School Notes: School of Management
May/June 2010

New SOM campus gets key city approval

On March 1, by a vote of 25 to 1, the City of New Haven Board of Aldermen approved the zoning changes necessary for Yale to build a 230,000-square-foot home for SOM on a four-acre plot on Whitney Avenue. During a brief discussion, the aldermen who voted in favor of Yale’s proposal cited the positive economic impact that the project will have on the city, through both the construction phase and the eventual increase in the size of the SOM student body, as well as the fact that the construction is favored by many of the residents in the surrounding neighborhood. The university still needs to get approval of site plans from the City Plan Commission. Internal demolition of the buildings currently on the site has already commenced, and construction of the campus is expected to begin by the end of 2010. The university hopes to complete the building by fall 2013. See info on the new campus at mba.yale.edu/new_campus/index.shtml.

Research by SOM professors cited by top media

New research by William Goetzmann ’78BA, ’86MBA, ’91PhD, Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies, and Keith Chen, associate professor of economics, has been prominently cited recently in the New York Times, while K. Geert Rouwenhorst, professor of finance, and Gary Gorton, the Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Management and Finance, were profiled in the Financial Times. Goetzmann noticed that the real estate bonds that financed the first wave of skyscraper construction were remarkably similar to mortgage-backed securities created over the last two decades. His research uncovered an earlier boom-and-bust cycle with many parallels to today’s crisis. Chen has discovered a key mathematical flaw in decades of research on cognitive dissonance. The Times covered how his research has caused prominent psychologists to redesign their experiments. TheFinancial Times examined influential research by Rouwenhorst and Gorton showing that commodities provide returns as high as stocks while offering a diversification benefit because their returns are negatively correlated with those of stocks and bonds. Read more about the work of SOM faculty at mba.yale.edu/facultyinsights.

Internship Fund reaches 100 percent support from the Class of 2011

Each year, the Internship Fund challenges the students of the incoming class to pledge money to help fund summer internships in the nonprofit and public sectors. This year, the Class of 2011 set a Student Fundraising Week record, raising more than $37,000, a result of pledges from 100 percent of the class. The mark represents a significant jump over the $22,000 raised last year. The full participation of the class triggered a $25,000 contribution from the dean’s office. “The success of the drive is the result of our great community,” said Kimberly Bartlett ’11, a fund coleader. “Everyone reached into their pockets and gave what they could.”