Advertising and Quantitative Analysis: The Trial and Error Economy Comes to Madison Avenue By Bill Conerly, Businomics, Conerly Consulting LLC Back in February, Congress passed and the President signed a $787 billion stimulus package.  But the economy is still weakening.  Does that prove we need another, bigger stimulus package?  Not […]

U.S. Voters Find Too Much Regulation By Moore Information Portland, Oregon Results of our recent national survey show that by nearly a two-to-one margin, American voters believe business and industry are over-regulated in this country. Further, these data reflect an upward trend in the percentage since 1991 of the electorate […]

The Wall Street Journal reported today, “New U.S. claims for state unemployment benefits unexpectedly tumbled last week to their lowest level since the beginning of the year, as anticipated layoffs in the automobile industry failed to materialize as much as the government expected.  “Still, the data don’t necessarily imply better […]

NFIB’s state director, Jenna Kaluza says their successes are credited to members’ involvement. By Oregon Biz Report, The most important legislation the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) championed this cycle was House Joint Resolution 43, the Small Business Bill of Rights. Essentially, this resolution declares that small businesses should […]

Bloomberg reported today; ” U.S. apartment vacancies rose to their highest in 22 years in the second quarter as job losses cut tenant demand and more units came to market.Vacancies climbed to 7.5 percent from 6.1 percent a year earlier, New York-based real estate research firm Reis Inc. said today. […]

By Patrick Emerson Oregon Economics BlogThe Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the relative increase in the size of cities proper versus their suburbs.  Their economics blog also discusses it.  Why is this happening?  I can think of three reasons (all touched on by the article and discussion): […]

For those relying on consumer credit to come to the rescue recieved bad news this week on the latest credit card approval numbers.   USA Today reported, “In the first four months of the year — the latest data — banks issued 9.8 million new credit cards, a 38% drop from […]

By Bill Conerly, Oregon Economist Businomics, Conerly Consulting LLC In the midst of the banking crisis, the Obama administration is considering sweeping financial regulations.  But before fixing problems with a sledgehammer, let’s assess which of these problems have fixed themselves.  It turns out that many of the private sector errors […]

by Charles Johnson Oregon Employment Department 6/23/09 Oregon’s per capita personal income growth has fallen behind national trends in recent years – in fact, the national growth rate was more than double Oregon’s rate from 2003 to 2008 (see Oregonians are Losing Ground to the Average American in last month’s […]

Bureau of Economic Analysis: Real spending on travel and tourism declined at an annual rate of 5.9 percent in 2009:1 after decreasing 6.9 percent (revised) in 2008:4.  By comparison, real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased 5.7 percent (preliminary) in 2009:1 after a decrease of 6.3 percent in 2008:4.