Business Economics articles from April 1999

Business Economics archives from April 1999

Perspectives on productivity growth.
April 1, 1999... The U.S. economy has surprised forecasters in recent years. Rapid growth, falling unemployment, low interest rates, and falling inflation were all very unusual for what was presumed to be the late stage of an expansion. Little wonder that...

Economic statistics, the new economy, and the productivity slowdown.
April 1, 1999... THE "NEW ECONOMY" VIEW OF THE PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN(1) Many economists believe there must be a mismeasurement story in the productivity slowdown, because they see more technical changes, more new products, more changes in consumer service,...

Computers and aggregate economic growth: an update.
April 1, 1999... In the past two decades, U.S. business poured billions of dollars into information technology, as computer power exploded and prices plunged.(1) As the top panel of Table 1 shows, real purchases by the business sector of computers and...

S&P earnings, corporate profits and productivity.(Standard and Poor 500 Stock Index companies)
April 1, 1999... The first argument often presented in favor of the view that the American economy has entered a "new era" is the strong performance of corporate profits in spite of modest price increases. Corporate restructuring and technological advancement...

National productivity statistics.(The Statistics Corner)(excerpts from an article with the same title published in the Federal Reserve Bank of richmond Economic Quarterly, Winter 1998)
April 1, 1999... Many people now enjoy levels of prosperity that would have been barely imaginable a few hundred years ago. That remarkable achievement can be viewed through the lens of productivity statistics that give quantitative estimates of output per unit...

Accounting for the recent decline in the NAIRU.(natural rate of unemployment)
April 1, 1999... The stubborn persistence of high inflation in the United States during the 1970s in spite of high average unemployment led economists and policymakers nearly twenty years ago to reappraise the inflation-unemployment tradeoff popularly known as...

Revenue management: microeconomics and business modeling.
April 1, 1999... Revenue management is a discipline that combines statistical techniques of forecasting with quantitative optimization techniques that have their origins in Operations Research; however, it is based squarely on the consumer and firm behavior...

Cable's expanding role in telecommunications.(cable television broadcasting)
April 1, 1999... The Telecommunications Act of 1996(1) set in motion a fundamental change in the telecommunications market. Now, with competition enabled, all markets are contestable, and the role of government will eventually shift from monopoly regulator to...

The business economist at work: Mobil Corporation.
April 1, 1999... Mobil Corporation is a major producer, refiner, and marketer of petroleum, and also has a large chemical operation. Its business interests extend to about 140 countries. In 1997, revenues were nearly $66 billion and operating earnings were $3.4...

Industry corner: the U.S. market for primary and secondary batteries.
April 1, 1999... Batteries are used as a source of electrical energy in some of the most cyclically sensitive industries and sectors in the entire economy, e.g., motor vehicles, industrial machinery, electrical equipment, consumer durable products, etc. But the...

Productivity of Cities.(Review)
April 1, 1999... By Sung-Jong Kim, Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1997, pp. 144, $53.95 While the theory of productivity differentials has been well established in the field of urban economics, empirical evidence on productivity distribution...

The Managed Care Blues and How to Cure Them.(Review)
April 1, 1999... By Walter A. Zelman and Robert A. Bereson, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998, pp. 224, hard cover $45.00, paper back, $17.95. Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force had two goals: (1) require everyone to join a...

Investment Intelligence from Insider Trading.(Review)
April 1, 1999... By H. Nejat Seyhun, Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1998, pp. 402, $29.95. Can insider-trading signals provide valuable investment information? Most business economists know that corporate insiders have more and better quality information about...