused on sports, entertainment, education and philanthropy. Her company, Jamie Enterprises, principally invests in high-value real estate, biotechnology ventures and technology startups. McCourt was an early-stage investor in ZipCar, now the nation’s largest peer-to-peer car sharing service. More recently, she was one of the first investors in Kite Pharma, a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company that went public in record time. McCourt is also an investor in a variety of culinary ventures, including Bouchon of the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group.

From 2004 to 2012, McCourt was co-owner, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers. She was the highest-ranking woman in baseball and one of the few female executives in all of professional sports. In addition to setting club attendance records and winning back-to-back division titles for the first time in 30 years, under her leadership the Dodgers returned to profitability.

McCourt is a pioneer in the field of business education. Her ground-breaking class at UCLA Anderson, The Pursuit of Leadership: A Female Perspective, which she taught from 2005 to 2011, was the first accredited graduate-level leadership course specifically designed for women at a leading U.S. business school. She joined UCLA Anderson Board of Advisors (then Board of Visitors) in 2007.

All ambassadorial appointments are subject to confirmation by the United States Senate.

Read the official announcement here.

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UCLA Anderson Forecast’s Second Look at Economic Policy Changes under the New U.S. Presidential Administration

Stocks, the dollar and interest rates soared after the surprising election of Donald Trump on the assumption of a major shift in fiscal policy. Now that immigration and trade issues have moved to the fore, the markets are less certain as to the magnitude and timing of the fiscal changes. In its first quarterly report for 2017, the UCLA Anderson Forecast will discuss the implication of these cross currents and present a second pass at Trumponomics.

Key questions addressed at this quarter’s conference include:

• Can Trump deliver on his proposed tax cuts?
• How much will immigration and trade restrictions weigh on the economy?
• How many times will the Fed raise interest rates this year?

The national forecast

In his outlook for the national economy, UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist David Shulman wrote that some of his current expectations are similar to those of last quarter, including the approximately $500 billion a year in personal and business tax reductions, a repatriation holiday for accumulated foreign earnings, increased defense and infrastructure spending, Medicaid cuts, relaxed regulations, modest changes to trade and immigration policies, and reductions in food and aircraft exports, as several trading partners react to the policy changes. The impact of a large tax cut on an economy at or very close to full employment will likely result in a short-term growth spike, but will quickly fade. The forecast calls for real GDP growth of 2.4 percent, 3 percent and 2.2 percent in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively, noting that real growth trails off on a quarterly basis in 2019, as higher interest rates weigh on the economy.

Though job growth appears robust with 170,000 jobs a month expected in 2017 and 2018, the figures will trail off to about 110,000 a month in 2019 and become even slower if the administration embarks on a large-scale deportation program of unauthorized immigrants. Concurrently, the unemployment rate could bottom out at 4.1 percent in late 2018, before gradually rising.

Joss Whedon to UCLA Anderson Students: “Make Your Choice, and Give Yourself to that Choice”

By Paul Feinberg

“Save the Day … didn’t,” said writer/director/producer/auteur Joss Whedon, referencing the digital production company he founded in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The goal of his super PAC Save the Day was to get out the vote, specifically in support of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, though the candidate herself was never specifically mentioned in any of the short films produced by the organization.

But while the text of Save the Day didn’t go as planned, the subtext contained several important lessons: that the act of voting is a powerful one and that getting involved in the causes one believes in is a brave and necessary act in a democracy. Whedon recently emphasized these points in an appearance at UCLA Anderson at the invitation of the Entertainment Management Association.

Whedon was a working writer in Hollywood when he created his first television show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became a cultural phenomenon, featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy: high school student by day, killer of vampires and other denizens of the evil realms by night. Buffy begat its spin-off Angel and Whedon and his company Mutant Enemy Productions became power brokers in the entertainment industry. His body of work includes creating, writing and directing television shows, comic books and feature films. If you’re one of the millions of people who enjoyed the two Marvel films featuring the super hero team the Avengers, you’ve enjoyed Whedon’s work.

UCLA Anderson Economic Forecast: What Do Trumponomics Really Mean for the U.S., California and L.A.?

