Business

It’s likely that U.S. airlines will reinstate waived flight-change fees once demand returns, said John Zhang of the Wharton School. “This isn’t a forever kind of thing.”

Susan Wachter of the Wharton School offered her take on the U.S. housing market, which she believes will continue to see low inventory and high demand.

Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School said being included in the Dow can boost a company’s reputation. “Just in terms of name recognition, I think a lot of people are going to look it up and say, ‘Hey, what does Salesforce do? Maybe if Dow thinks it’s good, we should use it,’” Siegel said.

Tyler Wry of the Wharton School spoke about the nearly 200 CEOs who pledged to lead their companies in a manner that considers stakeholders beyond shareholders, including employees and community members. “The companies that were returning the most money to shareholders before signing the BRT statement, they had by far the worst responses to the pandemic out of any companies in the S&P 500,” he said.

Susan Wachter of the Wharton School said the pandemic-induced flight of tech workers from major cities will be good for the industry. “It was nearly impossible to get young talented people to join the workforce at wages that could cover those prices,” she said. “This will now make it possible to expand and increase Silicon Valley’s size, not in a geographic cluster sense, but in a network sense.”

Research led by Atul Gupta of the Wharton School examined how private equity firms’ investments in nursing homes have affected residents and staff. Overall, the investments were associated with lower spending on staffing and increased crowding of residents. “We expect that private equity-owned nursing homes would be less prepared in an emergency situation like this,” said Gupta.