HEADING ALL OPERATIONS and decision-making within a firm, the chief executive officer(CEO) is at the top of the corporate hierarchy, though there could be a president of the corporation, who would technically out rank the CEO. In a publicly held firm, however, the CEO is an agent of the stockholders of a corporation. Shareholders are [...]
CASH IS KING” is a favored proclamation of market analysts and entrepreneurs. Cash, in that sense, refers not to that physical green substance we all treasure, but to cash receipts minus disbursements from a given asset or operation for a specified period. Cash flow, for all intents and purposes, is the transfer of money in [...]
A CENTRAL BANK IS the most powerful financial institution in a nation’s economy, charged with critical monetary and financial responsibilities. Central banks issue currency, serve the banking needs of the national government, maintain foreign exchange reserves, support the banking system(including serving as a clearinghouse for bank drafts and as a “lender of last resort”), and [...]
FORMED BY THE 2001 merger of OIL giants Texaco and Chevron, the company is involved in all aspects of petroleum production including exploration, drilling, refining, distribution, and retailing, as well as energy technology and petrochemicals. The company has operations in over 180 countries. With 2001 revenues exceeding $100 billion, Chevron-Texaco is one of the five [...]
FOUNDED IN 1848, the Chicago Board of Trade(CBOT) is the world’s oldest and largest futures and future-options exchange. It began modestly, trading only agricultural commodities, but has significantly grown in both absolute and relative terms over the years; it now also trades financial contracts and options on futures contracts, and has become one of the [...]
THE CHICAGO SCHOOL of economics describes a number of economists and theories that have been produced or influenced by the economics department of the University of Chicago. What is known as the First School of Chicago began in 1920 under the leadership of Frank KNIGHT and Jacob Viner. The Chicago School is most closely associated [...]
POLITICAL CAPITALISM IS a private-property market system shaped by special-interest government intervention. Regulation, subsidies, and tax-code provisions are less reformer-driven than business-driven. This is to say, most interventions are not the result of government authorities acting on general impulse about the public good but are sponsored, or at least shaped, by the directly affected businesses [...]
(1940– )GEORGE AKERLOF HAS BUILT a career on his quirky, unconventional insights: his papers are titled with redolent words such as “Lemons,” “The Rat Race,” “Gift Exchanges,” “Fair Wage,” “Gang Behavior,” and “Looting.” Underneath the casualness has been a serious research program: to provide underlying behavioral models to Keynesian theory, importing knowledge from other social [...]
(1835–1919)THE PRE-EMINENT SYMBOL of America’s Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie was the most powerful capitalist of the last quarter of the 19th century. Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie died in Lenox, Massachusetts. After emigrating to the UNITED STATES with his family in 1848, Carnegie worked as a telegrapher before joining the administrative staff of the Pennsylvania [...]
AN ASSOCIATION OF FIRMS, a cartel explicitly agrees to coordinate its activities. A cartel that includes all firms in a market is in effect a monopolist(i.e., if a cartel includes all firms in a market then the cartel problem is identical to that of a monopolist, and the resulting market outcome with respect to price [...]