The Scout Report for Business & Economics

December 18, 1997

A Publication of the Internet Scout Project
Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The target audience of the new Scout Report for Business & Economics is faculty, students, staff, and librarians in business and economics. Each biweekly issue offers a selective collection of Internet resources covering topics in the field that have been chosen by librarians and content specialists in the given area of study.

The Scout Report for Business & Economics is also provided via email once every two weeks. Subscription information is included at the bottom of each issue.

NOTE: This will be the final Scout Report for Business & Economics for 1997. See you on January 15, 1998. Happy Holidays to all!
Research Current Awareness
Learning Resources New Data
General Interest In the News

Two From IMF
International Capital Markets: Developments, Prospects, and Key Policy Issues--IMF [.pdf, 265p.]
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/icm/97icm/icmcon.htm
World Economic Outlook [.pdf, 223 pages]
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/FT/Weo/WEO1097/WEOCON97.htm
These two publications have recently been made available by the International Monetary Fund. International Capital Markets: Developments, Prospects, and Key Policy Issues is part of an annual series that has been produced since 1980. It is "an integral element of the IMF's surveillance of developments in international financial markets." It contains sections on developments in mature markets, emerging markets, and international banking, among others. World Economic Outlook is a semi-annual report that provides "IMF staff economists' analyses of global economic developments during the near and medium term." It also surveys the creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU), exchange rate arrangements and economic performance in developing countries, and monetary policies in the transition economies. WEO contains a statistical appendix on various global macroeconomic variables. [THN,JS]
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PACIFIC Exchange Rate Service
http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/xr/
Professor Werner Antweiler of the University of British Columbia, Canada has developed the PACIFIC Exchange Rate Service, which provides access to current and historic daily exchange rates. Daily exchange rates are available for approximately 200 countries and 3 commodities. An online interface allows users to retrieve the exchange rates into a table or plot them in a graph. A list of the currencies in the world together with their exchange rate regimes is also available. In addition to the exchange rate service, users will find a daily analysis of the US and Canadian dollar, short-term forecasts of the Canadian dollar, and information about the Euro (Europe's new currency) and Special Drawing Rights. [THN]
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Guidelines for Economic Evaluation of Pharmaceuticals: Canada [.pdf, 85p.]
Executive Summary
http://www.ccohta.ca/pubs/peg-e.html
PDF version:
http://www.ccohta.ca/pubs/peg-e.pdf
The Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment (CCOHTA) has just released the 2nd edition of Guidelines for Economic Evaluation of Pharmaceuticals: Canada. The Guidelines provide a standard framework for pharmaceuticals study design and reporting format and are directed at researchers who conduct health economic evaluations. The report "focuses on key areas of significant development in theory and/or methodology such as cost-benefit analysis, equity, utilities, and treatment comparators." [THN]
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Economic Growth Resources [.ps, .pdf]
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Economics/Growth/
Jonathan Temple, Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics and Statistics, Oxford University, has put together a collection of economic growth resources at this site. The resources available are divided into data sets, journals, literature surveys and working papers. Through the data links, researchers can obtain various economic growth data sets such as Barro-Lee, Summers-Heston and the Penn World Tables, among others. The site also contains a collection of working papers in both Postscript and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats. Users can locate the home pages of many economic growth researchers in a directory housed at this site. [THN]
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SICE--Organization of American States
http://www.sice.oas.org/
