Education, Business, & Law

Illustration of two people in an office using a large shared table divided by a glass partition, each wearing face masks while sitting at their laptops.

The post-COVID workplace: Will employees be safe?

Experts at Wharton weigh in on what to expect when employees return to the workplace post-pandemic, and whether to expect all employees can, and will, return to a traditional workplace.

From Knowledge@Wharton ・

hand holding pen signing paperwork

David Hoffman on broken contracts during pandemics

Law professsor David Hoffman argues that there isn’t a precedent, outside a major unexpected event, to keep a party from fulfilling a contract. The pandemic raises a questions about obligations, public policy, and public health.

From Penn Law ・

Pedestrians lounging around a city filled with bicycles, cars, and airplanes

Understanding infrastructure

In the second episode of Penn Today’s “Understand This ...” podcast series, emphasizing interdisciplinary perspectives, a Wharton and Weitzman School discuss the past, present, and future of infrastructure.

Brandon Baker ・

line of people at a polling place with a sign out front reading VOTE HERE/VOTE AQUI and also in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Do long waiting times for voting put democracy on the line?

Gerard Cachon’s research looks at whether the length of voting time affects the effective exercise of democratic rights, and if the relationship between resource disparity and voting behavior depends on the racial composition of voters or party affiliation.

From Knowledge@Wharton ・



In the News


Associated Press

Mars drops Uncle Ben’s, reveals new name for rice brand

Americus Reed II of the Wharton School spoke about the recent Uncle Ben’s rice rebrand and efforts to redefine who “Ben” is. “You don’t want to step in it twice,” Reed said. “I think what you might see is a very watered-down, safe creativity. Let’s not step on anyone’s toes. You’ll see that for a while.”

FULL STORY →

Marketplace (NPR)

AI is reshaping the way we buy, sell and value homes

Christopher Geczy of the Wharton School was interviewed about digital advancements in real estate. “The advent of computer technology, especially with respect to artificial intelligence—computer vision—is that it can compare what it sees to hundreds of thousands of other examples for reference points,” he said. “The scale of the intelligence can potentially add where humans can potentially lack.”

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Bloomberg

Ginsberg’s death injects new doubt into fate of Obamacare

Dean Theodore Ruger of the Law School said of efforts to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, “Whoever wins the presidential election will have much more to say about the success or failure of the act than the court. If it’s Trump, there are many administrative ways he could stifle it.”

FULL STORY →

Philadelphia Inquirer

Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the impossible look easy

Serena Mayeri of the Law School wrote an op-ed about the life and accomplishments of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “To honor Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, we, too, must accomplish what may seem impossible, so that others might enjoy the world of possibilities she made,” Mayeri said.

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The New York Times

50 years of blaming Milton Friedman. Here’s another idea

Research by Tyler Wry of the Wharton School found that companies that signed a revised Business Roundtable statement about corporations’ obligations to employees and the broader world were more likely than other big companies to lay off staff in the early months on the pandemic.

FULL STORY →