Media Coverage

Higher education is being impacted by the enormous amount of data the COVID-19 pandemic has created, allowing researchers and providers to analyze trends, monitor patient populations, and begin rectifying longstanding issues in the healthcare industry. Because of this, Rutgers Business School has seen a 60% increase in its revamped The Master of Health Care Analytics and Intelligence program. 40% of those admitted to the program shared that the pandemic has impacted them and pursued their interest.

Program Director Xin (David) Ding says, “With over 2,000 exabytes of new healthcare data generated in 2020, the ability to extract, analyze, and interpret the tremendous amount of information holds the key to the future of healthcare. During the pandemic, industry leaders set an exemplary case of how healthcare analytics capabilities can be leveraged to address various issues in supply chain, capitation and heath disparity.”

The climate action plan was developed by the President’s Task Force on Carbon Neutrality and Climate Resilience, a universitywide committee co-chaired by Rutgers climate scientist Bob Kopp and supply chain sustainability expert Kevin Lyons. The plan – the culmination of 21 months of effort – outlines a strategy that will guide Rutgers through the next three decades.

“Rutgers is a national leader in linking climate research to community needs and was also an early pioneer of on-campus renewable energy,” said Lyons, associate professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick and associate director of the Rutgers Energy Institute. He noted the university’s decision to divest from fossil fuels was a clear signal of its commitment to climate action, public health and social justice.

However, the climate action plan also acknowledges that the university is both part of the problem and the solution, Lyons said. Annually, the university emits greenhouse gases equivalent to about 470,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, enough to cause about $24 million of damage to global society each year. It also plays a key role in developing technologies to avoid emissions and helps communities in New Jersey respond to climate change.

"Why do people collect baseball cards? Why do people collect wine? Why do they collect art? You can collect [NFTs] because it's a hobby, and you can collect because some people look at it as an investment," said Dr. Merav Ozair, a FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School and Blockchain expert.

"The uses of NFTs go above and beyond the hype," she added. "Will everything be worth millions of dollars? Probably not. But I think the trend will be that everything is going to be NFTed [one day], because that's the power of authentication... We are moving to the digital world in everything that we do."

Looking at auction prices for some of today's biggest NFT sales can feel pretty distancing for most. But Ozair stresses that the NFTs should be approachable for everyone.

"There are NFTs that are not that expensive. You just have to look for them," she said. "You can [create] NFTs yourself and sell something, and I hope that NFTs will eventually have the power to democratize society... [For example] if you're taking a video and posting it on Facebook or Instagram, you can NFT it and immediately monetize it. And maybe it will not be worth thousands of dollars, but you can make a little bit of an income."

Do you consider downsizing a good money-saving strategy for residents of big metros?

Potentially. Money saved from downsizing can come from (a) lower property taxes, (b) lower depreciation/maintenance expenditures, and (c) lower interest expenses on a mortgage (or, lower opportunity costs of holding funds in home equity).

The average property tax rate is about 1%, the average mortgage rate on new mortgages is about 3%, and the average depreciation rate is about 2%. So, on average, every $100,000 reduction in house price is associated with a savings of interest (or opportunity cost), taxes and depreciation of about $6,000 per year - although obviously this can and does vary a lot.

There is a large cost to downsizing from realtor fees and taxes of all sorts. There is some variation, but let's say these fees and taxes are about 8% on the value of the property. So, if you see a $1,000,000 home, you would pay $80,000 in fees and taxes. Moving from a $1,000,000 home to an $800,000 home - a 20% reduction, which is not small - saves about $12,000 per year in interest, taxes and depreciation on average but costs about $80,000 in fees and taxes. The payback period for that move is 6.7 years.

Dr. Merav Ozair, a blockchain expert and professor of financial technology at Rutgers University, said NFTs are a way to show someone is the owner of an authentic version of a digital file like a meme.

“You go to the museum and see the Mona Lisa, but only the museum owns it,” she said. “Only they have the original. And they have documents in their offices which can prove that this is really the original.”

