Strong and Weak Management: The Case of American Bus Companies and Regional Transit Authorities

By the end of the 2010’s, city officials in several American cities were rethinking bus service in a fundamental way; the passenger-fare revenue model was being questioned, and in some cases replaced with a model that fit better with serving poor people and changed local business environments. Yet the downside effects on the bus companies of trends, especially regarding ridership, may have been the result of internal organizational factors immune to a change in the revenue model. I contend that city officials and the managers of bus companies should resist the temptation to view a new model as a cure precisely because some problems, internal to the companies, could go on and silently undermine analysis of the new model such that it could erroneously be discontinued. To be sure, being willing to question a longstanding model is a mark of managerial strength. Indeed, it is precisely the managers of bus companies and regional authorities who are mired in longstanding assumptions who would tend to have the most difficulty in dealing with troublesome internal problems. 

The full essay is at "Strong and Weak Management: Bus Companies."

The 2012 U.S.Trade Deficit: An Analysis

Coming in at 2.7% of GDP, the U.S. trade deficit fell to $107.5 billion in the third quarter of 2012—down 9 percent from the second quarter’s $118.1 billion, which was 3% of the economy at the time. The current account includes merchandise, services, and investment flows. The surpluses in services and investment were out-done by the deficit in merchandise to produce the overall trade deficit. According to the New York Times, the “improvement in the current account in the third quarter reflected a decline in the deficit on goods and a small increase in the surplus on services, led by a gain in foreign earnings made by financial services, insurance and professional services provided by companies in the United States. The surplus on investment earnings narrowed to $50.8 billion, down from $52.1 billion in the second quarter.” Most of the decline in the deficit on goods reflected a decline in the foreign oil bill, according to Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics.

Analysis is at "2012 U.S. Trade Deficit" 

A Planned Chinese Supercity Hinging on Technology

A Kansas-sized supercity of 82,000 square miles and 130 million people, with Beijing at the center, is in the vanguard of economic reform, Liu Gang said from Nankai University in mid-2015.[1] Six times the size of New York City’s metropolitan area, the planned regional economy would require nothing short of a feat of urban planning. The economic synergy anticipated from the planned integration is the main benefit. The sheer scale alone presents its own challenges, however, and the complexity in coordinating the various shifts of people and services suggests that unintended excesses and shortages will demand immediate action. Even so, I contend that the application of technology will make or break the viability of the anticipated supercity.

The full essay is at "A Planned Chinese Supercity."

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[1] Ian Johnson, “Pain and Hope as China Molds Its Capital into New Supercity,” The New York Times, July 20, 2015.