Comments on Glenn Hubbard's Business, Knowledge, and Global Growth

Abstract

We are grateful to have this opportunity to comment on Dean Hubbard’s remarks about the role of business and business education in the world. We read Dean Hubbard’s article with great care. We see him as making the following four points:

(1) Many recent critiques of business education are simply disguised forms of a broader anti-business sentiment.

(2) Much of human progress since 1750 can be traced to the powerful contributions made by “business institutions.”

(3) The purpose of business schools is to foster economic growth.

(4) The primary benefits of an MBA education are: a significant financial return, an insurance policy that reduces “some of the uncertainty of the business landscape,” valuable analytical and technical skills, such as “the ability to assess valuations and conduct negotiations” and a degree that offers its students a wide range of choices as to where to apply the skills they acquired while in school.

We address each of these points in turn.

This paper is a comment on Business, Knowledge, and Global Growth by R. Glenn Hubbard which can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2205909.