We are pleased to introduce Mushfiq Mobarak, Assistant Professor of Economics, to SOM and the PSE newsletter community. Prof. Mobarak was drawn to Yale because of the impressive tradition of development economics scholarship here. He is excited by SOM’s level of social responsibility, which is a good match with his own values.

Prior to Yale, Prof. Mobarak taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and before that worked at the IMF and the World Bank. Prof. Mobarak is currently undertaking a number of research projects centered on topics relevant to the lives of the poor in the developing world. One of Prof. Mobarak’s research interests is marital behaviors in developing countries. He is exploring why countries such as Pakistan have a very high rate of marriage between relatives. He feels that studying and understanding the factors that lead to marriage between relatives will enable the creation of appropriate policies to combat the risks associated with this behavior.

In his home country of Bangladesh, Prof. Mobarak works closely with a local non-profit, BRAC, to look at what affects people’s adoption of new technologies such as cook stoves. His research aims to parse out the factors that may increase or limit adoption: price, information levels, gender dynamics, tradition, etc. Another research project looks at migration in northwest Bangladesh where every year in the pre-harvest period there are price shocks: prices increase and labor demand decreases. Surprisingly, this does not cause migration to areas with higher wages. Prof. Mobarak’s study aims to discover the impediments to migration and how they can be attenuated. Prof. Mobarak is excited to continue his research on these topics here at Yale and hopes to be able to take students to Bangladesh where he does his research.

This semester, Prof. Mobarak is teaching an elective course at SOM entitled “Doing Business in the Developing World.” In addition, he helps to organize the Development Workshop, which is a forum at Yale for graduate students, faculty and outside speakers with research-in-progress on the economics of development. He is also leading the international experience trip to South Africa and Namibia with Professor Victor Vroom.

Click here to learn more about Prof. Mobarak’s research interests and teaching.

By Juliana Koo, SOM’06

Nonprofit healthcare managers often feel conflicted about charging a price for their goods or services, especially when clients’ immediate health and welfare are at stake. On one hand, it is often the case that their target client population is poor, and placing an additional financial burden on poor people feels wrong. On the other hand, there is evidence that clients do not use donated products appropriately, resulting in lower impact of nonprofit managers’ time and investments. Here is a case where the right decision may feel completely wrong.

In her PONPO seminar on September 18, Nava Ashraf (Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School) presented a report of a field study that she conducted in Zambia with two colleagues to sort through the factors that affect a client’s use of a product based on whether and how much she pays for it. If it is true that pricing boosts usage, Ashraf contends that there are two potential reasons. It may be that prices screen in people who want to use the product, resulting in a higher proportion of users among the purchasers. She calls this the screening effect. It may also be that paying actually has a psychological effect that induces use.

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By John Zebrowski

The new SOM curriculum is designed to support the integration of traditional business disciplines in order to create a learning experience that better prepares students for the problems facing management executives today. An important component to the new courses is the continuation of the school’s strong commitment to corporate social responsibility and environmental issues.

A study performed by a committee of staff, faculty, and students found that the level of social and environmental material presented to first-year students is greater under the new core curriculum than the traditional MBA coursework that preceded it. According to Julie Koo, executive director at Yale’s Program on Social Enterprise, the data from the study show that there is greater depth to the social content in the new core curriculum.

“In the past, there were a few courses that discussed these issues extensively, a great many that touched upon them, and a few that did not mention them at all,” she said. “In the new core, social and environmental issues have been integrated into the curriculum in a broader, deeper way. Rather than segregating discussion on these topics into one or two courses, they are discussed in depth throughout the core.”

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By Fawzia Ahmed, SOM’07

This year, I had the privilege of composing one of the school’s first social enterprise cases, on Achievement First (AF), a New Haven-based charter school management organization with schools in New Haven and New York.

My unexpected foray into case-writing began with an e-mail from Sharon Oster while I was a summer intern at AF, providing support to the organization’s leadership team on budget and strategic issues. In designing the capstone course for the new core curriculum, Integrated Leadership Perspectives, Professor Oster was including a module on nonprofit organizations. She had chosen Achievement First as her case, and wanted me to write it. Writing the case presented a great opportunity for me to probe deeper into a fascinating organization and to crystallize my thoughts on school reform issues, such as replicating high performing schools, political and funding challenges, and expansion that I had been thinking about all summer. My response to Prof. Oster’s e-mail was an enthusiastic yes.

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Yale SOM offers many practical learning opportunities, as highlighted by Professor Sharon Oster in the last edition of the PSE Newsletter.

Highlighted here are three student projects with local nonprofits:

Farnam Neighborhood House by Kendra Lee, SOM’08
Christian Community Action by Sarah Rose Cohen, SOM’08
Visiting Nurse Services Health Care by Imani Brown

Executive MBA students, Chidi Achebe, M.D., M.P.H., David Esposito, M.D., Michael Giordano, M.D., and Jamie Sidore, worked with Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) Health Care, a non-profit organization that has been helping people in Connecticut live independently in their homes for over 100 years. VNA Health Care is focused on home care and wellness services. As Dave Esposito explained, “it was refreshing to work with a group that’s not so much concerned about profit, cash flow, and bottom line.”

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By Jonathan Koppell, Associate Professor of Politics and Management & Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance

Management 684: Social Venture Management was created in response to student demand for a course that addressed contemporary business issues often grouped under the heading of “Corporate Social Responsibility.” In putting together the class, I wanted to concentrate on the management challenges associated with achieving multiple objectives rather than the arguments for social responsibility. Thus I made the focus of the class on the difficulty in reconciling pursuit of profits and non-financial goals. The course is case based; we examine companies that seek to create some type of public good at each step of the value chain. In this sense, it is a general management course, integrating lessons drawn from all the disciplines taught at SOM. I am pleased that several students with no particular interest in social responsibility of business have found the class useful and engaging for this reason.

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By Sharon Oster, Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and Director of the Program on Social Enterprise

Since Yale SOM began, we have always had opportunities for students to work with outside organizations while still in school. In theory, these workshop experiences, as we sometimes term them, are a win-win venture. Students gain the benefits of learning how to apply their new-found skills in real world settings while helping deserving organizations, often in the nonprofit or small business setting, while those same organizations get the benefit of pro bono work by a bright group of soon-to-be expensive MBA students. The lure of this value proposition both for students and for community organizations has led SOM, along with many other MBA programs, to offer these opportunities.

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