SICE (Foreign Trade Information System) is the "information technology arm of the Trade Unit of the Organization of American States (OAS)." It provides information and trade documents on trade in the Western Hemisphere. The available documents are divided into categories such as Free Trade Area of America (FTAA) process, Trade Agreements, Investment Treaties, and Dispute Settlement. The Dispute Settlement section contains all of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) panel reports from 1948 to 1994. The site also contains a quantitative trade data section with links to data on tariffs, trade flows and national statistical agencies. Spanish, Portuguese and French versions of the site are available. [THN]
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Supreme Court Antitrust Debates
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/bowenj/antitrust/INTRO.htm
John Bowen, Professor of Economics at Ripon College, has put together a collection of excerpts from 72 of the Supreme Court's antitrust opinions from 1895 to 1993 in Supreme Court Antitrust Debates (SCADs). The web site was originally developed as an educational tool for instruction in antitrust economics. The cases emphasized are those "in which a divided Court has 'debated' significant issues in antitrust economics." Each excerpt provides both the majority and minority opinions and includes the background information needed to understand the case. [THN]
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Management Teaching and Training Archive [.pdf]
http://ursus.jun.alaska.edu/teach/
The Management Teaching and Training Archive is maintained by Professor Jim Goes at the University of Alaska Southeast. It provides various teaching resources for management-related courses. There is a large collection of course syllabi on various management topics such as business ethics, business policy, health care management, operations management and organizational behavior. A listing of discussion lists on teaching management and business is provided; archives of discussions are also available. Links to Internet-based courses in management can be found as well. [THN]
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Hot Topics--Warwick Business School
http://www.wbs.warwick.ac.uk/HotTopics/index.html
Hot Topics briefing papers are published by Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. These briefing papers summarize "Warwick Business School's research findings on key organisational issues for directors, policy-makers and opinion formers in both the private and not-for-profit sectors." Topics that have been covered include "The industrial consequences of new labour," "The acquisition challenge," and "The innovation trap." [THN]
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Classroom Expernomics
http://mcnet.marietta.edu/~delemeeg/expernom.html
The Classroom Expernomics site was jointly developed by Gregory Delemeester, Associate Professor of Economics, Marietta College, and John Neral, Associate Professor of Economics, Frostburg State University. This site features the Classroom Expernomics newsletter aimed at encouraging the "use of economic experiments as teaching tools for the classroom." The newsletter has been published twice a year since the spring of 1992; all current and previous issues are available at the web site. Each newsletter contains two or three articles by various professors profiling their use of economics experiments in the classroom. [THN]
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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [.pdf]
http://www.oecd.org/
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization with 29 Member countries from North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific area. The OECD serves as a "forum for governments of the industrialized democracies to study and formulate the best policies possible in all economic and social spheres." Content is organized into activity sections such as development and co-operation, economics, environmental issues, transition economies, trade and transport. Within each activity, visitors can usually find related publications. The OECD site features a news and events page highlighting the latest OECD developments, and a guide to free on-line documents sorted by activity. [THN]
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Tax Planning Guide
http://www.dtonline.com/taxguide97/cover.htm
Delloite and Touche LLP, a large accounting firm, developed this online Tax Planning Guide. The Guide provides an overview of the Tax Relief Act of 1997 and explains how the changes in the tax code affect individual taxpayers. This site also offers general tax strategies for all taxpayers and customized tax strategies for particular types of taxpayers such as high-income earners and self-employed people. A guide on long-term financial planning and a tax forecasting worksheet rounds out the site. [THN]
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Official MBA Guide
http://mba.us.com/guide/
