This Week in Business

Professor Emeritus of Healthcare Management at the Wharton School, Mark Vincent Pauly, analyzes the consequences of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidy expiration, its effects on insurance coverage and costs, and the potential implications of proposed reforms allowing individuals to choose plans using direct government funding.

Judd Kessler, Wharton Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy and author of Lucky by Design, tells how affordable housing lotteries function, why they generate hidden markets, and how better design could improve outcomes for renters.

Barbara Kahn, Wharton Professor of Marketing, discusses Saks Global’s bankruptcy, the strategic missteps behind it, and how luxury department stores can rebuild through experiential retail, omnichannel integration, and elite customer relationships.

Eric Bradlow, Vice Dean of AI and Analytics and Professor and Chair of the Marketing Department at the Wharton School, discusses new research with Accenture that empirically measures the skills gap and explores how AI is redefining education, hiring, and the future labor market.

Wharton Associate Professor of Financial Regulation, Peter Conti-Brown, analyzes the end of Jerome Powell’s term, the potential next chair, and why Federal Reserve independence is central to monetary policy, regulation, and the U.S. economy heading into 2026.

Stefano Puntoni, Wharton Marketing Professor and Co-Director of Wharton Human-AI Research, explores six major AI trends for 2026, including model specialization, agentic systems, everyday consumer AI, monetization, regulation, and the implications for business education and the future workforce.

Dan Taylor, Professor of Accounting at the Wharton School, discusses how his research helped shape new legislation requiring foreign company executives to disclose stock trades and protect U.S. investors from opportunistic insider selling.

Susan M. Wachter, Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate at the Wharton School, discusses the outlook for housing and commercial real estate, focusing on inflation trends, interest rates, inventory challenges, and what these forces mean for markets in the year ahead.

Jeremy Siegel, Wharton Emeritus Professor of Finance and Senior Economist at WisdomTree, shares his perspective on the state of the U.S. economy, analyzing recent rate cuts, inflation progress, employment data, tariff uncertainty, and what they could mean for markets and growth in 2026.