Faculty & Research

Because the deal envisions emissions cuts no bigger than what countries pledged coming into Copenhagen, U.S. experts say the world's temperature is already on track to increase by 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, says John Sterman of MIT.

Peter Weill, director of MIT Sloan's Center for Information Systems Research, is interviewed in this Web cast about the research behind his new book, IT Governance. "We looked at how the key five decisions in IT were made," Weill says.

MIT Sloan professor and transportation expert Arnold Barnett provides insight on developing airport security solutions without sacrificing timeliness and consumer privacy. "If we act, even belatedly, to close loopholes in security, we might force aviation terrorists to adapt new methods that have a lesser chance of success," he says.

MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson reviews three recent books detailing the key events and players of the 2008 bank crisis, and cautions against a repeat fiasco in the future. "Without really serious reform, we have every reason to start counting down to the next financial crisis," he says.

"While explaining the growth differences between China and India by pointing to this difference in infrastructures and FDI, this Indian observer--and many others like him in India--committed a classic analytic error known as reverse causality, i.e., he thinks that it is infrastructures or FDI that caused the Chinese growth when in reality it is the growth that caused China to have infrastructures and FDI," writes MIT Sloan Prof. Yasheng Huang in this opinion piece.

"There is a cohort of people who are condemned to a permanently stagnant career path in Spain. It's very worrisome," says MIT Sloan Prof. Paul Osterman, who also teaches at the Institute de Empresa business school in Madrid.

MIT Sloan's Andrew McAfee's recent McKinsey interview is cited in this opinion piece about the importance of businesses using social media.

Grace W. Ueng, a faculty member of the MIT Sloan MBA joint venture at Fudan in Shanghai, offers the tenth step in her 12-step marketing guide for new and existing businesses.

InnoCentive, Inc., a Waltham-based technology company, appointed Thomas Malone, Patrick McGovern professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, to its strategic advisory board.

MIT Sloan Prof. Simon Johnson will provide the keynote address at the annual Cayman Business Outlook conference in January 2010. This year's theme, "Prospering in a Grave New World," and attendees can expect a big--picture view of the latest economic and social issues impacting Cayman.

Alessandro Bonatti, assistant professor at MIT Sloan, describes the paradox of online advertising that occurs when technology advances spur more affordable and targeted ads.

Recent layoffs have resulted in an increase in productivity among those still employed, and contributes to the delay in new hiring. MIT Sloan Prof. Thomas Kochan says the jump in productivity is stronger than in many past economic recoveries.

This article quotes a study co-authored by MIT Sloan's Yasheng Huang titled, "Business: Can India Overtake China?"

Systems dynamics expert John Sterman of MIT compares our carbon problem to a bathtub. Each year we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, much of it remains there. It lasts for about a century, although about half of the carbon dioxide produced is removed each year by forests and oceans. Sterman figures the world can afford to churn out another 920 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide between now and 2050. Holding emissions to that level offers a better than even chance at keeping the world under 450 parts per million and avoiding a crucial temperature rise.

MIT Sloan Prof. Michael Cusumano's contributions to an article about the browser wars and the incentives for companies to offer free Internet browsers to their customers is cited.

According to new research by MIT Sloan Assistant Professor Michael Grubb, consumers may overestimate the precision of their demand forecasts. This overconfidence creates an incentive for both monopolists and competitive firms to offer tariffs with included quantities at zero marginal cost, followed by steep marginal charges. This matches observed cellular phone service pricing plans in the United States and elsewhere.

Research by MIT Sloan's John Sterman and Peter Senge are cited an ongoing series on the recent climate talks in Copenhagen. The blog entry also provides a link to Senge's video summary about MIT's work with Climate Interactive on climate simulation tools.

Simon Johnson, MIT Sloan professor, shares his thoughts on potential economic crises for the year 2010.

So would people be prepared to pay to avoid future disasters? And if so, how much? That is the question tackled by Robert Pindyck of MIT's Sloan School in a recent paper he co-authored titled, "The Economic and Policy Consequences of Catastrophes."

This article describes MIT Sloan Assistant Prof. Renee Richardson Gosline's recent study, which showed that shoppers can more accurately distinguish between real or fake designer bags if the product owners "look authentic to the brand."

MIT Sloan's Howard Anderson predicts the coming year to be challenging for start-ups seeking venture capitalist investors. "When the market is rational, and right now it is rational, then you're going to find it very hard to start companies," he says.

MIT Sloan Prof. Eric von Hippel is quoted in an article about new applications of the Open Source Development Model.

MIT Institute Professor Emeritus and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Samuelson, who had held a joint appointment with MIT Sloan and the Department of Economics, died Sunday at his home in Belmont.

MIT Sloan's Neal Hartman provides insight on why American executives have unique methods of operation. "One trademark of the American style is a focus on achieving results, short-term and long-term," he says.

A new study suggests that funding with a long-term focus and more freedom results in more innovative and influential research. Study co-author MIT Sloan Prof. Peter Azoulay says, "If you want people to branch out in new directions, then it's important to provide for their long-term horizons, to give them time to experiment and potentially fail."

Ernst Berndt, MIT Sloan professor of applied economics, is part of the faculty team for a teleconference and webcast program offered by the American Bar Association Center for Continuing Legal Education.

MIT Sloan's Andrew Lo received the first Market Technicians Association Educational Foundation (MTAEF) Mike Epstein Award in honor of his long-term support of technical analysis in academia and practice.

Glen Urban and John Hauser, professors at MIT Sloan, developed an "ad morphing" system designed to tailor website banner ads to individual users. The program uses cookies to monitor users' click patterns and predict the types of advertising cues to which they are likely to respond.

The president is putting "a little more skin in the game," says MIT Sloan's John Sterman, of Obama's scheduled delay in attending the climate summit in Copenhagen. "The closer to the end of it that he attends, the more he's connected to whatever the outcome is."

MIT Sloan Prof. Antoinette Schoar explains why the best CEOs manage to make struggling businesses more profitable just 60% of the time. She says, "Our results show that managers do matter, but they don't change everything."

MIT Sloan Prof. Thomas Kochan debates the Employee Free Choice Act with former Department of Labor Solicitor Eugene Scalia in a recent panel. He describes the union process as "clearly broken," and says, "we ought to fix the law and fix it systematically."

Dr. S.P. Kothari, MIT Sloan professor and finance expert, gave a lecture on "Economic Recovery: Global Trends and Implications for India" at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science -- BITS Pilani. He highlighted recovery trends and ongoing challenges worldwide

Companies are increasingly affected by their employees' high expectations for sustainability in the workplace. MIT Sloan Prof. John Sterman says, "People are hungry for the opportunity to work professionally in a way that is consistent with building a sustainable world instead of one that undermines it". Adds Deputy Dean Richard Locke, "The risk of asking people to care is that you have to then walk the talk."

MIT Sloan Prof. Michael Cusumano was named one of Silicon.com's most influential people in technology. Cusumano shares this year's honor with distinguished leaders such as the CEOs of Apple, Google and Twitter, the founder of Facebook, and President Barack Obama.

MIT Sloan's John Sterman will use the newly released Climate Scoreboard, a tool for understanding and tracking climate change negotiations, to analyze proposals during the United Nations talks in Copenhagen on December 7-18.

MIT Sloan Visiting Professor Christa Bouwman analyzed a quarter century of US bank performance data to determine how capital affected banks' profitability, market share, and ability to survive.