The Official MBA Guide is provided by Unicorn Research Corporation. It aims to be a "comprehensive source of MBA program information for prospective MBA students." The site contains an online database of MBA programs where prospective students can search for and rank programs according to their criteria. Each MBA program features its own page of relevant statistics plus contact information and links to university home pages. In addition, the site contains the The MBA Guidebook by Martin Schatz, a guidebook that contains advice on how to select an MBA program. Administrators of MBA programs will be given a password so that they can regularly update the information about their program. [THN]
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Institute for Fiscal Studies
http://www1.ifs.org.uk/
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) is an independent policy research center that aims to "bridge the gap between policy-makers and academics: bring academic rigor to policy discussion, and policy relevance to academic research." Most of the research materials available at this site pertain to the United Kingdom, homebase of the IFS. At the site, visitors can find results of IFS research on topics such as income distribution and tax, indirect taxes and consumer behavior, local government and the environment, and corporate issues. This site includes coverage of the 1997 United Kingdom general election and budget. [THN]
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Global Investor
http://www.global-investor.com/index.htm
Global Investor was developed by Numa Financial Services. The main feature of the site is the Global Investor Directory which contains investment-related sites from around the world. The sites are divided into global, regional and country sites and are rated on a five-star scale. Users can also compare the relative performance of the world's stock markets at the site using the currency of their choice. The latest finance news on the Internet can be found in the Finance netWatch section. There is also a list of international American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) for those interested in creating an ADR portfolio. [THN]
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(For links to additional current awareness on periodicals, journals, working papers, new books, etc., visit the Business & Economics Current Awareness Metapage: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/bus-econ/metapage/).
Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends--CBPP
http://www.cbpp.org/pa-1.htm
Press Release
http://www.cbpp.org/pa-rel.htm
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a research think-tank, has released "Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends" which analyzes the income trends in each of the 50 states. The analysis was conducted using data from the Census Bureau, and the report concludes that income disparities has risen over the last two decades and are "significantly greater than they were at the comparable point in the business cycle during the mid-1980s." The report advocates using polices such as "raising the minimum wage, strengthening unemployment insurance, implementing welfare-to-work initiatives, and reforming regressive state tax systems, to help mitigate the growing income divide." [THN]
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Working Papers
Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Current Issues in Economics and Finance [.pdf]
http://www.ny.frb.org/rmaghome/curr_iss/sec_dis/issue2.htm
Federal Reserve Bank of New York Research Papers
http://www.ny.frb.org/rmaghome/rsch_pap/
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Working Papers [.pdf]
http://www.frbatlanta.org/publica/work_papers/1997.htm
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Working Papers [.pdf]
http://www.clev.frb.org/research/workpapr/1997/index.htm
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has released the December 1997 issue of Current Issues in Economics and Finance. The issue examines the rise in unemployment in New York City from 1994 to 1997. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has also released the abstracts for Research Papers No. 9734 to No. 9736 covering topics such as structural change in the mortgage market, output fluctuations in the US, and a cross-country comparison of total factor productivity. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has released four new working papers (97-7--97-10), including "Financial Aggregates as Conditioning Information for Australian Output and Inflation" by Ellis W. Tallman and Naveen Chandra and "A Closed-Form GARCH Option Pricing Model" by Steven L. Heston and Saikat Nandi. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has released Working Paper No. 9710: "Absolute Priority Rule Violations, Credit Rationing, and Efficiency" by Stanley D. Longhofer, and No. 9712: "Simulating U.S. Tax Reform," by David Altig, Alan J. Auerbach, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, et. al. [THN]

