economy

Research at Vanderbilt: The Money behind the Innovation

Research at Vanderbilt: The Money behind the Innovation

Totojang via iStockPhoto At Vanderbilt, students are constantly surrounded by the effects of research funding. From posters advertising new breakthroughs, emails detailing newsworthy projects, or even the paragraph-long official titles of professors. The research ecosystem of elite universities like Vanderbilt is constantly publicized. At innovative universities like Vanderbilt, research is a business. With national academic research expenditures totaling more than $75 billion, universities race to obtain maximum funding from as many sources as possible. Research success at universities attracts both students and faculty. Research experience is a critical component of many graduate applications, such as those for medical school and…
Read More
We’re Going to Build a New Stadium, and You’re Going to Pay For It!

We’re Going to Build a New Stadium, and You’re Going to Pay For It!

Image generated by ChatGPT 4o The Tennessee Titans are building a new, $2.1 billion dollar home and you’re going to pay for it. No, Vanderbilt students are not going to have to take out their, or their parent’s check book and write out an eye watering figure, but Nashville and Tennessee taxpayers are going to bear a record breaking financial burden to the tune of $1.2 billion dollars, the largest ever stadium subsidy in the nation.  Large public subsidies for the stadiums of major sports teams have been somewhat of a trend in recent years, and with that has come…
Read More
A Freshman Perspective: September Jobs Report and What It Means for Our Careers

A Freshman Perspective: September Jobs Report and What It Means for Our Careers

jacoblund via iStockphoto By Nathan Park The September U.S. Jobs Report was recently released on Oct. 6 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and it blew expectations out of the water. It reported a whopping increase of 336,000 in the U.S. Job Report Non-Farm payroll, which was far above the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 170,000 and was the biggest increase since January. Regarding the different sectors in which these jobs have been added into, jobs in leisure and hospitality rose by 96,000, jobs in government by 73,000, and jobs in health care by 41,000 (compared with the average…
Read More
Authoritarian Success Stories? Evaluating Amartya Sen’s “Development as Freedom” in the Unfree World

Authoritarian Success Stories? Evaluating Amartya Sen’s “Development as Freedom” in the Unfree World

iStock photo by imaginima (2021) By: Claire Chen Amartya Sen’s “Development as Freedom” examines a provocative question posed by authoritarian governments and their sympathizers: does economic development truly necessitate liberal political values, especially in today’s developing world? Such a question becomes especially interesting in the context of Asia’s rapidly industrializing economies. While it is true that some wealthy nations have stable democratic governments, most notably post-WWII Japan, the relationship between prosperity and liberalism is not always clear-cut. South Korea and Taiwan are relatively affluent democracies today, but their authoritarian stints, which both lasted until 1987, could be compatible with economic…
Read More
The Populist Revival of the Islamic Banking Movement

The Populist Revival of the Islamic Banking Movement

iStock Photo By Claire Chen Islamic banking is on the rise. Recent estimates suggest that the industry can expect a 10 percent growth rate over the next year, part of its broader transformation from a niche cultural product to a mainstream commodity part of the broader ethical finance movement. A prevailing interpretation of Islamic banking considers it as simply another alternative in the consumer banking market. It is here that much of the discourse is centered: Islamic banking appears to be an individual moral statement that the savvy consumer chooses among a variety of products. At the same time, the…
Read More