Jones School expert available to comment on Black Friday’s economic impact

EXPERT ALERT

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Jones School expert available to comment on Black Friday’s economic impact

HOUSTON – (Nov. 26, 2013) – Shoppers across this country are preparing to take advantage of Black Friday deals. What will be the hot-ticket items and will the economy and stock market receive a boost?

Jill Foote, a senior lecturer in finance at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, is available to comment on the dynamics and economic impact of Black Friday and holiday shopping.

“Consumers sat on the spending sidelines in October clocking the lowest retail spending in two years,” Foote said. “But that is all about to change as increasing consumer confidence from more jobs, higher stock market and home prices and lower gasoline prices is expected to drive strong holiday shopping and further economic gains.”

Foote is also director of the Jones School’s El Paso Corp. Finance Center and director of the school’s Wright Fund, the MBA student-managed investment fund. Her principal teaching responsibilities are in investment management. She is also the faculty adviser for the Rice Finance Club and serves as executive director of the Rice Summer Business Institute, an intensive two-week summer program introducing high school students from Houston’s low-and moderate-income areas to the world of business and finance.

Rice University has a VideoLink ReadyCam TV interview studio for media who want to schedule an interview with Foote. ReadyCam is capable of transmitting broadcast-quality standard-definition and high-definition video directly to all news media organizations around the world 24/7.

-30-

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

Foote biography: https://business.rice.edu/Jill_Foote/.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for “best value” among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.