Ozair said collecting NFTs is like collecting anything else. People might do it because they expect the item to increase in value, or they might just enjoy collecting.

"It's not just one thing," said Rudi Leuschner, a professor of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School in Newark.

"When you think about any product that will end up in a retail store or at a contractor, that product until it gets there changes through a number of hands," he said. "And at each point in that process there's a chance that it gets delayed, or there's a chance that it just gets stuck somewhere. And then all of these little things add up to bigger delays and bigger outages and so on."

Dr. Merav Ozair, a blockchain expert and fintech professor at Rutgers Business School, finds it “amusing” when people think criminals would flock to the blockchain.
A recent NFT scandal illustrates why.
“Every transaction, once it’s recorded on the blockchain, nothing can be changed or deleted. It just lives there forever,” Ozair told The Hustle.
Because NFTs are minted on Ethereum, a public blockchain, transactions related to particular NFTs can be tracked, too.
“You can be scammed on any platform… but finding the scammers on the blockchain is much easier, so you shouldn’t fear too much,” Ozair said.

Soft Skills Don’t Help Job Seekers with Disabilities in Early Interviews

A new study by Rutgers University researchers finds that job candidates with disabilities are more likely to make a positive first impression on prospective employers when they promote technical skills rather than soft skills, such as their ability to lead others. The findings, published in the International Journal of Conflict Management, contrast this with the results for candidates without disabilities who were positively evaluated when they highlighted either hard or soft skills during initial job interviews.

“Job interviews are challenging for everyone, but particularly so for people with disabilities who have always had difficulties presenting themselves favorably to gain employment,” said Rutgers Business School professor and study coauthor Mason Ameri. “[They] encounter an implicit bias that they will not be as productive as their non-disabled peers. Knowing how to navigate the conversation with potential employers is critical for leveling the playing field.”

Predictive analytics isn't a new technology. In fact, it's older than the United States. In 1689, Lloyd's of London starting using predictive analytics to underwrite sea voyages.

Since then, predictive analytics has launched ahead as access to information became better and faster, with computers giving a major assist.

In a modern sense, "they're similar to RFID tags. They've been around for a while," said Rudolf Leuschner, associate professor in supply chain management at Rutgers Business School. "When we look at the actual algorithms that underpin predictive analytics, there isn't really that much new stuff."

"We've gotten to the point where people aren't screaming that we don't have enough data. They're screaming about how we have too much data," Leuschner said. Software and technology companies are "doing a better job at taking in that fire hose of information and making something out of it," he said.

Scheduling takes the fun out of free time, says Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School. According to her previous research, penciling in a date and time for leisure can make it feel like a chore. It also decreases anticipation of that free time. “Scheduled leisure is less enjoyable than more spontaneous or impromptu leisure,” Tonietto says. “It makes it feel more like work once it’s on your calendar. People start saying, ‘Well, this is an obligation,’ as opposed to something that you want to do.” While some scheduling is inevitable, “rough scheduling” is often best: Make loose plans to meet someone for lunch or for a jog on a Friday, for example, but don’t assign a time until shortly beforehand. That’s one way to leave room for spontaneity.

Ismael Essome applied for the Mandela Washington Fellowship and was assigned to the Leadership in Business Institute at Rutgers under the mentorship of Kevin Lyons, associate professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School and Johanna Bernstein, assistant dean for global programs at Rutgers Global.

“This is the magic of Mandela Washington Fellowship,” Essome said. “With this fellowship, we were able to create a partnership with TerraCycle that wasn’t a business-to-business arrangement, but a business-to-social action arrangement – something I wouldn’t have been able to achieve without the connections I made through Rutgers.”

Most of the work on leisure has focused on time scarcity, or when people have small amounts of discretionary time. “Most people know someone, or are someone who gives themselves a really hard time about engaging in leisure,” said Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School. “People say that they want leisure, they want work-life balance, but they don’t actually use their leisure time. Plenty of Americans don’t use all their vacation days. Many of us work while on vacation.”

