Business Economics articles from January 2000

Business Economics archives from January 2000

IN MEMORIUM.(Obituary)
January 1, 2000... The death of Herbert Stein in Washington on September 8, 1999 at 83 was a great loss to the economics profession and, indeed, to a larger community. "Herb," as he was called by those who knew him, earned distinction in both the public and...

A Tribute to Edmund A. Mennis.(Obituary)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Over the course of his long professional career in business economics, to date spanning more than 40 years, few if any economists have made a greater contribution than Ed to NABE and to the field of business economics. His imprint on NABE and...

FROM THE EDITOR.
January 1, 2000... I am Bob Crow, the new Editor of Business Economics. As Ed Mennis announced in the October 1999 issue, he has retired after 15 years of service. Bob Parry's tribute to Ed and his distinguished service appears in this issue. Fortunately for me...

Facing the Consequences.
January 1, 2000... RISK IS MORE ABOUT HOW WE MAKE BUSINESS DECISIONS AND OUR BASIC VISIONS OF THE WORLD THAN IT IS ABOUT MATH. Although the achievements over the past three hundred and fifty years in the measurement of risk are extraordinary intellectual...

Implications of Productivity Uncertainty For Monetary Policy.
January 1, 2000... UNCERTAIN FUTURE PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH COMPLICATES MONETARY POLICY IN A LOW-INFLATION, LOW-UNEMPLOYMENT ECONOMY. Faster productivity growth rates are consistent with the remarkable combination of fast GDP growth, low unemployment, and low...

How the Economy Came to Resemble the Model.
January 1, 2000... A CONVERGENCE OF FORCES IS DRIVING ECONOMIES AND THEIR INDIVIDUAL ACTORS CLOSER TO THE CLASSICAL MICROECONOMIC MODEL--A TREND TO BE RECKONED WITH IN BUSINESS PLANNING. Over the years, economists have spent much effort to modify the...

Economic Foundations and Risk Analysis in Investment Management.
January 1, 2000... ADDING ECONOMIC CONTENT TO TIME-SERIES FORECASTS OF FINANCIAL RETURNS IMPROVES EXPLANATORY POWER AND FORECASTINGS. The risk management systems now used in investment analysis are based on Markowitz mean-variance optimization. Successful...

Country Risk and Foreign Direct Investment.
January 1, 2000... CUSTOMIZED, SYSTEMATIC COUNTRY RISK ASSESSMENT IS CRITICAL FOR COMPANIES THAT CONTEMPLATE ACTIVITY ABROAD. Country risk analysis (CRA) attempts to identify imbalances that increase the risk of a shortfall in the expected return of a...

How Technology Is Reshaping Finanace and Risks.
January 1, 2000... TECHNOLOGY, ESPECIALLY THE INTERNET, IS CREATING REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN COSTS, REGULATION, AND COMPETITION. Dramatic increases in the capacity and speed to transmit and process information electronically are transforming the structure of...

Weighing Emerging Market Risk: The Supply of Capital.
January 1, 2000... BUSINESSES CONDUCTING COUNTRY RISK ANALYSIS SHOULD CONSIDER NOT ONLY THE DETERMINANTS OF CAPITAL FLOWS, BUT THEIR SOURCES AS WELL. Economic professionals specializing in country risk or international portfolio analysis face a daunting...

ERRATA.(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2000... In the Statistics Producers' Corner from the October 1999 issue of Business economics, the following sentence was printed incorrectly: "This is a useful concept applicable to time series with few actual contractions, except where it is...

European Monetary Union: Will It Really Contribute to Stability?
January 1, 2000... IN THE INTERMEDIATE RUN, AT LEAST, MONETARY UNION IS LIKELY TO INCREASE RISKS FOR THOSE WHO DO BUSINESS WITH EUROPE FROM OUTSIDE ITS BORDERS. In the long run, European monetary union will almost surely prove beneficial--economically and...

Monitoring the Household Sector with Aggregate Credit Bureau Data.
January 1, 2000... A NEW SOURCE OF DATA PROVIDES A FIRMER FOUNDATION FOR CREDIT ANALYSIS AND DECISIONS. This article demonstrates the value of aggregated credit bureau data for benchmarking portfolio performance and modeling trends in household borrowing and...

Will the Real Economy Please Stand Up?
January 1, 2000... How do these new measures of GDP change the picture of economic growth and inflation in the current expansion compared to previous estimates? For the current expansion--through the second quarter of 1999, the new numbers show more growth....

Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Stephen B. Adams Orville R. Butler, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 269 pp., $34.95 hardcover. The subtitle of this book might easily suggest that it is just another laudatory company history created by internal public...

The Age of Modularity: Using the New World of Modular Products to Revolutionize Your Corporation.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Peter O'Grady, Iowa City: Adams and Steele Publishers, 1999, 247 pp., $49.75 hardcover. One of the hot buzzwords in business today is "mass customization." This is the process by which consumers can order, and have delivered quickly,...

The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, and Anthony J. Venables, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999, 367 pp., $35.00, hardcover. The Spatial Economy will likely become the cornerstone of the revitalized field of economic geography. Economic...

To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Bruce L. Benson. Foreword by Marvin E. Wolfgang, New York: New York University Press, 1998, 372 pp., $37.50 hardcover. Crime and crime control are big business. I have a friend--an ex-con--in the faith-based prison business who says,...

E.W Scripps and the Business of Newspapers.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Gerald J. Baldasty, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999, 217pp., hardcover $42.50, softcover $16.95. Students of mass media industries--and especially those of us working in these industries--have been fascinated by the...

The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: An International Comparison.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By H.E. Frech, III and Richard D. Miller, Jr., Washington DC: The AEI Press, 1999, 108 pp., $14.95 paper. The title of this book, The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: An International Comparison," may be a little...