Left to right: David Shulman, Gerald F. Kominski, Kal Raustiala, Jeffrey B. Lewis, Sebastian Edwards

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By Paul Feinberg

The December 2016 UCLA Anderson Forecast conference focused on the ramifications of a Donald Trump presidency on the nation’s economy, as well as on those of California and Los Angeles. The event began with the presentation of three forecasts, with key takeaways for the specific regions.

A roundtable panel of UCLA experts continued the discussion, which was moderated by UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg and included Professor Sebastian Edwards, UCLA Anderson’s Henry Ford II Chair in International Management; Professor Gerald F. Kominski of the Department of Health Policy and Management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who is also director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research; UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist David Shulman; Professor Jeffrey B. Lewis, who is the UCLA department chair of political science; and Professor Kal Raustiala of the UCLA School of Law, who is also director of the UCLA Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations.

Touching on the President-elect’s recent phone call with the leader of Taiwan, Raustiala noted that Trump had often been critical of China during the presidential campaign, and called the phone conversation an “important deviation from U.S. policy and practice.”

“Trump’s inexperience with foreign policy is a concern,” the professor said. “In the field of international affairs, words and rhetoric actually matter.”

A Message From the Dean

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Dear All,

Yesterday’s presidential election yielded a stunning result for many, one about which I’m personally very disappointed. That said, my note is not about my own politics, or about your politics, to which we are entitled — it’s about bridging the profound issues that divide our country.

I have been embarrassed by the rhetoric, the tone, and the insults; it is not who we are or should be. I imagine that all of us — no matter where we’re from — will spend some time trying to process what this vote means about our society, what it tells us about individuals’ hopes and frustrations. It is also a stark reminder to leaders in business and elsewhere — current and future — of how our actions have profound effects on our society, and how we must become more engaged as constructive forces of change. To me, this creates greater urgency to our discussion of valuing differences and to reaching out in acts of kindness and understanding to those who feel vulnerable or threatened, to those who suffer in whatever their life journey is, and to those who simply are not as lucky.

Three women of color were voted into the U.S. Senate — that is cause for optimism. Rather than set us back, or produce distance, let us use this moment to create deeper dialogue. Let’s make the Anderson family a model of empathy and respect. I hope the discussions triggered by this election bring us to a deeper understanding of the origins and values of our differences, and thus move us forward as a more thoughtful and considerate community, one that is a source of strength and support to each other. I welcome it if you’d like to reach out to chat. We move forward.

Judy D. Olian
Dean and John E. Anderson Chair in Management

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America Could Use Some Good Economists in the White House

Ed Leamer is running as a write-in candidate for vice president of the United States

Ed Leamer is running for vice president of the United States.

Leamer, who holds UCLA Anderson’s Chauncey J. Medberry Chair and also serves as director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, is running as a write-in candidate along with presidential candidate Laurence Kotlikoff, who, like Leamer, is a professor of economics. Kotlikoff, who holds numerous chairs and appointments, is on the faculty at Boston University. Leamer and Kotlikoff first met when the former was teaching at Harvard and the latter was his student.

Leamer holds no illusions about being elected: He realizes that in today’s political climate it is virtually impossible for a write-in candidate with limited resources to actually get the most votes. But even with winning the election off the table, Leamer didn’t get involved as a publicity stunt. Instead, he sees it as a way for him and Kotlikoff to try to bring to the fore what they see as key economic issues.

Leamer sat down with the UCLA Anderson blog to discuss these issues and opened by saying, “Economists are taught to think logically and clearly about all the potential impacts of a policy — not just the surface impact, but that which is unexpected. A famous 19th-century French economist named Frederic Bastiat said, ‘There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.’”

Laurence Kotlikoff is running as a write-in candidate for president of the United States

Politicians, Leamer is implying, often propose policies that, on the surface, look good to voters. But they often do so without considering the indirect impacts. Like the “good economists” that Bastiat references, Kotlikoff and Leamer are focused on what must be foreseen.

Ed Leamer: We represent the youth of America, the future of America, and we want to make sure that the public policies that are put in place are guaranteeing that America’s going to be a great place in a decade or two. We think every bill that goes through Congress should have a youth impact statement. There should be an assessment as to how this affects the youth of America. And if it’s adverse, then we ought to be avoiding that. It ought to get a big red asterisk, saying, “This is not good for the youth of America.”