Shoppers these days may need to take a cue from a Rolling Stones hit when it comes to setting their expectations: You can't always get what you want.

"Delays during the pandemic have caused a lot of pain in terms of putting a brake on both instant gratification and efficiency. Now consumers are trying to recalibrate," said Ashwani Monga, a professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School and author of the book Becoming a Consumer Psychologist.

Keith Kirkland is a Black entrepreneur. He and a partner devised the wearable technology that enabled a blind man to run the New York City Marathon with no other navigation assistance. That exciting proof of concept opened doors to other “GPS you can feel” applications. Their company, WearWorks, has attracted investment capital to hire, scale, and solve more problems.

It’s a great story of entrepreneurship, but here’s a question it raises: Why aren’t there more Keith Kirklands getting early-stage equity capital? Statistics show that while the rate of entrepreneurship has been higher among Black Americans than in the white population in recent years, their businesses on average stay smaller. The vast majority do not have even a single employee beyond the owner. What’s holding these entrepreneurs back is a puzzle that people committed to racial economic justice and city leaders striving to boost their economies have been trying to solve for years.

Some intermediaries provide the pre-seed capital, often through awards at pitch competitions. In Keith Kirkland’s case, a $10,000 award from Rutgers’ Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development catalyzed a $25,000 investment from the Black and Latino Angel Investment Fund of New Jersey. This helped put WearWorks on the radar for an investment syndicate who collectively kicked in $115,000 more.

Rutgers Business School financial technology professor Dr. Merav Ozair expressed neither shock nor outrage nor confusion over Sotheby's auctioning off a lot of 101 JPEGs of cartoonish apes for $24.4 million.

"It's a historical moment," she said. "Probably this particular NFT will increase in value because it was the first."

Or at least one of the first of these collections of profile-pic-style NFTs. The creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club used an algorithmic program mixing and matching images of apes, different fur colors and fur patterns, outfits and accessories to create 10,000 unique images varying in rarity.

Three Rutgers Business School professors recently acquired a grant from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to improve the University’s recycling process.

Mark Rodgers, Matthew Walsman and Kevin Lyons, professors in the Department of Supply Chain Management, received $206,346 as part of the state’s Recycling Enhancement Grant Research program, according to the article.

“We really want to get to a model where it’s like a circular system — where we can use (waste) for something else, or we can make something else with it,” Lyons said. “At Rutgers, for instance, our carpeting that’s in some of our buildings was made from soda bottles and water bottles and such. So there's ways that you can do this, but everybody has to be on the same page.”

In the first segment, Alex Jensen looks at cryptocurrencies. Are they a good investment and a democratic way to transfer money, or are they a Ponzi scheme to lure those caught up in the hype? Alex talks with Dr. Nicolas Weaver, a crypto-septic from UC Berkeley and Dr. Merav Ozair a proponent of cryptos and NFTs.

Listen to the podcast

And it’s not just employers that are highlighting the need for supply chain management. According to Alok Baveja, a professor at Rutgers Business School, incoming business school students, who traditionally seek out finance, are now showing greater interest in the topic as well.

Another effort comes from the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED) at Rutgers Business School, which was founded in 2009 and has since worked with some 600 entrepreneurs on strategic planning, marketing and other advisory services. Over the last two years, CUEED has also been helping connect these entrepreneurs to capital through federal grants; an angel investment group of alumni, and others in the community; and the Black Entrepreneurs Survive and Thrive (BEST) Fund, which was started during the pandemic to provide 0% loans of $25,000 to $50,000 to Black-owned businesses.

The CUEED angel fund is focused on growth businesses, a lot of which are tech or tech enabled. According to Executive Director Lyneir Richardson, most of the entrepreneurs CUEED works with own “everyday” businesses. More than 70% of these business owners are Black or Latino; 40% are based in Newark or adjacent communities; and more than 200 generate over $1 million a year.

