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Research earlier this year makes agencies lia- ble for the quality of their ratings, but this may also be insufficient, the authors say. Problems will remain unless the relationship between rat- ings and regulation is severed, says Opp of Haas. By eliminating rating-contingent regulation, governments allow agen- cies to evaluate the risk presented by UPCOMING & ONGOING sands of craftspeople sell their work. A better understanding of these models, say the researchers, could lead to the design of creativity-sup- port software, as well as to lessons for professional scientific communi- ties about successful networking and collaboration. n HARNESSING THE POWER OF NETWORKS Jeffrey Bardzell and Shaowen Bardzell, both professors at Indiana University at Bloomington, have received a $686,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Divi- sion of Information and Intelligent Systems. The husband-and-wife team will use the grant to study two of the Internet's largest, most crea- tive, and most collaborative online communities: World of Warcraft (WoW), a gaming community with more than 11 million users, and Etsy, a site where hundreds of thou- 52 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010 n SOLUTION FOR EMERGING MARKETS Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, a phar- maceutical company in India, has signed an agreement with the Indi- an School of Business, Hyderabad, to form the Centre for Emerging Markets Solutions (CEMS). CEMS will be an interdisciplinary research unit at ISB to study the employa- bility and training of young people in India and develop solutions for socioeconomic problems. n CENTER FOR CRM EXCELLENCE Microsoft Canada and the Univer- sity of Toronto's Rotman School of Management in Ontario have created the Rotman Executive Programs Centre for Customer Relationship Management Excel- lence (CRM Centre). The initiative will focus on conducting research, building intellectual capital, and developing interactive CRM edu- cational programs. institutional investors without any conflicts of interest. Under those circumstances, he says, "I believe the ratings would automatically become more informative." The paper, "Rating Agencies in the Face of Regulation: Rating Inflation and Regulatory Change," can be downloaded at ssrn.com/ abstract=1540099. The Downfall of 'Loud' Logos Consumers who wear expensive clothing or drive sports cars with logos promi- nently displayed to prove their socioeconomic status might be achieving the opposite result, according to a study by Young Jee Han, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles; Joseph Nunes, associate professor of marketing at the Mar- shall School; and Xavier Dreze, associate professor of marketing at UCLA's Anderson School of Man- agement. "Loud" logos, they found, actually con- note a lower price point to others. The authors exam- ined three categories of luxury goods— designer handbags, high-end vehicles, and men's shoes. They then surveyed consumers in sev- eral shopping malls in southern California. Through the survey responses, the authors identi- fied four types of luxury-good pur- chasers: patricians, who purchase luxury items with "quiet" identifiers that only their wealthy peers can recognize; par- venus, who purchase "loud" luxury goods to signify their sta- tus; poseurs, who purchase counterfeit items because they Young Jee Han Joseph Nunes Xavier Dreze