A retrospective look at Business Economics - journal of the National Association of Business Economists - The Business Economist at Work

Business Economics, Oct, 1993 by Bruce Kratofil

THE Historical Index of Business Economics has just been updated through 1992, reflecting the first twenty-nine years of publication. In preparing this index, it was apparent that Business Economics has gone through many changes in both design and focus over time. This article will review some of the trends in BE's history, and show how it has changed over the years.(1)

Much of this change can be attributed to the development of NABE itself, and also the differing interests and perspectives of the editors and editorial board. The first issue was published in the summer of 1965, six years after the formation of NABE itself. Before this, NABE published a newsletter similar to the present-day NABE News. However, many members felt that NABE needed a more professional, in-depth publication for its membership. In the first issue of BE, NABE President George James wrote that he hoped that the journal would give business economists "an exchange of view,...a forum for the discussion of common problems. . .and exhibit our professional thinking to our peers and our management, as well as our academic counterparts."

The first editor, and one of the leaders in the formation of the new publication, was William Chartener of Goldman, Sachs & Co., who served from 1965 to 1966. The other editors have been: Jack L. McCroskey, the University of Denver, 1967-68; Morris Cohen, Long Island University, 1969-72; David L. Williams, Acme-Cleveland Corporation, 1973-75; William J. Brown, Northern Illinois University, 1976-81; Morris Cohen, Morris Cohen & Associates, 1981-1983; Max Mozer, of Virginia Commonwealth University, 1983-1985; and since 1985, Edmund A. Mennis, Consultant to Investment Management.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was considerable movement toward making BE more of a refereed, academic-type journal. To complement this, the editors during this period were mostly academic economists, and articles were more theoretical and quantitative during this period. However, this trend was reversed in 1985, when the NABE Board decided that business economists would be better served by a format that emphasized: (1) a "magazine" approach to applied business economics as contrasted to a theoretical journal approach; and (2) an emphasis on solicited articles rather than refereed articles.(2) This change can be seen in both the topics selected for articles as well as the type of articles published. The format change also means that issues are focused around certain themes, so that one issue may have four or five articles about the same topic. Before this, the article subjects in a given issue were more random.

There have been 1,162 articles published in BE through 1992. In addition to the standard bibliographic information collect in the index, the articles have been classified in a number of ways. The old subject classification system of the Journal of Economic Literature was used to categorize articles by subject matter. In this system, ten broad topic categories are defined, under each of which are narrower topics.(3) Each article was placed in one of these subject areas. In some cases, a secondary category was also assigned to articles that covered more than one topic. For instance, the 1974 article "Oil and the Balance of Payments" is classified under both "431: Open Economy Macroeconomics" and "723: Energy." In addition, each article was classified as to the background of the authors, the highest level of math used, and whether any sort of empirical testing was done in the article.

ARTICLES BY SUBJECT

Table 1 shows the breakdown of subject matter over the years. By far the most popular category was "Growth, Planning, Forecasting, and Fluctuations." Counting only the primary classification, 23 percent of the articles were in this category; if you also count the secondary classification, the percentage climbs to 28 percent.(4) This category encompasses some of the business economist's most important concerns, including forecasting, economic fluctuations, inflation and deflation, and stabilization policies. Not surprisingly, articles about forecasting were the most numerous, with macroeconomic, microeconomic, financial, and international forecasting accounting for 16 percent of all articles.

Table 1

Articles Classified by Subject

Category                                   Primary     Primary
                                            Only          &
                                                      Secondary

General Economics                             4%          5%

Growth; Planning; Forecasting;
Fluctuations                                 12          28

Quantitative Economic Methods and Data       12          16

Domestic Monetary and Financial
Theories and Institutions                    14          19

International Economics                      11          13

Administration; Business Finance;
Marketing                                     8          12

Industrial Organization; Technological
Change; Industry Studies                      8          12

Agriculture; Natural Resources                2           3

Manpower; Labor; Population; The
Profession of Business Economics             14          15

Welfare; Consumer Economics; Urban
and Regional                                  3           4