Homeownership is an essential part of the American Dream and one of the most important tools for anyone in the 21st century to build wealth. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a level of uncertainty to a market that has been largely stable since the last recession. This has proven to be a major roadblock affecting multiple generations of Americans in their quests to develop wealth. A particularly interesting case study through this crisis has been the housing market of Phoenix Arizona. When the challenges presented by the pandemic began to unfold, thousands of home listings and sales were canceled all the while newly unemployed Arizonians began to worry about meeting their mortgage payments. However, this disruption didn’t last long, several months after the beginning of the pandemic housing prices quickly began to swell. Many listings continue to be sold for tens of thousands of dollars above the asking price which has led investors to ask: how have Phoenix homes been able to seemingly ignore the economic downturn? Today we are living in the hottest housing market since early 2007, and many expert opinions on the state of the market conflict with one another. Some expect housing prices to crash, others believe this growth is sustainable. A complex web of interconnected financial and human systems has led us to the position we are in today and several important questions have been left unanswered. What forces have driven the market to such dramatic heights? Who have been the winners and losers in the Arizona housing market during the pandemic? And what can be expected to happen in the near future as the “new normal” served to us by COVID-19 unfolds? The purpose of this thesis is to explore these questions and identify the underlying factors that have created the current market conditions. It will begin with an analysis of relevant supply and demand factors, then move to identify groups of winners and losers, to finally develop a prescriptive outlook for challenges facing Phoenix’s housing market.

Music streaming services have affected the music industry from both a financial and legal standpoint. Their current business model affects stakeholders such as artists, users, and investors. These services have been scrutinized recently for their imperfect royalty distribution model. Covid-19 has made these discussions even more relevant as touring income has come to a halt for musicians and the live entertainment industry. <br/>Under the current per-stream model, it is becoming exceedingly hard for artists to make a living off of streams. This forces artists to tour heavily as well as cut corners to create what is essentially “disposable art”. Rapidly releasing multiple projects a year has become the norm for many modern artists. This paper will examine the licensing framework, royalty payout issues, and propose a solution.

This thesis will be exploring the situation of one of the most vulnerable groups during the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income renters. As businesses and whole states were shutdown, jobs and wages were lost and the over 100 million renters in the United States, many of whom spend a significant chunk of their income on their rent, were forced into a precarious situation. <br/><br/>The Federal Rent Moratorium that is currently in effect bars any evictions for missed rent payments, but these are expenses that if left unpaid, are just continuously accruing. These large sums of rent payments are currently scheduled to be dropped on struggling individuals at the end of the recently extended date of June 30th, 2021. As these renters are unable to pay for their housing, landlords lose the revenue streams from their investment properties, and are in turn unable to cover the debt service on the financing they utilized to acquire the property. In turn, financial institutions can then face widespread defaults on these loans.<br/><br/>The rental property market is massive, as roughly 34% of the American population consist of renters. If left unaddressed, this situation has the potential to cause cataclysmal consequences on the economy, including mass homelessness and foreclosures of rental properties and complexes. Everyone, from the tenants to the bankers and beyond, are stakeholders in this dire situation and this paper will seek to explore the issues, desires, and potential solutions applicable to all parties involved. Beginning with the pre-pandemic outlook of the rental housing market, then examining the impact of the coronavirus and the resulting federal actions, to finally explore solutions that may prevent or mitigate this potential disaster.

The goal of this research paper is to analyze how we define economic success and how that affects large corporations and consumers. This paper asks the questions: What do we define as a good economy? What metrics are currently utilized? And how do perceptions of a good economy influence politics? Overall, the research seeks to identify common economic and financial fallacies held by the average citizen and offer alternative methods of how socio-economic information is presented to the consumers. Consumers play a major role in the market, and the information they receive has a considerable impact on their behaviors. Determining why the present economic analysis is used is the first step in finding ways to improve the system. Observing past political and economic trends and relating them to current issues is necessary for finding future solutions.

Regulations in the financial sector of the United States have had the same purpose of protecting the economy and consumers since their modern establishment. Deregulation in the 1980’s led to an environment that allowed banks to take on high risk choices. This, among other economic circumstances, lead to the 2008 Great Recession that brought down the United States and global economies. The government was forced to act with bailouts to keep many big banks from shutting down. Some were bailed out and others failed to keep the economy stable. In June 2009, the recession was over, but the recovery process was not. To help prevent another crash, the Dodd Frank Act was passed in July 2010. The act is a long and complex legislation with the main purpose of enforcing regulations to keep banks in check to prevent another recession. The Act’s enforcement was felt immediately, forcing businesses to adapt to its regulation standards. Opinions on Dodd-Frank are mixed. Some see it serving its purpose with regulating the financial sector and others see it being a costly burden that has slowed the progress of the economy. As the economy continues to evolve, we can expect changes to the regulations on the financial sector which will continue to cause businesses to adapt, change, and modify their operations.

RIIIIING. The class bells ring to signal the end of the school day for Timmy and his classmates. Mrs. Clark, the boys’ sixth grade teacher, is in the middle of a vocabulary lesson, but as soon as the bell rings everyone rushes out the door. She sets her chalk down on the desk and waves goodbye to everyone as they head home. Timmy and his best friend, Ben, hop on their bikes and start their ride home.
Every day, the boys drive past Merlin’s Magic Shop on the way back from school. Today when Timmy and Ben ride past the store, Timmy sees something new in the window. It appears to be an old box. Wooden, a little worn in, but it still looks like something special.
The boys go inside to ask someone about the box. Towards the back of the store there is an older gentleman stocking the shelves. The gentleman sees the boys looking his way and he begins to head towards Timmy and Ben.
“How do you do?” the man asks. He can tell they are stealing glances at the box, too nervous to ask about it. He points towards the object in the window and says, “You know, that was my old magic box when I was a boy. I thought it looked like it might need a new home.”

Timmy thinks for a moment. The man seems a bit odd—could this really be magic or is he tricking us? By the way he talks, it’s as if he already knows what people are thinking. He knew right away that we wanted that box. He can be standing in the middle of an aisle and in the blink of an eye, he’s gone! Is he magic himself? The store is odd too. You won’t find more than two of an item in there. The store is full of wands and hats and capes, but none of them look the same. Nothing comes in packages or pretty boxes—everything comes as it is, as if it has been used before.

The sense making process is a part of our everyday lives. The way we make sense of the world around us can have a big factor in our ability to make judgments and decisions. That is why it is important to establish a valid model in which we can run through the thought process that allows us to come with high quality solutions to problems in an efficient manner. Once I have established this model and given examples on how it operates, I will move onto potential impediments. Impediment are biases that can hinder us from running through the sense making process in an efficient manner. These impediments can vary from affecting our previous knowledge to affecting our ability to process new information. The end result of these impediments when effective means they have negatively impacted our ability to rationally make decisions. This can cause the overall quality of solutions provided by the sense making process to be degraded. After I have discussed the most relevant impediments to this process, I will begin to discuss external factors such as complexity, dynamism, and uncertainty. These external factors can directly affect the validity of our sense making process, as well as empower the impediments to do more damage than what was possible before. I will discuss how the external factors operate, and their individual ability to affect the sense making process and impediments. Finally, I will conclude this thesis by taking the research I have done so far and apply it to how we make sense of financial markets. This will involve analyzing how we make decisions with regards to the stock market, and how external factors and our impediments can impact the validity of those decisions made. Finally, I will summarize my findings, and discuss the biggest factors that impact the sense making process.