“My goal at CUEED is that when someone establishes that they have a solid business idea, we can put in the first $25,000 to $50,000 to get it off the ground,” Richardson says. “Black and Latino entrepreneurs need that early seed stage capital because of all the systemic inequality that’s been in America.”

A recent Rutgers study has found that people who find leisure activities wasteful tend to be more depressed, anxious and stressed, according to an article from Rutgers Today.

This is because people who see leisure as wasteful are unable to fully reap the benefits of it, which include enjoyment or relaxation, said lead author Gabriela Tonietto, a professor in the Department of Marketing at Rutgers Business School.

When Mattel introduced the brawny superhero He-Man in 1982, he was an instant hit. Now, nearly four decades after their first appearance, He-Man and the rest of the Masters
of the Universe are looking to conquer the toy aisles again.

And Mattel is expanding the Masters of the Universe’s roster of muscled heroes with the introduction of Sun-Man, a Black character created in 1985 by a New Jersey mother who wanted to create a role model for her son.

“My son said he couldn’t be a superhero because he was Black. He was 3,” said Yla Eason, an assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers University.
So she started her own company, Olmec Toys, to make Sun-Man and other toys for Black, Hispanic and Native American children. “The intention was to give positive Black presentation in imagination and creativity,” she said.

Umbrella insurance is a type of insurance coverage that extends the liability insurance from an auto or homeowner’s insurance policy to cover more situations with higher limits.

Who should purchase umbrella insurance?

Umbrella insurance makes sense for people that want to preserve assets, so they tend to be more affluent. Umbrella insurance is usually placed "on top" of your traditional car and/or homeowner insurance. So, if your auto insurance has a maximum at-fault coverage of $250,000 and your net worth is less than $250,000 it probably does not make sense to purchase umbrella insurance.

Professor Merav Ozair appeared on Bloomberg Quicktake Focus. She was asked about the repercussions of Coinbase experiencing errors in the middle of Bitcoin’s big sell-off and the need for regulation and consumer protection.

Watch video

With hustle culture too often glorified (despite its link with the health-compromising effects of burnout), there's a good chance you've brushed up against a demand for hyper-productivity, in one way or another—whether at your workplace, in your personal life, or of your own volition. This productivity push is so pervasive, in fact, that it’s capable of inducing “productivity guilt” in anyone who feels they’re not measuring up. And according to new research, it may even counteract your ability to reap the mental-health benefits of leisure activities, too.

“Those who reported viewing leisure as wasteful also reported less enjoyment of what they did for Halloween if it was a ‘terminal’ leisure activity—which is just where the activity and the goal are the same, [which here is] to have fun, as in going to a Halloween party,” says Gabriela Tonietto, PhD, an author on the study and assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School. “By contrast, views on leisure did not impact participants’ enjoyment of what we called 'instrumental' leisure activities—those that contribute to some larger goal, like, in this case, taking your kid trick-or-treating,” says Dr. Tonietto.

Now, a fascinating new joint study from Rutgers University, The Ohio State University, and Harvard University is providing a new, scientific take on this idea. Their research strongly indicates that believing or feeling like leisure activities or time spent relaxing is a “waste” results in more stress and depression, greater anxiety, and less happiness overall.

“While work can impart meaning and a sense of purpose in life, leisure — such as time with family and friends, hobbies, and exercise — is what makes our lives happy and healthy,” says lead study author Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. “But not everyone sees value in time spent on leisure. Many hold a general belief that these activities are an unproductive use of time — at the cost of their own happiness. We find that believing leisure is wasteful causes time spent on leisure to be less enjoyable.”

Why are employers reluctant to accommodate people with disabilities?

Mason Ameri, an associate professor at Rutgers Business School, said it’s due to employers not understanding how to work with people with disabilities, and being prejudiced against them.

“Oftentimes, employers perceive workers with disabilities as just straight-up less productive and costlier due to accommodations,” he said.

Ameri and his colleagues tested this in an experiment in 2015. They sent out identical resumes for accountant positions, the only difference being that some resumes mentioned people having a disability and some did not. Researchers chose disabilities that would not affect the work of an accountant, to isolate the effects of bias. They found that companies were 26% less likely to be interested in job applications that mentioned disabilities.

