Senate Republicans recently released their much-anticipated healthcare bill. The law that that bill seeks to replace is the Affordable Care Act, which was devised by Faculty Affiliate Ezekiel Emanual.
He comments on some recent, negative statistics surrounding healthcare in the U.S. right now, “The problem is a lot of this uncertainty makes insurance companies nervous. When insurance companies are nervous, they do two things: they exit markets and they raise premiums. That’s exactly what you’re seeing.”

Uber recently announced that they would add a tip function to their ridesharing app, in line with what their competitor, Lyft, has done. They continue to make changes without the leadership of Travis Kalanick.

Faculty Affiliate Professor Peter Cappelli comments on the departed CEO’s affinity for President Trump, “the thing that is important to remember about Uber and Lyft is who their customers are. Almost all their customers and all their money come from urban areas, and those areas are Democratic.”

Faculty Affiliate Kevin Werbach comments for Politico on Uber’s future. The company recently let its CEO, Travis Kalanick, go, and is looking to right the ship.

He makes a point about what would need to happen before an IPO: “the company would want to put its house in order first before going and doing an IPO, which would definitely include a willingness to resolve some of its disputes with localities.”

Politifact looked into a recent tweet by the White House, which claimed that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, “led to fewer health insurance options for millions of Americans.” The website found this statement to be false.

Faculty Affiliate Daniel Polsky discussed the situation in rural America going forward, “Fewer plan options will be available when compared to the early years of the Affordable Care Act.”

Knowledge@Wharton looks into China and its finance industry’s future in a piece that features Faculty Affiliate, Franklin Allen.

“China needs to do a lot of work. For example, its capital markets do not work well.”

Faculty Affiliate Jennifer Blouin weighs in on how effective a repatriation scheme similar to the one in 2004 would be.

“If there are good investment projects, companies that have cash overseas very easily borrow domestically to make those investments happen. The reality is, there’s not much profitable investment they want to do in the U.S.”

Faculty Affiliate Olivia Mitchell comments on the juxtaposition of General Electric’s $45 billion in stock buybacks in recent years to their growing pension liabilities.

“It’s a clear tension. Buybacks clearly use assets available not to fund the pension promise but to make shareholders happy.”

Faculty Affiliate Michael Useem comments for the Washington Post on the unprecedented departure of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick without a plan for his replacement.

“They’re going to go nuts if they don’t have a final arbiter,” he said. “It’s like Management 101… . Nothing runs without one person at the top. Nature abhors a power vacuum.”

Faculty Affiliate Professor Howard Kunreuther writes an op-ed for Knowledge@Wharton discussing the American Health Care Act and the National Flood Insurance Program in an effort to explain this.

“Elected representatives on both sides of the aisle continually espouse the principle of fairness across a wide range of issues, including trade, tax reform, and jobs.”

As Uber faces increasing pressure and changes, especially in light of CEO Travis Kalanick’s leave of absence, Professor Kevin Werbach comments on how the company could rebound.

”One possible strategy to improve its image would be to pay drivers more and scale back its losses. That would mean higher prices for riders.”

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed legislation that would restructure future public employee’s pension plans to be solvent. The plan does not fix the current shortfall, however, as it only affects future employees.

Faculty Affiliate Olivia Mitchell commented, “The fact that they have to reform for all future hires means that, eventually, and very eventually, there will be some relief. However, the current defined benefit plan is underfunded and is not fixed by that reform.”

The future Janet Yellen’s position is unclear at the moment, with President Trump’s longtime advisor Gary Cohn being chosen to lead her replacement effort. Although Trump criticized Yellen during the campaign, he has praised her since becoming President. Professor Peter Conti-Brown believes this is short lived.

“The minute that ‘Morning Joe’ has a report about a Fed action that could harm Donald Trump, set an egg timer and see how long before he tweets,” he said.

Faculty Affiliate Howard Kunreuther, Ph.D., and his co-author Robert Meyer write in Psychology Today about their research on natural disasters and the psychology behind a lack of preparedness.