Q: What types of proposals would avoid that asterisk?

Leamer: From my perspective, there are three things that the nation ought to do.

First of all, we’ve got to have much better employment prospects for college graduates and high school graduates. We need to do something to create the access to good jobs for the youth, and to a large extent that comes from workforce development and better educational outcomes.

What It Means to Be an Ally

See the full schedule of Awareness Week activities in the LGBTQ@Anderson portal

By Kelsey Gorman (’16)

Out@Anderson co-president Derek Bailey ('16) with the author

I knew before coming to UCLA Anderson that I wanted to be involved with the LGBTQ club on campus as an active ally. I grew up up in Los Angeles, where the LGBTQ community was very familiar to me. My mom was an active ally, often volunteering at the LGBTQ resource center. I considered myself an ally, and a supporter of the LGBTQ community, but it wasn’t until later that I made the shift from “sure, of course I support gay rights” to truly educating myself to become an active ally for the entire community.

Right before I entered high school, one of my best friends confided in me that they were gay. I didn’t think much of it as it was one of my closest friends and their sexuality had no bearing on our relationship. I listened and tried to be as supportive as possible throughout the conversation. What I learned later was just how nervous that friend had been to tell me, and it was a few years afterward that they got the courage to tell other friends and family. It was a big lesson for me to see a friend I loved so much be so scared to tell me something about who they were. I knew I wanted to take action toward making my school, my community and the world a place where no one should be scared to tell a friend who it is they choose to love.

In high school, I worked with faculty and other friends to help start the first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club. Although ours was an open-minded liberal school, we were faced with surprising resistance from parents — even parents I knew well — and the surrounding conservative community. We fought to get approval; by the time I reached my senior year the GSA was one of the larger clubs on campus and we participated annually in the National Day of Silence.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla Champions New Voter Registration Legislation

By Paul Feinberg

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (Riordan Fellow ’97) ran for office on a platform that included a pledge to increase voter turnout. Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that allows Californians to be automatically registered to vote when they utilized Department of Motor Vehicle Services to obtain or renew a driver’s license. Padilla was a strong advocate for the new law as a means to increase voter participation.

“The new Motor Voter Act will make our democracy stronger by removing a key barrier to voting for millions of California citizens,” Padilla said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Citizens should not be required to opt in to their fundamental right to vote. We do not have to opt in to other rights, such as free speech or due process.”

Earlier this year, Padilla was honored by the Riordan Programs at UCLA Anderson with its Legacy Award. Upon receiving the award he encouraged his fellow alumni and the current Riordan Scholars to make use of the program to change the world as they wish to see it changed. “In our own ways,” he said, “we have overcome obstacles, and the program has helped us along the way. Tonight, let us honor the program and think on how, too often, we are seen as the exception to the rule. It weighs on me to be the exception, let us try to make it so that this becomes the rule.”

The new legislation goes into effect at the start of 2016, but there is much work to be done before it is officially implemented. In a published report, Padilla said, “It won’t be in time for the June primary of 2016. At the latest, for the 2018 election cycle, I expect millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California.”

The 100th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide: A Catalyst for Change

 

To leaders in our Armenian community here at UCLA Anderson, today is an important historic anniversary as well as a deeply personal call to action. They share their thoughts and perspective below.

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By Arek Santikian (’15) and Araz Khodabakhshian (Ph.D. ’18)

The United States is home to roughly 1.5 million Armenians (500,000 of whom live in the greater Los Angeles area). Russia is home to roughly 2 million Armenians. In these two countries alone, one can find more Armenians than within the Republic of Armenia.

Why? Why did they leave the beautiful mountainous heights of the Caucasus in Eurasia, and move to countries thousands of miles away? The population of Armenians living in countries outside of Armenia (11 million) is almost four times the population living inside of Armenia (3 million). This was not a natural result of emigration. The reason lies in a not-so-distant past, buried and ignored inside a very dark time in world history. The reason is genocide. The first genocide of the 20th century. The Armenian Genocide.