Commerce

BY TIMOTHY P. CARNEY Uber is very good at raising piles of money from investors, but it is not very good at making profits. So the company is resorting to a tried and true tactic of businesses in industries with

AMHERST, NY –Amherst Chamber of Commerce President/CEO A.J. Baynes joins Chamber member and local restaurant owner Michael Tobin in announcing the Grand Opening of Shuck Shack, the third seafood venture for Tobin on Saturday, July 4 at 301 Ohio Street in Buffalo. The

BUFFALO, N.Y– The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, the area’s regional chamber of commerce, announces that seven new members have joined its Board of Directors, with terms effective immediately. The new Board members are: Jim Dentinger, President, NOCO Enterprises, LLC, a division

BY MATT WEIDINGER Various reviewers (including me) have noted the rapid growth of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. That’s the temporary federally funded unemployment benefit program created in the March 2020 CARES Act that is designed to assist self-employed individuals,

BY E.J. McMAHON For a second consecutive year, New York’s population loss was mainly concentrated downstate, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates. During the 12-month period ending last July 1, the 50 counties of upstate New York lost 20,846

Billionaire Bob Rich, the owner of the privately held Rich Products Corporation is being urged to launch a new Buffalo-based marketing unit focused on ‘brand-building’ across the multi-national firm’s product channels. Many in the local business community believe that Rich

In March, developer Gerald Bucheit killed a South Harbor development project called Queen City Landing, which has been long delayed by preservationists’ lawsuits claiming that the 23-story residential tower would interfere with ‘migratory bird patterns’. Nonsense litigation aside, urban design advocates

BY MATT WEIDINGER State unemployment insurance (UI) programs typically offer laid-off workers up to 26 weeks of benefits that replace, on average, nearly half their pre­vious wages. Except for the brief recession in 1980, in every recession since 1957, Congress

BY MARK JAMISON Universities are scrambling to figure out what to do if the COVID-19 pandemic keeps many students off campuses this fall. But they might do better to watch out for people like Jeff Bezos. Bezos’s statement, “Your margin

In recent weeks Governor Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly said that the economy is unlikely to “just bounce back” from the COVID-19 pandemic shut down.  He has been arguing that the government will need to “think big” in efforts to rebuild

Billions of dollars in hidden state taxes are driving up the cost of health insurance for New York consumers and employers, according to a report published today by the Empire Center. The taxes, collected under the state’s Health Care Reform Act, add

Pegula Sports & Entertainment may be in such a serendipitous cash crunch that billionaire Terry Pegula may be willing to sell his two National Lacrosse League franchises — the Buffalo Bandits and the Rochester Knighthawks — to the Seneca Nation

Rumor has it that the Seneca Gaming Corporation is developing a ‘top-secret’ gaming application for home play on phones and computers during the COVID-19 outbreak, which prompted the Seneca Nation Tribal Council to shut down its casino venues — halting

BY ANNA SCHERBINA We investigate the optimal duration of the COVID-19 suppression policy. We find that absent extensive suppression measures, the economic cost of the virus will total over $9 trillion, which represents 43% of annual GDP. The optimal duration

TD Garden, often called The Garden, is a multi-purpose arena in Boston, Massachusetts named after a subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank. It opened in 1995 as a replacement for the original Boston Garden and has been known as FleetCenter, among

BY MATT WEIDINGER Last October, the House Ways and Means Committee approved, along party lines, legislation to extend and expand the Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) program.  HPOG is one of more than 40 federal education and training programs and provides low-income individuals training

The federal government over-regulates nearly everything, and the northern border with our largest trading partner is no exception.  But making it easier to traverse this international boundary line will have enormous economic impacts for both nations, but for the economically

Lorraine Capital, LLC (“Lorraine”), a Buffalo NY private equity firm, in partnership with Landon Capital Partners, LLC (“Landon”), a Boston MA family office and Ironwood Capital, LLC (“Ironwood”) an Avon CT based subordinated debt fund, has exited their investment in