Data Interpreted
How long the federal government could be fully funded by even the most drastic “billionaire tax”
Penn Wharton Budget Model faculty director Kent Smetters shared the estimate during an episode of This Week in Business. After podcast host Dan Loney noted that California was the most recent state to propose a billionaire tax, Smetters recounted a hypothetical experiment he conducted with policymakers. Even after making a few “extreme” assumptions in modeling — including the seizure of all personal wealth above $1 billion — Smetters said there would only be enough to fund the federal government for less than nine months, rather than the 10 or 15 years that the policymakers anticipated.
Thought
“It’s at the heart of creating trust and making that trust scalable.”
Vice dean of Wharton Executive Education and Ira A. Lipman Associate Professor of Marketing Patti Williams on the rise of mass advertising and brand management in the early 20th century. As mass production, mass media, and national distribution reshaped the U.S. economy, brands evolved into identity systems, helping companies build trust with consumers they would never meet. Williams shared her insights in the upcoming American Business Innovation video series launching in June. The series is part of a broader effort that also includes an April panel on sports as economic growth engines and a June 13 Penn & Philly community event.
Data Interpreted
Founders with extensive pre-entry knowledge and experience grew their revenue by this much after one year at an accelerator.
Research co-authored by Wharton management professor Valentina Assenova analyzed the impact of startup accelerators on founder success. The study sample had 6,723 startups in 281 accelerator programs across 147 countries, measuring revenue, employment, and equity funding. The authors found that joining an accelerator doesn’t guarantee success; the human capital the founders had, defined as their “pre-entry knowledge” levels gained through their cumulative education, industry experience, and entrepreneurial exposure, was a defining factor of startup performance.
Thought
Does Testosterone Affect Men’s Economic Decisions?
For years, scholars have argued that testosterone influences how people make decisions about money and competition. But new research co-authored by associate professor of marketing and Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz Professor Gideon Nave suggests that the hormone may play a smaller role in economic behavior than previously believed.
The paper, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested the impact of testosterone on nine types of economic behavior, such as risk-taking, generosity, and competitiveness — and couldn’t find an effect on any of them.
“One important strength of this study is that it’s very large,” said Nave, who carried out the double-blind study with a team from academic institutions around the world, including Stockholm University in Sweden and the Nipissing University in Ontario, Canada. They recruited 1,000 men — 10 to 20 times more than in most earlier hormone studies — then randomly assigned half to receive a dose of testosterone and the other half to receive a placebo.
After the treatment, participants took part in a series of economic tasks to measure behavioral tendencies such as risk tolerance, trust, fairness, altruism, and willingness to compete. These included standard economic games such as “ultimatum” and “trust” activities in which participants decided how to split money or whether to trust another person with it.
The study found no measurable effect of testosterone on any of those outcomes, with economic behavior virtually the same between men given the hormone and those taking the placebo. But the authors acknowledge the study’s limitations.
“We looked at one specific paradigm: giving men one dose of testosterone,” said Nave. “This is not the only channel through which the hormone could influence behavior. However, because long-term testosterone experiments aren’t safe or practical, the only causal evidence we had so far on this question came from the aforementioned studies that gave a single dose.”
The paper, then, adds to growing evidence that many bold claims about human behavior need stronger proof. “Most behaviors are likely the result of many psychological and biological factors, each of them having a small effect on the outcome,” said Nave. —Seb Murray
Data Interpreted
Transaction volume of stablecoins for Visa last year
That total is double their traditional payment volume, said Wharton chair of the legal studies and business ethics department and Liem Sioe Liong/First Pacific Company Professor Kevin Werbach on an episode of This Week in Business. On the podcast, Werbach introduced Wharton’s Stablecoin Toolkit, a comprehensive report that offers a balanced perspective and clearer understanding of the digital asset’s potential to bridge the gap between the traditional finance system and blockchain-based markets.
Thought
“The Fed can do its job. But it cannot do everyone else’s.”
Former Wharton dean and Rowan Distinguished Professor Patrick Harker explained why monetary policy can’t substitute for sustainable fiscal policy in Knowledge at Wharton’s new monthly column, “Vantage Point,” which features timely insights from Wharton faculty. During Harker’s tenure as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, he operated on the belief that workforce development was a core economic policy, which in part led the Philly Fed to establish the Occupational Mobility Explorer, designed to allow policymakers and others to see how workers move between occupations and thus “where targeted investments could unlock mobility.”
Published as “Data” in the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of Wharton Magazine.
