College of Business Administration Bureau of Business and Economic Research

This paper discusses the importance of credit to small businesses, and the role that banks play.  It also supports that small businesses are an asset to economic growth because of their innovation, employment, and also their capability of research and development.

In this paper, we show that by applying the modified R/S technique to the intraday data, there exists the phenomenon of long-term memory in both NYSE and NASDAQ indices.  The policy implication is that an abnormal profit is entirely possible for certain time intervals during a trading day.  The efficient market hypothesis may actually coexist with a global structure to comprise a fractal market hypothesis.  In addition, via a univariate ARMA model, we can make more accurate forecasts on the stock returns in the time period when a long-term memory is found.

99-02, Krause,Aric, "Human Capital Skilling, FDI, and Economic Development:  Toward Equity," January 1999.    Click Here to Download

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the prospects of equitable economic development through technology transfer and human capital skilling.  It begins by developing the mechanism through which technology transfer can result in human capital skilling.  A discussion of technology transfer through foreign direct investment is presented to illustrate the potential for economic development.  The paper then discusses the importance of transaction costs consideration for encouraging technology transfer.  Finally, implications for equity are analyzed, then concludes with a brief discussion of policy implications.

This paper discusses the rights given under our legal system to pursue a lawsuit to recover for personal injuries, property damage, or some other form of  loss due to the wrongdoing of another individual.  Then, lawsuits are pursued to receive some form of compensation for these injuries, damages, ot losses, to cover medical expenses as well as compensation for lost wages, emotional suffering, and physical pain.   Finally, when this lawsuit is presented to a judge in court, the jury must decide what the facts are, who is at fault, and if there was a degree of negligence on either person's behalf.

98-02, Quesenberry,LeGene, "Adventure Tourism:  An Environmental Protection Technique," September 1998.

Sustainable development is the au courant theory regarding economic growth.  Scholars from various disciplines have taken issue with the definitions (or lack of defining qualities) to the term sustainable development; but the environmental problems spawned by population growth, unfettered industrialization, and traditional economic policies require an innovative solution.  This paper explores the potential of ecotourism as a mechanism for sustainable development,  using Belize as a model.

97-07, Ewedemi,Soga, "A Theory of Accidents," December 1997.

Two theories of accidents have been proposed previously; namely the Loss Causation Chain and the Energy Release theories of accidents.  Another theory of accidents, based on the availability and employment of relevant information is proposed in this paper.  This theory stipulates that occurrence of accidents is a function of available relevant risk information as well as the available information employed.  It implies that accidents which occur on account of failure to employ available information are not accidental and can be prevented while accidents resulting from lack of relevant information are unexplainable and cannot be prevented.  Different strategies are therefore required for dealing with preventable accidents (due to unsystematic risk exposure) and unexplainable accidents (due to systematic risk exposure).

One of the evolving areas in employment law is the question of employee privacy.  As technology permits employers to easily monitor phone calls, computer productivity, employee voice mail, and employee E-mail accounts, more conflict is arising between employers and employees over privacy issues.  While monitoring once required large amounts of time and manpower, today a systems manager, a network administrator or even another employee with a personal computer may be able to tap into electronic mail sent over the company E-mail system or over the Internet from a home computer.  There have been a number of instances when companies have been accused of overstepping the boundaries and invading employee privacy.  Employees have filed "invasion of privacy" lawsuits against their employers.  As electronic mail and the Internet are used by more companies, managers are going to have to make decisions as to how much information they need to acquire regarding their employees, how much (if any) monitoring of computer and voice mail systems they will do and also how the information they gather will be used.

Electronic communication technology is becoming an important part of university-level education processes.  As a result, students routinely utilize a variety of Internet services.  This pilot study represents survey results describing the student usage of Internet services available at a small western Pennsylvania state university.  The findings, based upon 77 student subjects, provide insight into usage levels and applications of various network services.

In general, the basic forecasting problem is one of utilizing all relevant information to effectively minimize errors in predicting future values of economic time series.  In addition, the ability of the forecast to predict regime changes and to provide accurate forecasts at minimal cost are important properties to consider as well.  Having stated this, there is considerable scope for choosing alternative forecasting strategies in terms of the structural form of the model and the information set to consider in devising the forecast.  Much of the debate in this area, consequently, has been directed toward determining which type of model specification elicits the most accurate forecasts.  Because micro-level data are influenced by both national and regional economic conditions one would expect these series to fluctuate more over time and be more difficult to forecast.  Certainly these data series are more sensitive to short-run economic fluctuations specific to major industrial sectors.  As an initial investigation, this paper utilizes a Bayesian time series approach and regional financial data to forecast turning points and levels of two important regional employment and income variables.  Forecast results are then compared to alternative model specifications with and without the regional indicator variables.  It is found that regional financial data improves the forecast accuracy of employment and income levels but does not help identify turning points in the time series.

This paper examines the results of a series of ultimatum bargaining games in relation to academic performance in an introductory economics course.  It is shown that while a high correlation exists between the proportion of the pie kept in the bargaining experiment and test performance in the course, the experiment itself does not sufficiently increase the degree of learning in the course, rather, the experiment acts as a measure of prior knowledge.

Alimak is a Swedish firm that specializes in rack and pinion technology, and is a world distributor of industrial lifts.  Founded in 1948, the company has developed substantially, concentrating on the design, development, manufacturing, supply, and after-sales service of construction hoists, permanent goods and service lifts for industry and commerce, work platforms, and a range of mining equipment.

Dietrich Industries, Inc. is a metal framing and processing company.  The problem the Company is experiencing deals with developing a sufficiently sized pool of applicants for entry level managerial training positions.