U.S. business schools are refreshing their supply-chain coursework to make sure the next generation of logistics managers is prepared for future crises.

Incoming business students who once defaulted to finance or marketing now want to explore supply-chain management, says Alok Baveja, a professor at Rutgers Business School.

The just-in-time inventory systems embraced by many businesses led to empty shelves and costly bottlenecks. That’s put a rare spotlight on supply-chain programs, which are attracting more students.

Incoming business students who once defaulted to finance or marketing now want to explore supply-chain management, says Alok Baveja, a professor at Rutgers Business School, whose faculty includes former executives of nearby pharmaceutical giants such as Johnson & Johnson.

Dr. Merav Ozair, a FinTech Faculty member and a leading blockchain expert, at Rutgers Business School, sees Europe as a major player coming up in Cryptocurrency.

“From a regulation perspective, this space is mostly unregulated, and there is much uncertainty, and more clarity is needed,” she tells The Buttonwood Tree. “The European regulators, unlike the US or Chinese regulators, have been exploring different proposals and trying to provide guidelines and clarity. If the European provide the regulatory clarity without impeding innovation and technology evolution, then Europe may have the potential to become the hub of innovation, as many companies might migrate to Europe for the regulatory clarity and the innovation fostering environment it provides.”

Serial entrepreneur and Newark startup activist Anthony Frasier has hitched his wagon to the skyrocketing podcasting industry. His podcast network is producing cutting-edge work that connects him to his roots and his community.

Going back to his beginnings in podcasting, Frasier noted that when he started out, he had nothing. He didn’t even have production equipment or content, he only knew that he wanted to tell stories. But Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, at Rutgers Business School, gave him a chance when he pitched a podcast that would feature interviews with venture capitalists. Frasier admits he didn’t know much about what he was doing, but the podcast, called “VC Cheat Sheet,” turned out well. “It really put the name of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship out there,” and it was a very successful podcast for Rutgers, he said.

BY GLENN SHAFER Guest Correspondent

I am writing because of the heartbreaking events in Afghanistan, which we are all witnessing from afar.

I was a Peace Corps volunteer there during the academic year 1968-1969. That does not make me an expert on what has happened in the 50 years since or on what is happening now. But in this emotional moment, in the cacophony of opinion aroused by our distress, I want to share my feelings and my thinking with those close to me.

I feel the greatest affection for the Afghans, all those I knew and all those I do not know. All of them, including those who have cast their lot with the Taliban. I also feel great affection for the Peace Corps and great respect for my fellow volunteers, most of whom made great contributions to the lives of those with whom they worked. As it happened, perhaps because I expected too much, I was not myself able to make such a contribution. A Peace Corps volunteer signs up for a two-year stint, but I left after one year.

Discover does not currently charge annual fees or foreign transaction fees on any of their credit cards; how likely is that to last?

The vast majority of credit card companies charge no annual fees. A lesser number of firms offer cards with no foreign transaction fees. The combination of the two benefits is a good deal for consumers. However, Discover is not the only option out there that offers these benefits, so I would expect it to last for at least a few years.

Are credit cards that offer 5% back in rotating bonus categories a better deal for cardholders or card issuers?

The 5% rotating bonus category may be a win-win situation for both the consumer and credit card company. The 5% bonus feature may attract a large client base. However, the credit card companies know that many of their customers will not pay their balances in full, thereby enabling them to charge high rates of interest, more than offsetting the cost of the program. If consumers are smart, they can "cherry-pick" the categories where they receive the 5% bonus and stay dormant with the card for the remainder of their purchases. They could use other rewards cards for purchases outside the current 5% bonus category.

Which do you think resonates more with consumers: an initial rewards bonus of a few hundred dollars for spending a few thousand dollars in the first three months, or a one-year anniversary bonus that doubles the rewards a cardholder earned the first year?

