You wouldn't expect to see a scrawny, spectacled, beak-nosed Chippendale dancer any more than you'd expect Hooters to hire an obese waitress. But, surely, looks don't matter for the highly educated and trained sales professionals that pharmaceutical companies send to doctors' offices.

Arizona is at a crossroads, looking back at 25 years of spectacular growth and forward to a future that, while promising, is also uncertain. As one of 10 identified "megapolitan" areas in the U.S., Arizona faces the choice of creating high-quality jobs or ignoring that need.

The Arizona Constitution mandates that "the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible" at the state's universities, and that the state appropriate money for the "development and improvement" of its universities.

Thirteen years after then-First Lady Hillary Clinton's 1,000-page universal health-care plan met with derision, an increasing number of public policymakers are coming full circle, advocating mandatory enrollment for everyone and coverage regardless of age, income and pre-existing medical problems

Are America's top CEOs living in a world apart from the rest of us? The average compensation package for a CEO of an S&P 500 company last year was $11.7 million — about 185 times greater than the average salary of a rank-and-file employee.

Employee turnover is an expensive process. Human resources experts estimate the cost of turnover to range between 93 percent and 200 percent of an exiting worker's annual salary, depending on the employee's skill level.

When Dell Computer Corp. announced in May that it is opening two retail stores, retail industry observers took note. Dell, with $56 billion in revenue this year, was a pioneer in developing the online model of retailing. Brick-and-mortar retailers have followed, creating their own online stores.

The withdrawal of Bill Gates from his full-time role in the Microsoft empire he created raises the specific question of how — and even whether — an icon can be replaced. Gates' move also highlights the general question of how best to handle management succession.

In our competitive culture "no risk, no reward" is an axiom. But is all risk the same? In their new paper, "Not All Risk Taking is Equal: Firm Performance and the Motivation for Executive Decisions," Nathan Washburn and co-authors studied the risk-taking behaviors of executives.

Fannie Mae's recent $11 billion accounting scandal drew headlines, but even before that, critics, analysts and academics have urged that the time has come for this Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) to be completely privatized.