Reuven Brenner

Uncovering the costs and benefits of sports gambling

webfull — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 19:15:47 +0000

In a piece for The Wall Street Journal, Professor Reuven Brenner makes the case for legalized sports gambling – an activity that has only recently been legalized in the US through a Supreme Court ruling.

“As in sports, so in high culture – prohibitions, bad regulations and badly imposed taxes destroy businesses and have long-term unintended consequences,” explains Brenner.

Professor Brenner on anti-Semitism

webfull — Fri, 11 May 2018 15:55:23 +0000

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Desautels Professor Reuven Brenner traces the early manifestations of anti-Semitism into the present, suggesting that the constant in all of this is the Jewish people’s opposition to dominant ideologies of a given time.

Professor Brenner on how Asian countries can overcome democratic deficits

webfull — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 21:13:49 +0000

In a piece for Asia Times, Professor Reuven Brenner points to history and other geographic contexts to demonstrate how Asian countries, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, can redress democratic deviances.

Professor Brenner invited to prestigious panel

webfull — Mon, 12 Feb 2018 16:41:34 +0000

Professor Reuven Brenner was invited to present on a panel that discussed venture capital in Quebec’s biotech and life sciences industry. The high-profile event was attended by Quebec Ministers Mr. Gaétan Barrette and Ms. Dominique Anglade, while the discussion was moderated in part by Mr. Pierre-Marc Johnson, former Premier of Quebec.

The education reformation

webfull — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 20:35:48 +0000

In a piece for American Affairs, Professor Reuven Brenner takes a pulse of contemporary U.S. education and outlines some of the key challenges in this area, including skewed high school graduation rates and the lack of rigorous training to develop skills and discipline.

As a solution, Prof. Brenner proposes an accelerated education program that is complemented by new institutions to better prepare students for their lives and careers.

Technological advancement means the rethinking of language

webfull — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 16:24:32 +0000

As society continues to embrace technological advancement, we tend to overlook how the words that our ancestors used have lost their meaning. In an article for Asia Times, Desautels professor Reuven Brenner explores what happens when the words used for the physical realm are applied to a digitized society, and how the fit is not always a natural one. Prof. Brenner illustrates his point by referring to the legal system’s struggles with interpreting Google’s business practices.

Is bitcoin the new gold?

webfull — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 17:32:14 +0000

Bitcoin has been the target of much speculation among financial circles with some experts alleging that it has the potential to become comparable to gold, a currency legitimized through social convention.

In a piece for Asia Times, Desautels professor Reuven Brenner explores what it takes for a new monetary yardstick to emerge, and argues that, historically, social convention must be combined with scarcity.

Inflation or recession? The US Fed tries to untangle a financial mystery

webfull — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 15:13:26 +0000

A Weekly Standard op-ed examines the way the Fed is trying to tame a $4-trillion quantitative easing problem in case another recession hits.

The piece quotes Desautels professor Reuven Brenner’s withering criticism of current policies in American Affairs (in which he likens them more to astrology than science) but allows that the Fed is trying to make sense of a vastly confusing set of circumstances: low unemployment should be pushing wages and inflation upward, but it’s not happening.

Must All Patents Last for 20 Years?

webfull — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:07:40 +0000

Patent controversies continue to roil the business world. In March, a federal judge slashed by nearly half the $1.05 billion in damages awarded Apple last year in its patent-infringement suit against Samsung. On April 1, India's Supreme Court denied Novartis AG's request, after a seven-year legal battle, to gain patent protection for an updated version of its blockbuster leukemia drug Gleevac. And on April 15, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, challenging Myriad's claim to patent a naturally occurring gene.

Warren Buffett and Tech Stocks: Why Doesn't the Oracle's 'Common Joe' Portfolio Include Apple or Google?

webfull — Wed, 21 May 2014 16:05:24 +0000

With Mr. Buffett's annual celebration last weekend and some grumbling about his failure to beat the market in four of the last five years, people keep reminding me of a piece I wrote in 1996 for Dow Jones about Buffett's portfolio.

... Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at ��ϲ��'s Desautels Faculty of Management, serves on the Board of ��ϲ��'s Pension Fund, and is a member of its investment committee. Brenner's last book is World of Chance (2008).

How many immigrants can Europe accommodate?

webfull — Fri, 25 Sep 2015 22:13:45 +0000

Written by Reuven Brenner

Europe is now facing a prospect similar to what the US has been facing for decades: the march of millions upon its borders. But whereas the US got millions of immigrants fleeing Mexico for a better life, the potential millions moving on Europe come from failing states from around the world: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya – and through the latter, from Nigeria, Eritrea and other.

Why is the media on the left? Why the contempt for workers?

webfull — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 19:07:49 +0000

I spent the first fourteen years of my life under communism. When my parents got out in 1962, I realized to my utter astonishment that much of academia was on the left, praising communism, rationalizing increased centralization of powers under a variety of jargons. Even the US was not immune to these ideas, and that the left and academia despised workers who wanted routine lives, rather than revolutions.

Read full article: Asia Times, December 4, 2016

Metaphor, literacy and ‘fake news’

webfull — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 15:23:05 +0000

Desautels Professor Reuven Brenner writes in a recent Asia Times op-ed that, as societies become literate, earlier metaphors become codified as literal truths, much to the detriment of those societies and the cultures that exist within them. There are parallels between the “fake news” of today and analogues in early societies, where one people’s superstitions about another group could bring the two into conflict.”

Free Markets Series E11 - Reuven Brenner - The force of finance

webfull — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:27:59 +0000

Free markets are essential to the technological innovations that underpin rising levels of prosperity. In this sobering interview, though, economist Reuven Brenner expresses his concern for the future of free markets, at least in the near term.

Watch full interview: YouTube, March 12, 2013

Reassessing History from Two Continents

webfull — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 21:41:15 +0000

Günter Bischof ist aus der österreichischen zeitgeschichtlichen Forschungslandschaft nicht mehr wegzudenken. Als Leiter des Centers Austria und Marshall Plan-Professor an der Universität von New Orleans bekleidet er einen wichtigen Außenposten der österreichischen Wissenschaft und der österreichisch-amerikanischen Beziehungen. Als Historiker leistet er wesentliche Beiträge zur Aufarbeitung des breiten Feldes der österreichischen und europäischen transatlantischen Beziehungen, insbesondere der Nachkriegsjahre. Die anlässlich seines 60.