I believe consumers are more enticed by the initial bonus. Human psychology often leads people to focus on the near-term and what may be quantified (i.e., the $x00 sign-on bonus), rather than an abstract doubling of a future unknown reward.

John M. LongoPh.D., CFA,
Professor of Finance & Economics

The conceptual idea of “revenge wear” still exists, but it has evolved beyond the singular. “Acts of revenge dressing and shopping have always existed but used to be individualistic – people expressed themselves depending on their unique personal circumstance,” says Professor Ashwani Monga from Rutgers Business School. “However, the pandemic is something that all of us are going through collectively. Hence we are going through similar sets of emotions and reacting in similar kinds of ways.”

Professor Monga explains the thinking behind it: “If I do revenge shopping, I’m harming my ‘virtue self’ that reigned supreme through the pandemic, restraining me from spending money on frivolous, shallow, consumption. Enough of this goody-two-shoes self,” he says. “At the same time, revenge shopping helps me reward my ‘vice self’ that wants to finally let go, indulge and have fun after a long period filled with misery.”

Monga thinks that the concept of the “revenge dress” has changed. “It’s no longer about a stance against other people. Rather, it is about a stance against one’s own ‘virtue self’ which acted as a restraint on extravagant consumption through the pandemic.”

Struggling to decide whether to spend another hour at the office or take a late afternoon stroll? Put on your walking shoes.

Making leisure time a priority is good for your mental health. For many, though, especially folks who prize productivity above all, it's a hard sell, a new study finds.

"But those who participated in fun activities that fulfilled responsibilities, like trick or treating with your kids, didn't see such a reduction in how much they enjoyed their Halloween," said study co-author Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School in Newark, N.J.

If you view leisure as wasteful, think about the productive ways that individual leisure activities can serve your long-term goals, Tonietto suggested. In other words, link each leisure activity to something you want to accomplish.

As a key player in developing and transforming innovators into entrepreneurs that improve people’s lives, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey will expand its entrepreneurship training programming and further equip faculty and student researchers with the skills and strategy needed to transition their discoveries into technologies and products, as a partner in the newly created NSF I-Corps™ Hub: Northeast Region.

Jeffrey Robinson, an associate professor at Rutgers Business School and academic director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, will also serve as the Research Lead for the entire Hub and spearhead entrepreneurship research on both deep tech and inclusive innovation as co-investigator on the grant.

“Inclusive innovation is the idea that the visionaries, entrepreneurs and gatekeepers of technology innovation should be as diverse as our nation. This diversity leads to brilliant ideas, new companies, and international leadership in innovation,” said Robinson. “The I-Corps Hub: Northeast Region offers us a unique opportunity to study how the diversity of our area can be harnessed for regional development and national competitiveness,”

“This belief that positive events are going to go quickly and feel short can be exacerbated when we think about the ending,” says Gabriela Tonietto, assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School and a co-author of the study.

One solution, the researchers say, is to focus on the experiences you will have on the vacation, not on its duration. Ms. Tonietto says she put her theory to the test when her honeymoon to Greece was delayed for more than a year because of the pandemic. She tried not to think about the length of the honeymoon relative to the number of months she had to wait until it began.

“I thought about the different places, hotels and experiences we would have—from snorkeling to visiting different beaches to a sunset cruise to a couple’s wine tasting and cooking class,” she says. As a result, she believes, instead of fretting about how short the vacation would be, she enjoyed the anticipation.

Step one, what is a fungible token? When an item is fungible it is interchangeable and, in some cases, also indistinguishable. Take two one-dollar bills, for example. They are fungible. As Dr. Ozair explains, “If I go to Starbucks and I give them this dollar bill or that dollar bill, they don’t care right? This is what fungible means because it is interchangeable. However, the two are distinguishable because they have serial numbers – this is how the Central Bank tracks them. In this case, the two one-dollar bills are interchangeable but not indistinguishable.”

