In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, the political parties in many states are working to redefine their congressional district maps to gain every possible edge. From California and Texas to Tennessee and Virginia, redistricting efforts have taken center stage. The Supreme Court has sanctioned partisan gerrymandering, and the system has evolved to one in which state legislature majorities get to determine who is most likely to fill those seats in Congress.
In short, gerrymandering has become a central feature of the system, not a bug. But what if we rethink the structure entirely?
Fake Hermès Birkin bags and other counterfeit luxury goods are popular not only with people on a budget, but also with those with deeper pockets, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the National University of Singapore analyzed millions of counterfeit purchases by American consumers from more than 24,000 U.S. zip codes on a major cross-border, e-commerce platform. They found that both lower- and higher-income individuals are “significantly more likely” to buy fake luxury items than middle-income consumers, according to a press release by INFORMS on Monday.
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Brock University professor and INFORMS member Michael Armstrong analyzes data from the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and discusses the difference between linear growth and exponential growth, using that information to explain why it's important to stop the current outbreak in the Congo before it spreads.
INFORMS members Scott Nestler, CAP, and David Hunt were named by the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business to its annual list of Office of the Dean Mission Awards, which honor faculty members for a specific research study that contributes to the common good. Nestler and Hunts “Using INFORMS Ethics Guidelines in the Classroom” describes how the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and its ethics guidelines can be used in the classroom. Their work stems from their involvement with the creation of the INFORMS Ethics in O.R. & Analytics Group, which is meant to bring awareness to issues of ethics in operations research and analytics.
Critics say capitalism erodes institutions and relationships. Turns out, working in sales might, according to a new study in the INFORMS journal Organization Science. A survey of people from different countries revealed that working in a sales-related job was associated with being less trusting, even controlling for other factors. To confirm this experimentally, participants here and abroad were randomly assigned to generate a positive review of a low-quality product. Compared to generating an honest review, generating an artificially positive review caused participants to see people as less honest.
Collective creativity in diverse teams is a kind of black box: We have a good idea of what goes in it (e.g. team composition) and what comes out of it (e.g. creativity), but we know very little about the process – what actually happens when people from different cultures work together. In order to illuminate this process, a new study published in the INFORMS journal Organization Science, examines how the cultural backgrounds of team members interact to shape team dynamics and outcomes.
It's an age-old question: Is it healthier to focus on the type of food you eat or the portion size? Whatever the correct answer is, consumers tend to be more influenced by the perceived healthiness of a food (nuts over chocolate, for example), than a food's portion size. That's one of the findings in new study, to be published in the INFORMS journal Management Science, that also finds that this tendency to neglect food quantity in favor of food type can partly be mitigated by encouraging consumers to compare different portion sizes of food side-by-side.
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