Ben Mattison

Tech giants including Apple, Google, and Meta have been skirmishing almost daily with regulators and courts around the world about their outsized power over our digital lives. Yale SOM economist Fiona Scott Morton, an expert on competition and the former chief economist of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, recently published a collection of essays offering approaches to creating real competition in digital markets and making them work better for consumers. ‌

For more than 50 years, New Haven’s Fair Haven Community Health Care has provided care to immigrants and other vulnerable populations. We talked with CEO Suzanne Lagarde ’14 about how the organization is grappling with federal executive orders and budget cuts that threaten its mission. ‌

Days into President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration issued a memo freezing all federal grants. That memo was later rescinded amid multiple lawsuits, but nonprofits that depend on the funding remain in a state of profound uncertainty. We talked to Andrea Levere ’83 and Alexandra Sing ’20, CEO and COO of Capitalize Good, about the state of the social sector and the increased urgency of their work working with funders and nonprofits to move toward a model of stable, long-term capital.‌

Barr, who is stepping down this week as the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, reflected on the response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in a talk presented by the Yale Program on Financial Stability.

Since the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, a wide-ranging set of reforms to the American healthcare system, the uninsured rate has been cut in half, falling from 16% to 8%. We talked to Yale SOM’s Dr. Howard Forman about what the ACA has achieved and what aspects of the law could be weakened under a Republican administration.‌

Over several weeks this spring, four women who are using entrepreneurial tools to achieve public health goals visited Teresa Chahine’s classroom to discuss their work. Then they joined Chahine in the Evans Hall studio to record episodes of Chahine’s podcast, Impact & Innovation, where they told their stories and shared what they’ve learned about connecting with a community to make a difference.

A decade after scientists developed the ability to edit DNA using the CRISPR sequence, the first drugs using the technique are approaching the market, with the potential to transform the lives of people with certain genetic illnesses. But questions of ethics, access, and pricing remain. We talked with Dr. Greg Licholai, a biotech entrepreneur and a lecturer at Yale SOM, about the state of the technology.

Impact investing advisor Clint Bartlett ’17 and Professor Todd Cort say that overpriced expected returns demanded by investors can destabilize the ventures that could help build resilience in the most precarious parts of the world. With a group of colleagues from leading universities and global funders, they are working on innovative approaches in which businesses that create positive social outcomes get cheaper capital.

At Yale SOM’s gathering of business and government leaders, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that “this is our common war.”

The day included cohort reunions, candid reflections from alumni, and discussions on teaching in prisons, early childhood education, and the climate crisis.

New research co-authored by Yale SOM Dean Kerwin K. Charles shows that the rise in imports from China at the beginning of this century accelerated a long decline in union elections, by diminishing the benefits of unionization and increasing the risk.

Why are fewer women promoted to senior positions than men? In a study of evaluation and promotion data from a large retail chain, Prof. Kelly Shue and her co-authors found that women got higher performance ratings than men but were consistently—and incorrectly—judged as having less leadership potential.

A large study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Jason Abaluck and Mushfiq Mobarak tested the effectiveness of a mask-promotion program in Bangladesh in increasing mask use and preventing symptomatic infections. The study found that masks significantly lower symptomatic infections, especially among older people and when surgical masks are used.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an emergency room doctor and three Yale SOM experts in organizational behavior launched a study to look for ways to protect the well-being of overwhelmed healthcare workers. They found that feeling like part of a team reduced reported stress and burnout—an insight with implications for how any kind of organization can weather a crisis.

As commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services, Roderick Bremby led a dramatic turnaround of the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Today, he is an executive at Salesforce, which has provided contact tracing and vaccine management during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Teresa Chahine talked with Bremby about his career and the converging roles of the public and private sectors in addressing public health.