IMF Working Papers [.pdf]
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/CAT/wp.cfm
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released eleven new working papers (WP/97/150 to WP/97/160). They deal with topics such as the predictability of currency crises, monetary policy in the European Union, the affects of macroeconomic factors on income distribution, and African government expenditure. [THN]

World Bank Public Policy for the Private Sector [.pdf]
http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/notes/notelist.html
The World Bank has released several new papers in the Public Policy for the Private Sector series. There are two new Competition and Regulation papers by Richard Green on utility regulation in the United Kingdom. There is one new Telecommunications paper on telecommunications reform, two new Transport papers on railways, and one new Post-Privatization Performance paper titled "Global Trend to Railway Concessions Delivering Positive Results" by Louis S. Thompson and Karim-Jacques Budin. [THN]

Wharton Financial Institutions Center Working Papers [.pdf]
http://wrdsenet.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/wfic/papers/97.html
Four papers have recently been added (#97-44--46, 48). They discuss valuation models for insurers, the importance of volatility forecasting in financial risk, management, money market mutual fund fee waivers, and retail banking innovation. [JS]
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Periodicals
Federal Reserve System
Economic Trends December 1997--FRB Cleveland [.pdf]
http://www.clev.frb.org/research/dec97et/dec97et.pdf
Financial Update October - December 1997--FRB Atlanta
http://www.frbatlanta.org/publica/finan_update/v10n4/index.htm
Economic Policy Review December 1997--FRB New York [.pdf]
http://www.ny.frb.org/rmaghome/econ_pol/
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has released the December 1997 issue of Economic Trends, which offers a monthly snapshot of national, international, and regional issues. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has released the October - December 1997 issue of Financial Update, which features short articles on Federal Reserve regulations, products, services, and operations. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has released the December 1997 issue of Economic Policy Review. This issue features articles on bank capital requirements, branching deregulation, bond market and the inflation puzzle. [THN]

Poverty Lines : November 1997[.pdf, .ps]
http://www.worldbank.org/html/prdph/lsms/research/povline/plhome.html
The World Bank has released the November 1997 issue of Poverty Lines, a newsletter that summarizes current research studies on poverty. The latest issue looks at how public works programs can help people who are poor. [THN]
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Books and Journals
Econbase
http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/econbase
The abstracts for the latest issues of Insurance: Mathematics and Economics (Vol. 20 No.3 and Vol. 21 No.1) and Resource and Energy Economics (Vol. 19 No.4) are now available. [THN]

Journal of Economic Education
http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/
The Journal of Economic Education is published by the National Council of Economic Education and the Advisory Committee on Economic Education of the American Economic Association. It features articles on "innovations in and evaluations of teaching techniques, materials, and programs in economics." Visitors to the site can search through abstracts of past articles and browse through the table of contents for past and forthcoming issues. [THN]

Review of International Economics
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/journals/rie/
The Review of International Economics is published by the International Economics and Finance Society. Its goal is to publish "original, high-quality research on a broad range of topics in international economics." The site contains abstracts of past and future issues and a membership directory for International Economics and Finance Society members. [THN]
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Conferences
Fourth International Conference on Competence-Based Management
http://www.cbm.net/frconfer.htm
The Fourth International Conference on Competence-Based Management will be held at the Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway from June 18 to June 20, 1998. The theme of the conference is "Competence-Based Management: Theory, Practice, and Education." [THN]

Eighteenth International Symposium on Forecasting
http://www.napier.ac.uk/depts/eco/isf98.html
The Eighteenth International Symposium on Forecasting will be held in Edinburgh from June 10-13, 1998. The Symposium is jointly organized by the International Institute of Forecasters and Napier University. The theme of the conference is "Forecasting Social, Technological and Economic Change." [JS]
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Jobs
Job Openings in Economics from the Chronicle of Higher Education
http://thisweek.chronicle.com/.ads/.ads-by-group/.faculty/.sscience/.econ/.links.html
Job Openings in Business and Management from the Chronicle of Higher Education
http://thisweek.chronicle.com/.ads/.ads-by-group/.faculty/.professional/.business/.links.html [THN]

