Gold May Glitter, but It Doesn't Stack up as a Long-term Investment
Call it a gold rush, of sorts. Gold topped out at more than $1,000 an ounce in mid-March, up from about $680 a year ago. Although it dipped to just under $900 late in April, it has had a tremendous run, up from $350 five years ago. What has driven these price gains? What does gold tell us about the economy's future? Should ordinary investors buy it? Knowledge@Wharton talks to the experts.

---

'No Place to Hide': The Pressure on Companies to Address Global Warming Heats Up
The scientific community now overwhelmingly agrees that earth's 6.5 billion inhabitants are contributing to global warming through heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions. While various industries are yielding to public pressure to address climate change, new carbon emission regulatory regimes are coming soon, and they will likely carry significant costs, according to experts from business and academia who spoke at the recent First Annual Conference-Workshop on Business and the Environment, which was organized by the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) at Wharton/Penn.

---

The Hard Sell: How to Market Products That Are No Longer Popular
Condos in Miami, traditional music stores, gas-guzzling cars, pharmaceuticals that get unfavorable press, foods made with trans fats: All marketers, from time to time, confront products that, for whatever reason, become difficult to sell. What strategies should companies follow to reposition their products in ways that might attract new audiences, or at least retain existing ones? One answer: segmenting. "There are so many different kinds of customers out there. You just need to find them," says one Wharton expert.

---

Cost-effective Medical Treatment: Putting an Updated Dollar Value on Human Life
A thorny question lies at the heart of meaningful health care reform. How much is human life worth? New Wharton research based on Medicare kidney dialysis data shows that the average figure -- $129,090 per additional year of quality life -- is higher than prior studies have shown. Perhaps more important, the study also puts a value on the cost-effectiveness of treatment across percentiles of the entire dialysis population in an attempt to develop a benchmark for coverage decisions. Chris P. Lee, a Wharton professor of operations and information management, co-authored the paper titled, "An Empiric Estimate of the Value of Life: Updating the Renal Dialysis Cost-effectiveness Standard."

---

Do China's Financial Markets Need More Freedom and Less Government Regulation?
While China's manufacturing sector booms and people sock away money in savings accounts, the country's financial markets remain in their infancy, according to international finance experts who gathered at the recent 2008 Wharton China Business Conference. One reason for the relative underdevelopment of China's capital markets, they note, is the role of the country's powerful central government. "Regulators are not comfortable letting the market do its own work," noted one conference participant.

---

Bad Business: Why Companies Shouldn't Trade with Abusive Regimes
Is selling police equipment to a notoriously brutal government tantamount to assisting in torture? William Schulz believes that it can be, and that these types of sales are one of the principal ways in which businesses find themselves tangled up with torturers. During a presentation sponsored by Wharton's Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research, Schulz, former executive director of Amnesty International and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, spoke about the challenges that companies face doing business with repressive governments.

---

Sea Change: What's on the Horizon for Royal Caribbean's Richard Fain
Richard Fain is chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises, the Miami-based global cruise company that operates 36 ships under the Celebrity Cruises and Royal Caribbean International brands, among others. He joined the company in 1981 as an outside director and became chairman and CEO in 1988. He spent 13 years before that at Gotass-Larsen Shipping Corp., a London-based owner and operator of cargo ships. Knowledge@Wharton asked him to update us on the cruise business.

---

---

---