Business Economics articles from January 2004

Business Economics archives from January 2004

From the Editor.
January 1, 2004... Debunking prevailing myths has been among the most honorable of economists' activities for over two centuries. This issue continues that noble tradition. The Master Debunker may well have been Adam Smith (although votes would also be cast for...

Leadership and progress: democratic capitalism and the Pax Americana have brought many more global benefits than is often realized.
January 1, 2004... During the postwar years, more people in more countries increased their living standards by larger amounts than in any period in recorded history. Two institutional changes, working together, explain much of the difference between postwar and...

Globalization: fads, fictions and facts: fads are no substitute for clear thinking about facts.
January 1, 2004... Globalization--the increased integration of national economies--has become a blanket term covering a number of facts and fictions. What are the facts? First, it can be argued that in important respects the world is no more globalized than in...

Corporate bond yield spreads in recent decades: an examination of trends, changes, and stock market linkages.
January 1, 2004... Corporate bond interest rates are a subject of concern to investment analysts, corporate financial managers, and scholars. In this article the yield spreads between corporate bonds and government bonds and the spreads between differing quality...

Predicting currency crises--a practical application for risk managers.
January 1, 2004... Since the Mexican and Asian currency crises, a body of research has been developed in an effort to build early warning systems to predict such crises. This paper presents a practical application of a currency risk model based on an extension of...

Testing for a new economy in the 1990s: the stock market accounted for a major part of the boom.
January 1, 2004... This paper examines how much structural change there was in the U.S. economy in the last half of the 1990s. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that there was only one major structural change, namely the huge increase in stock prices...

Monetary policy in a low inflation environment: thinking about unconventional monetary policy tools.
January 1, 2004... The constraint of a zero nominal interest rate requires rethinking how to use monetary policy to stimulate the economy in low-inflation conditions. Central banks are not only the economy's stabilizers, they are also its risk managers. How do...

Evaluating Wall Street journal survey forecasters.(Update)(Correction Notice)
January 1, 2004... Since our article "Evaluating Wall Street Journal Survey Forecasters: A Multivariate Approach" was published in the July 2002 issue of Business Economics, we discovered some errors in the background data. Most notable were miscoding of some...

Georgia State University's Economic Forecasting Center.(Economics At Work)
January 1, 2004... Founded in 1973, the Economic Forecasting Center is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year! We have survived for so long in the business of economic forecasting not by just being accurate, but by also being an important go-to resource for...

Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... By Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres. 2003. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, Pp. 304, $27.50 hardcover. Is innovation a skill that can be taught? The authors of Why Not? believe the answer is yes and present a virtual innovator's guide...