But that is the physical world. What about the tokenization world? Dr. Ozair says, “As for the tokenization and crypto world, you can think about bitcoin as being the equivalent of the one-dollar bill. It is interchangeable but it’s not indistinguishable because it has a unique hash number (the analogous to a serial number)” In the tokenization world when something is unique, it has its own entity.

Whether you’re joining the real-estate business or just looking for a place to call home, it’s important to get a handle on the housing markets you’re considering before investing in a property.

Is now a good time to buy? What economic indicators should potential buyers be watching?

That's a difficult question of course because there is a lot of market uncertainty right now, and the situation for each household might be different. In general, I think for households with a stable income and no short-term plans to move to a different city it is a good time to buy right now. Interest rates are really low, lending standards are not too strict, and I do not see house prices falling any time soon.
Morris A. Davis
Academic Director, Center for Real Estate,
Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate,
Professor of Finance and Economics

While many – from Aristotle to the Dalai Lama – have opined on the state of human happiness, a new Rutgers-led study finds that utter contentment depends, at least in part, on believing that leisure activities are not a waste of time.

The findings from four studies appear in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology."

“While work can impart meaning and a sense of purpose in life, leisure, such as time with family and friends, hobbies and exercise, is what makes our lives happy and healthy,” said lead author Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. “But not everyone sees value in time spent on leisure. Many hold a general belief that these activities are an unproductive use of time – at the cost of their own happiness. We find that believing leisure is wasteful causes time spent on leisure to be less enjoyable.”

It’s no doubt the pressures of the pandemic — which have forced staying at home more, and consequently, spending more time online — are largely to blame for the increase in online shopping. But how do you curb your online shopping habit if it’s gotten out of control? Easy. Put saving first and set up some roadblocks to make impulse spending more difficult. Here’s some expert advice to get you started.

Make sure your emergency fund is set before spending on wish-list items, advises John M. Longo, Ph.D., CFA, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School and author of “Buffett’s Tips: A Guide to Financial Literacy and Life.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made most understand that they should have an emergency fund of at least six months living expenses,” Longo said. “If you must shop online for non-necessities, then wait until your emergency fund is fully funded.”

This article was inspired by my teenage son and daughter, and the unprecedented courage of young public figures who also made recent decisions to take care of themselves before pleasing others.

We have a mental health crisis. It is becoming increasingly difficult to live in our modern world without mental illness — particularly for young adults — because of a social adaptation gone awry.

All of us are walking around with brains designed to solve problems that existed thousands of years ago. None of us have brains fit to solve problems in this modern, digital world. We are all misfits in a mismatched world — and it’s literally making us sick.

Warren Buffett, who turns 91 on Aug. 30, 2021, is a billionaire at a time when outrage over the excesses of extreme wealth is growing in tandem with billionaires’ fortunes.

But based on what I learned about him while becoming a scholar of finance and a portfolio manager, I see Buffett as a model for his ultrarich peers.

He has given half of his vast fortune to charity and plans to unload most of the rest during his lifetime or upon his death. Buffett also largely lives a modest lifestyle by billionaire standards; he still resides in the spacious house he bought six decades ago.

“My needs are simple,” he explained in June 2021. “What made me happy at 40 makes me happy at 90.”

The American Institute of CPAs recognized three accounting professors for their notable teaching and research during the annual American Accounting Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

Nancy Bagranoff, a professor of accounting and university professor at the University of Richmond (Virginia), received the 2021 AICPA Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award.

Jun Dai, a professor at Michigan Technological University, and Miklos Vasarhelyi, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, received the 2021 Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award.

Dai and Vasarhelyi were honored for their co-authored paper “Toward Blockchain-Based Accounting and Assurance.”

What do Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk have in common? In addition to being founders of multi-billion-dollar companies, they are also outliers. Outliers can be people, businesses, institutions, or events, depending on the specific context.

Dr. G. Christopher Crawford, assistant professor of professional practice of Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Management at Rutgers Business School—Newark & New Brunswick, models the emergence of outliers in entrepreneurship and develops a theory that is applicable to both academia and mainstream culture.

