Tag: election



Donald Trump’s election as president initially sent global markets reeling. What might we expect from the markets moving forward? John Horn, senior lecturer in economics at Olin breaks it down.

  • Economic Implications: “The election of Donald Trump will have long-lasting implications for the United States and global economy. The election will be significant economically because his main support came from the middle- and lower-class workers struggling in the face of globalization. Immigration (the wall on the border with Mexico), trade deals (NAFTA and TPP), taxes (across the board, but aimed mostly at the higher income brackets) and health care will all be addressed in the coming months. How these topics get addressed will fundamentally determine whether President-elect Trump can truly make America great again.”
  • Trade: “Most economists agree that trade and globalization have been good from a macro perspective: The size of the overall economic pie has gotten bigger in the U.S. and around the world. The core of Trump’s constituency are those who have not gotten a bigger slice of that pie … which is the downside of trade – not everyone shares equally in the gains. If we cut off trade with the rest of the world and the pie shrinks, how will President-elect Trump ensure that those who got left  from the bigger pie (with trade) end up taking a larger slice from the shrinking pie (without trade)?”
  • John Horn

    John Horn

    Manufacturing: “Manufacturing jobs have been hurt more by productivity gains (automation) than trade – those jobs lost to machines aren’t coming back. Unless there is a massive, large-scale retraining and skills-upgrade program, where will the new jobs come from? Infrastructure investments are good, short-term fixes to create jobs, but they don’t create long-term jobs (i.e., for 10 years or more) for those in the construction trade (unless we continually upgrade our infrastructure). Multiplier effects would help create ancillary jobs, but if the construction goes away, so do those support positions.”

  • Negotiating deals: “If the U.S. kills off NAFTA, and the Mexican economy tanks, how will that help reduce illegal immigration into the U.S.? If the U.S. starts to thrive again, and Mexico shrinks, the pressure on the wall will become immense. Trade deals are as much political as they are economic – the EU and Trans-Pacific Partnership are as much about regional political power as they are about GDP growth. President-elect Trump often had the advantage of negotiating business deals from a position of power. But the U.S. will have a harder time dictating terms to the rest of the world. Incentives matter, and the leaders from other countries are incentivized to help their constituents – and keep their own jobs! Trump might be able to perfectly thread the needle and get better deals, but it’s hard to see how they would fundamentally advantage the U.S. without simultaneously disadvantaging the other countries. It’s hard to envision why another leader would accept that kind of deal.”
  • Tax cuts: “Tax cuts to the wealthiest, including corporate tax cuts, could lead to more jobs, but could just as easily lead to more dividends to shareholders, or to further investments overseas. Economists will never agree 100% on which is more likely to happen… . Mandating what companies do with those tax cuts will be hard to pass Congress, and even harder to implement and enforce if authorized. There is no certainty that the lower and middle class will get pay raises and more jobs just because corporate tax cuts are enacted.”
  • Obamacare: “The Affordable Care Act will not look anything like it does today – but what will replace it? If the lower and middle class get hurt by the repeal, then another plank of Trump’s support will weaken.”
  • Be afraid. Be very afraid: “Ultimately, this is as much a political issue as an economic issue … though they are intricately linked. With the rise of nationalism in Europe with the U.K., Germany and France), with China’s struggles with a slowing economy, and with the collapse of oil revenues in the Middle East, the world is not in a great place to handle major shocks to the system. Trump’s supporters unquestionably have been hurt by globalization trends over the last 30 years. But there are major questions outstanding about how his major policy planks – immigration, trade, taxes and healthcare – will be implemented, how disruptive they will be and ultimately how well they will help that core constituency. If designed perfectly, they may well strengthen the lower and middle class. And a strong U.S. economy should help the global economy – as long as we haven’t cut ourselves off from it. But if the policies don’t help, or if Trump walks back those campaign promises, that dispossessed center will become even more angry with leadership in Washington. And that’s an election that we – and the rest of the world – should all be afraid of.”

Horn was a Senior Expert in the Strategy Practice of McKinsey & Company, based out of the Washington, DC, office, before joining Olin. Prior to joining McKinsey, John assisted major U.S. financial institutions with fair lending compliance as a consultant with Ernst & Young LLP.

From Washington University’s The Source Election 2016




Here at Net Impact, we strive to engage and empower Washington University in St. Louis and the business community to drive positive social, environmental, and economic change. We’re a graduate student club that sees an MBA as a conduit for impact. We want to make a difference in our careers across business sectors, industries, and initiatives. Part of this engagement includes non-partisan encouragement to cast a vote this election cycle.

October 12 is the last day to register to vote in Missouri.

As such, we’ve captured some of our members’ voices as they describe their motivation for voting. We spent part of our last general body meeting exploring why someone votes. The activity brought out interesting perspectives, from sense of duty to belief in change, acknowledgement of our country’s past to hopes for our future. A diverse array of voting rationale – which makes sense since this group comes from backgrounds, industries, and ideas that span education to energy, non-profits to Fortune 500, military to marketing.

