Research

How does your organization make decisions? Thomas Davenport, a professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and author of "Competing on Analytics: The Science of Winning," has taken a systematic look at the way decisions are made.

Final revised state figures for 2009 have just become available for two key indicators: nonfarm employment (from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) and personal income (from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis).

The American dollar is the major currency for commerce around the globe. By some estimates, the dollar is used in nearly half of all world trade, and has long played a vital role in domestic economies from Africa to the former USSR.

Alan Mulally, president and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Company, was honored recently as Executive of the Year by the Dean's Council of 100, a group of prominent business executives who advise the W.&nsbp;P. Carey School of Business.

In the Web's early days, self-styled seers proclaimed that the ironclad law of online commerce would be survival of the cheapest. Consumers could compare products with a few clicks of a mouse, these folks said, and thus they'd all soon migrate to the places where they paid the least.

Recovery from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression remains incomplete, but most experts concur that the worst is behind us. Now economists, policy makers and analysts alike are asking, how did we get here?

The resale season starts in March with an upswing in real estate transactions, but last month's numbers were much higher than might be expected if this were a "normal" year.

Everyone knows that Arizona has been mired in a budget crisis — worse, even, than in many other states — for three years now. But last summer, the Governor's office and the Legislature announced that the budget (for fiscal year 2010) was finally balanced.

We've heard since the middle of last year that the recession is over. Why, then, do people still seem so pessimistic? Why are consumers still so restrained? Why is the housing market still weak?

Those who were not expecting consumers to play much of a role in the recovery have been pleasantly surprised by recent bullish reports from the stores and malls.