Dr. Crawford points out: “Some of the most successful companies of our time, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook, are extreme outliers that changed the nature of how we engage with the world – they transformed what we do and how we think.” He argues that these companies have a significant impact on businesses and society as a whole. Therefore, rather than ‘fixing’ or excluding these exceedingly influential anomalies from our theories and data analysis, we should turn the spotlight on them and probe their emergence.

Listen to the Research Pod, with a transcript.

We Wondered If NFTs Could Change Education, So We Decided to Sell This Article on the Blockchain

Since I write about education and tech, I wondered if there were applications in the world that EdSurge covers. And since so many people we talk to stress the value of experiential learning—and since this particular trend is so fast-moving and hard to illustrate—we decided to try minting and selling an NFT ourselves and document the process. Specifically, we are going to auction off an image of this article—the first NFT ever sold by EdSurge.

My first step, naturally, was to reach out to an educator who knows the NFT space. And I found Merav Ozair, an assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers University’s business school. She’s a data scientist by training, and It turns out she has taught a few courses about blockchain, which is the technical framework that makes NFTs possible.

“If you see a painting in a museum you can take a picture of it, but it’s not the same—you don’t own it,” says Ozair. “But an NFT is like [an original] painting because it has an ownership in the code, and you can show it to everyone that you have it.”

Professor Merav Ozair speaks with Tim Stenovic and Katie Greifeld on Bloomberg QuickTake about non-fungible tokens and the business-use potential of NFTs (18:30 into the video).

Merav Ozair, FinTech faculty member at Rutgers Business School, thinks people can create additional income streams, as long as someone is willing to pay for their virtual/digital content. "In the case of a chef, instead of posting recipes on Facebook, a cooking video on YouTube or photos on Instagram for free, just in order to generate followers and induce sells, they can NFT [tokenise] the recipe, the video or the photo and sell it or receive royalties for it,” she says. By doing so, these professionals create an immediate income stream and protect their rights for their unique recipe or dish.

“When it comes to something like blockchain technology and NFTs, I believe that almost anything you can imagine can happen. So if you have an imagination and you’re enthusiastic about innovation and technology, just run with it.”
Merav Ozair, PhD, FinTech Faculty Member at Rutgers Business School, Research Director of the RBS Blockchain Hub

NFTs have become popular in industries from sports memorabilia to fashion and art, where their ability to provide authentication and uniqueness is prized. Last week, Shopify started allowing merchants on its platform to sell NFTs directly, betting that there’s demand for an alternative to third-party crypto marketplaces. The company aims to win over merchants by giving them more control over the sale and customer relationship, President Harley Finkelstein said on Twitter last week.

”We all like convenience” and Shopify makes it easier for people to buy NFTs, said Merav Ozair, an assistant professor of fintech at the Rutgers Business School who specializes in blockchain technology. “NFTs will go more and more mainstream because of Shopify’s existing customer base.”

by Farrokh Langdana

A sustainable Federal budget deficit used to be defined as being less than about 5% of GDP.1 Today, the budget deficit/GDP is over 13%! Disaster, right? Should we expect hyperinflation to be coming? The short answer is no. Keep in mind we were in the same ballpark during the subprime mortgage crisis (10-12% for the budget deficit/GDP ratio) and the sky did not fall on our heads. Why not?

Back in the day with large deficits and the massive printing of money, sure, hyperinflation was a real concern and possibility. But in the subprime mortgage crisis we had a unique situation. During this particular time of turmoil, the U.S. was still the “safest cave” on the planet.2 With all global economies “huddling in their respective caves” in the global housing crisis, we were in the best position. Consequently, massive global capital poured in and, to some extent, helped fund our budget deficit.

But, despite all this, there was no notable change in inflation. Here is a very important point: Massive monetary infusions ONLY erupt into mind-numbing hyperinflations when the money is actually injected into the economy.

The Ripon Forum Magazine: https://issuu.com/riponsociety/docs/ripon_forum_-_july_2021/15