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What is the ‘social cost of carbon’?

The social cost of carbon, a dollar figure per ton of carbon dioxide released, is factored into the costs and benefits of proposed regulations and purchasing decisions, such as whether the U.S. Postal Service should buy electric- or gasoline-powered trucks, or where to set emissions standards for coal-fired power plants. That extra social cost can tip the scales for whether a regulation’s costs appear to outweigh its benefits.

Feb. 16, 2022 | Jim Krane and Mark Finley

Academic research award: smart ideas with real-world impact

[Shrihari Sridhar at the Mays Business School of Texas A&M University, Rice Business Professor Vikas Mittal, and their fellow researchers] analyzed why screening rates for liver cancer were low for high-risk patients, deploying machine-learning techniques to understand the characteristics of those who responded best to different prompts to test, such as letters, emails or personalized telephone calls. That allowed them to recommend targeted approaches that would be more likely to succeed in place of the usual “one size fits all” outreach.

Jan. 18, 2022 | Andrew Jack

Fake it 'til you make it: Early-stage investors fall for style over substance

Earlier research from New York University found that our judgments are shaped mainly by our prejudices, and our conclusions are often wrong.

In our personal lives, we miss out on getting to know interesting people. Recently, I wrote about managers overlooking quality job candidates. But investment teams can lose billions of dollars of clients’ money, Rice Business assistant professor Alessandro Piazza, doctoral candidate Brian Chung and Dortmund University’s Daniel Reese found.

Feb. 7, 2022 | Chris Tomlinson

H-E-B dominates Austin-area grocery stores

Why do so many companies come up short in their strategy planning and implementation? Because their CEOs end up playing the role of firefighter, implementer or counselor. Four years of intensive data analysis conducted by the authors has shown the three roles repeatedly emerge, deflecting from strategy and keeping CEOs from elevating their companies.

Nov. 12, 2021 | Nicole Cobler and Asher Price

Why hiring takes so long

“The more thoughtful the organization is in making decisions, the better the long-term outcome is going to be for both the applicant who gets hired and the organization,” says Brent Smith, associate professor of management and psychology at Rice Business.

Oct. 20, 2021 | Bryan Lufkin

Supply chain crunch affecting local restaurants

David VanHorn, a supply chain expert and professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, said even if supply chains aren’t global that they are still complex.

“They're kind of like machines with a series of gears,” VanHorn said. “So if one of the interconnected gears breaks down for whatever reason, well, that means everything kind of stops. And yes, you can fix that gear but it still doesn't mean that the other gear, some other gear may not pop up and slow things down.”

Nov. 2, 2021 | Stefan Modrich

The Bounce Back: This Trio Of MBA Jobs Reports Has A Common Thread

The business schools at three more U.S. universities — Rice, Georgia Tech, and Vanderbilt — have posted employment numbers for their MBA classes of 2021 showing salaries up, placement rates up, and other markers improving dramatically after the pandemic year.

At Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, the job offer rate three months post-graduation jumped by 7 percentage points over last year, and the acceptance rate by 3 percentage points; meanwhile Rice Business reported its highest recorded salary in school history.

Oct. 20, 2021 | Marc Ethier

What happens if you pick the wrong date on your target-date fund?

You’re underestimating by 4.8 years how long you’ll be in the workforce and, as a result, you’re investing in the wrong target-date fund. And it’s costing you money, according to a new research report, “Missing the Target? Retirement Expectations and Target-Date Funds.”

How much is it costing you? On average it’s 4% or 0.2% a year, according to the authors of the paper, Byeong-Je An, an assistant professor of finance at the Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University and Kunal Sachdeva, and an assistant professor of finance with the Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Jan. 26, 2022 | Robert Powell

Rice MBA students win U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation competition

MBA students from Rice Business won the school’s second straight competition at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s MBA Case Competition. This year’s winners — Abhimanyu Bansal, Maya Stine and Nicholas Khater — won a total of $10,000 at the competition, beating 49 other schools from around the globe. This was the first year the competition was opened to international schools.

Dec. 14, 2021 | Ryan Nickerson