Professors from the Robert H. Smith School of Business often serve as experts in the media. Here are a few excerpts of various faculty members sharing their knowledge on a range of business topics.
Peter Morici, professor of international business, spoke to the Baltimore Sun about a potential Fed interest rate hike.
Maryland economists said that if the Fed decides to raise interest rates, the increase would likely be relatively small, affecting consumers through mortgages and auto loans.
“It’s going to have, frankly, a marginal effect on the economy,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and a former director of the Office of Economics at the U.S. International Trade Commission. “They’re going to move so tepidly that I don’t see this having much consequence.”
Morici believes any move from the Fed would come after the November presidential election. Pushing the increase later in the year also could diminish its impact on the economy and consumers, he said.
The Investor’s Exchange (IEX) and its 350-microsecond trading delay, or “speed bump,” likely won’t revolutionize the industry nor attract a broad range of investors, Smith Finance Professor Albert “Pete” Kyle tells ValueWalk, but a “batch auction” approach would more effectively “level the playing field” in the accelerating proliferation of high-frequency trading.
A more effective way to “level the playing field” is via “discreet batch auctions,” Kyle says. “Instead of processing one order at a time, orders are batched together, perhaps one order per second. And, to be even more effective, go a step further and randomize the waiting time between the batching of each order.”
Smith Clinical Professor of Finance David Kass gave his thoughts on the controversial pricing of EpiPens on KCBS Radio.
“The company owning the drug and pricing it this way, Mylan Labs, is primarily a generic drug company. About 85 percent of its revenues come from generic drugs that are off-patent, that are priced in a competitive market. At the moment, Epipen, for that particular application, has a monopoly,” Kass said.