American Agricultural Economics Association Employment Service
http://www.aaea.org/employment.html
The AAEA Employment Service page has been updated through mid-December, 1997. [JS]
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(For links to additional sources of new data see the Business & Economics Current Awareness Metapage: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/bus-econ/metapage/).
Bureau of Labor Statistics
U.S. Import and Export Prices -- November 1997
http://stat.bls.gov/news.release/ximpim.toc.htm
Producer Price Index -- November 1997
http://stat.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.toc.htm
Consumer Price Index -- November 1997
http://stat.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.toc.htm
Real Earnings -- November 1997
http://stat.bls.gov/news.release/realer.toc.htm
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the November 1997 figures for Import and Export Prices, the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and Real Earnings. [THN]
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Energy Information Agency
Short-Term Energy Outlook, Fourth Quarter 1997
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/upd/dec97/index.html
Status of State Electric Utility Deregulation Activity as of December 2, 1997
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/chg_str/tab5rev.html
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) has released the Fourth Quarter 1997 Short-Term Energy Outlook. The report provides energy demand, supply, and price forecasts through 1998. The EIA has also updated its table on the status of state electric utility deregulation activity. [THN]
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Bureau of Economic Analysis
U.S. International Transactions: Third Quarter 1997
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/newsrel/trans397.txt
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released the data for International Transactions in the Third Quarter 1997. The US current-account deficit increased to $42.2 billion in the third quarter from $37.9 billion (revised) in the second due to an increase in the merchandise trade deficit. [THN]
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Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal District (Beige Book)
http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/fomc/bb/current/
Flows of Funds Accounts of the United States -- Third Quarter 1997 [.pdf]
http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/releases/Z1/
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has released the latest issue of Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions by Federal District, commonly known as the Beige Book. The report shows that US economic growth continued at a moderate pace. The Board of Governors have also released the Flow of Funds Accounts for the Third Quarter 1997. The accounts show that growth of domestic nonfinancial debt rose by 4.4% during the period. This was due to increases in federal government debt (1.1%), household debt (4.5%), business debt (6.8%) and state and local governments debt (4.6%). [THN]
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Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Quarterly Banking Profile -- Third Quarter 1997
http://www.fdic.gov/databank/qbp/
Summary of Deposits Data Book
http://192.147.69.47/drs/sod97/
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has released the Third Quarter 1997 Quarterly Banking Profile (QBP) which contains a "summary of financial results from all US insured commercial banks and savings institutions." They have also released the annual FDIC/OTS Summary of Deposits which "provides detailed information on over 82,000 branches of FDIC-insured institutions." [THN]
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South Korean Financial Crisis
IMF Approves SDR 15.5 Billion Stand-by Credit for Korea
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1997/pr9755.htm
Press Conference of Stanley Fischer, First Deputy Managing Director, IMF
http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/1997/tr971205.htm
Republic of Korea: IMF Stand-by Arrangement, Summary of Economic Program
http://www.imf.org/external/np/oth/korea.htm
IMF Program for Korea: Summary
http://kiep.go.kr/IMF/hot-1.html
Financial Market Stabilization Package
http://www.mofe.go.kr/ENGLISH/Data/E_POLICY_ISSUES/eb_1108.html
Reality Cheque
http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1997/int/971201/asia.reality_chequ.html
This week's In the News looks at the South Korean financial crisis. The six resources above provide information about how the financial crisis started and what steps the Korean government is taking to overcome the crisis. The beginning of the financial crisis in South Korea can be traced to the collapse of Hanbo Steel Corp., the first in a string of large corporate failures in South Korea. This was followed by the decline in the value of the Korean won against the dollar in October 1997, which persisted until November when the Central Bank of Korea stopped intervening to support the won. The continued decline in won forced the Korean government to seek financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On December 3, the IMF announced a $55 billion aid package for South Korea.
The "IMF Approves SDR 15.5 Billion Stand-by Credit for Korea" details the aid package put together for Korea and provides a background of the events and the objectives of the aid package. On December 5, 1997, Stanley Fischer, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, gave a press conference on the IMF aid package. The "Republic of Korea: IMF Stand-by Arrangement, Summary of Economic Program" details the economic program that the IMF expects the Korean government to adopt. The main features of the economic program involve restructuring and liberalizing the economy. A summary of the economic program can be found on the Korean Ministry of Finance and Economy site. The Korean Ministry of Finance and Economy site also contains details of the Financial Market Stabilization Package aimed at solving the financial crisis announced on November 19, 1997. Reality Cheque is an article in Time magazine explaining how the long-neglected banking problems in Korea led to the current crisis. [THN]
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The Scout Report for Business & Economics
Brought to You by the Internet Scout Project

The Scout Report for Business & Economics is published every other Thursday by the Internet Scout Project, located in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Computer Sciences.

Susan Calcari
Jack Solock
Thiam Hee Ng
Jeannine Ramsey

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Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, 1994-1998. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report for Business & Economics provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The Internet Scout Project provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The Government has certain rights in this material.

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