They write, “people resettle in floodplains, stock market crashes come in cycles, and careless drivers suffer repeated crashes. Each time such an event occurs, one hears pledges to take steps to ensure that the adverse event never occurs again, but inevitably it does—something routinely attributed to short memories.”

Radio Sputnik interviewed Faculty Affiliate Professor Mauro Guillen on the issue. Numerous reports have stated that the President is reconsidering some of the Obama Administration actions to foster a relationship with Cuba.

Professor Guillen acknowledged that things would be changing but stated, “in the long term, there’s no other solution for the two countries than to be on good terms.”

Faculty Affiliate Professor Katherine Milkman’s new findings on ‘nudges’ were published in Psychological Science, offering a low-cost, high-reward strategy for intervention in government. Nudges encourage certain behaviors - like retirement saving, college enrollment, energy conservation and more - without limiting the options available to the individual.

She states, “The changes in behavior produced by nudges tend to be quite cost effective relative to those produced by traditional policy tools – so there is a big opportunity to use nudging more widely in government in conjunction with traditional policy tools.”

Professor Kevin Werbach, a faculty affiliate, discusses the potential of blockchain and smart contracts with Knowledge@Wharton and Professor Nicolas Cornell, from the Legal Studies department.

He explains, “a smart contract, in theory at least, takes away the legal system entirely. Now there is nothing but that digital agreement. That is the entirety of the relationship, and everything from the negotiating of the agreement, all the way to the full enforcement and clearing of the agreement, happens digitally.”

With the sale of the ride-sharing company, Juno, many industry analysts are wondering if socially conscious business models are on the decline.

Faculty Affiliate Peter Cappelli has followed the trend, noting how “vociferously the investment community seems to object to being nice to employees. It’s a reminder that, in the corporate world, things are constantly yielding to the finance guys—whether they know what they’re doing or not.”

Professor Tom Baker, a Faculty Affiliate, argues that financial advisory roles can be replaced by non-partial robots.
He states, “I’d find it much harder to imagine what happened at Wells Fargo that you would program a computer to do what its people did because you’d have to consciously do that. They gave people bad incentives and had weak controls, which is different than programming computers to rip customers off.”

Faculty Affiliate Ann Harrison comments on the problems with focusing on manufacturing over service jobs for the United States. She is the author of The Factory-Free Economy.
Discussing the potential for emerging economies’ workforces, she says there is “a lot of supply for the actual manufacturing, but not a lot of supply for creating the next Google or Apple.”

The Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative’s study, “The Business of Voting,” was heavily cited in a recent article highlighting that small elections technology companies were hacked in the weeks preceding the U.S. Presidential election in November.

Professor Lorin Hitt, who led the research process said, “the industry that provides the hardware and software for the election process has been scarcely studied and often is opaque.”

Professor Eric Orts, a Faculty Affiliate from the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department, discusses climate change on “Radio Times.” He detailed the Paris climate agreement and the effect of leaving it.

His counterpart, Michael Oppenheimer from Princeton University, explained, “It used to be in your face. I’m old enough to remember when the air was dirty where I lived in New York City. You could taste it. You could feel it.”

As the FCC looks to change network neutrality rules in favor of lighter regulation, the D.C. Circuit Court is likely to play a major role.

Faculty Affiliate Kevin Werbach comments on speculation about how the FCC might rule, “policymakers don’t have the luxury to make decisions based on how they believe the court should have ruled.”

Knowledge@Wharton interviewed Faculty Affiliate Mauro Guillen and Stephen Szabo, executive director of the Transatlantic Academy, about Germany’s relationship with the United States. The conversation touched on issues surrounding NATO, trade, and the eurozone.

Professor Mauro Guillen discussed the changing relationship between Europe and the U.S.: “this is indicative of the times that we are living through in the sense that the outcome of certain elections… have called into question longstanding relationships in the world…. My concern is that we are not having an in-depth debate about the pros and cons of continuing with the current system.”

Faculty Affiliate Susan Wachter weighs in on how the elimination of the mortgage-interest deduction could affect housing prices. While removing the deduction would likely cause a drop in prices, overall tax cuts would stimulate demand. 

“Income after taxes is the most important factor for housing demand,” she says.