The 2008 turmoil in world oil prices was not caused by an imbalance of supply and demand, argues Professor Kenneth Singleton of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Instead there was an "economically and statistically significant effect of investor flows on futures prices."
Consumer and environmental groups, angry over the spreading oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, are calling for a boycott of BP, the oil giant that owns the well gushing oil onto beaches and marshes. According to research by Phillip Leslie and Larry Chavis, boycotts do in fact work and they're something businesses should be concerned about.
The United States will see a slow move toward electric car adoption in the next 5-to-10 years while China will see only a small market for cars but big opportunities to manufacture and export batteries. A Stanford MBA student class study doubts either nation will move quickly to adopt clean coal technology.