Explore our thoughts here: Why We Vote: Net Impact-Style

turbovote-200px-fw__0Washington University is one of 200 universities using TurboVote, an electronic registration platform that allows students to register in any of the nation’s 50 states or the District of Columbia. The process is fast and private. TurboVote only shares with the university the total number of students who register, and it sends students election reminders and alerts.

 




Partisan politics can incite volatile emotions among the electorate, as the 2016 Presidential election has demonstrated. But what about voters’ emotions after election day? Olin professor Lamar Pierce and colleagues have been studying the reaction of voters to the 2012 election and have found a surprising trend among the winners and losers.

“Elections are important from a policy standpoint, but they also represent competition between the strong group identities of political parties,” said Pierce, associate professor of organization and strategy at Olin Business School. “Although an election might affect someone’s happiness because of its implications for policy, it also might induce sadness simply because their group’s candidate lost.”

Lamar Pierce

Lamar Pierce

Pierce, along with co-authors from the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of California at Los Angeles, examined data from thousands of online surveys conducted by CivicScience, an online polling and market research company. The research compared the happiness levels reported by people who identified with a political party in the days leading up to, and just after, the 2012 presidential election. The researchers found the pain of losing an election is larger and more impactful than the joy of winning, but the agony of defeat was surprisingly short-lived.

“Within three or four days the losers were back to their pre-election happiness levels,” Pierce said. “What this strongly suggests is that this is like losing the big game. It feels devastating and then several days later, life moves on.”

For comparison points, Pierce and his co-authors applied the same methodology to two national tragedies: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Sandy Hook shooting. The emotional dip that resulted was far smaller than the effect of a partisan election loss, with two notable exceptions: those who had children, who were distinctly less happy after Sandy Hook; and Boston residents, who had similar emotional responses after the marathon bombing. Pierce says the difference reveals the strong role of partisan identity to a person’s self and well-being.

“The magnitude of effects that we see around the election are not trivial,” Pierce said.

However, they might be changeable. Pierce points out that different factors are at work this election cycle that could very well yield different results as opposed to those observed in 2012.

“I think many people have very strong opinions about what the real policy impact would be in this election,” Pierce said. “You might get a different result in this case, but certainly in 2012 it was a very temporary effect.”

Pierce’s research appeared in the Journal of Experimental Political Science.

Guest blogger: Erika Ebsworth-Goold

Image: retrobaltimore.tumblr.com




True or false: Registering to vote takes forever.

False: The process takes all of 10 minutes.

True or false: Students need only to register once.

False again. Students must re-register anytime they move, even it’s just from the South 40 to the Village.

True or false: Washington University in St. Louis has registered more voters with TurboVote than all but two other universities.

True. Through Sept. 26,  a total of 2,065 students had registered using TurboVote. And thousands more had registered online or in their home states.

“There are a lot of myths about voting, including the persistent narrative that young people can’t be bothered to vote,” said Cassie Klosterman, voter engagement fellow at the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement and a 2016 graduate in Arts & Sciences. “That is not true at Washington University. Students here are not only registering to vote, they are engaging in the issues.”

turbovote-200px-fw__0Washington University is one of some 200 universities using TurboVote, an electronic registration platform that allows students to register in any of the nation’s 50 states or the District of Columbia. The process is fast and private. TurboVote only shares with the university the total number of students who register, and it sends students election reminders and alerts. So far, only Miami Dade College and the University of Maryland have registered more voters than Washington University.

Students have another opportunity to register as a voter from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today (Tuesday, Sept. 27), during National Voter Registration Day in front of the Danforth University Center. Students from WashU Votes, the Gephardt Center’s voter registration initiative, will be out in force.

“TurboVote makes it simple and eliminates the risk of error,” said Stephanie Kurtzman, interim executive director of the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. “In the past, if someone incorrectly filled out the paper form or it was somehow misplaced, students would show up at the polls and be surprised to find out they weren’t registered for that polling place.”

Klosterman has set ambitious goals for both student registration and turnout this election. In 2012, some 72 percent of Washington University’s 13,600 students registered, and some 56 percent of those students voted. Students with especially high turnout rates were South 40 residents who were registered in Missouri (84 percent), and Village residents who were registered in Missouri (95 percent).

Klosterman hopes to increase the  voter registration rate to 80 percent and to boost the registered student voting rate to 65 percent. Civic dialogue, research shows, is the one proven way to get more people to the polls, Klosterman said. That’s why the Gephardt Institute will be hosting 90-minute post-debate civic dialogues after every debate.

“This will be a great way for students to engage in positive, respectful conversations,” Klosterman said. “When voters feel like they know and understand the issues, they are more inclined to vote.”

The ultimate goal, however, is not just high turnout rate on Election Day Nov. 8, but high turnout in years to come.

“Our focus is broadly on voter engagement, not just voter registration,” Kurtzman said. “When students start to identify themselves as voters — not just a supporter of a particular candidate or issue — that’s when voting becomes a part of their civic life.”

Guest Blogger: Diane Toroian Keaggy

Photo: Debate Watch at the DUC, Sept. 26, 2016, WUSTL Photos