another Google tool....

I just heard about another Google tool, still very much in beta. Google PublicData is accessed directly through the basic Google search engine and provides quick comparison views of U.S. public data at the state and county level. Currently, only total population data from the Census Bureau and unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is available.

Example:
At the basic Google box, type in: population pinellas.
The first result should be from Google and clicking on the link opens a simple graph with population data over the past 20 years. On the left, you can add in other counties or states. I quickly made a graph that includes 4 counties -- Pinellas and Hillsborough in Florida (Tampa-St. Petersburg); and Ramsey and Hennepin in Minnesota (Minneapolis-St. Paul). The result is a quick overview of population change in two "twin city" metro areas over the past 20 years.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a way (yet?) to cut and past the graph, but a link is provided that you can share. And, to date, the only search options for the limited content available are to use either "unemployment" or "population" as the first word of your search.

You can follow Google developments on this feature, and others, at the official Google blog.

Layoffs and Executive Pay

Two unrelated web sites, one on executive compensation and the other on recent U.S. layoffs, offer useful data and information, particularly for research on the current economic crisis:

2009 Executive PayWatch provides a searchable database and rankings of CEO pay by name, company, and industry. CEO pay for TARP money recipients is also identified. The site is produced by the AFL-CIO so there is a particular perspective but the data is presumably reliable.

The Layoff Tracker from Forbes provides compiled layoff figures for the 500 largest U.S. public companies -- date, name of company, industry, and number of layoffs. For April 24, 2009, the total number of layoffs since November 1, 2008: 536,173.

Social networking for personal branding...

Musicians, writers and artists have been using social networking sites and services such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to market themselves and create personal brands for some time now. With the current economic recession, other professionals are also looking to exploit all possible networking avenues available to them.

A recent article in Knowledge@Wharton explores personal branding through social networking: "Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand through Social Networks". Some of the specific tips, from various sources cited, include the following:

• "...come up with three simple words to define a personal brand -- words that could describe a specialized skill set..."
• "You need to seed the right people, to develop a word-of-mouth army.... Everyone should have a list of 20 or 30 people who will act as their ambassadors."
• "...it is usually helpful to build a following by giving away something for free -- even if it's just nuggets of information or personal wisdom..."
• "Branding is something that does not necessarily come with a short-term payoff. It's a long-term investment. .... it's about building brand awareness."

The article also notes that social networking is a booming business as well -- businesses reportedly spent nearly $2.2 billion on social networking in 2008, primarily through advertising on popular sites.

Blogging for a living

According to a recent MicroTrends column by Mark Penn in the Wall Street Journal, there are now more people blogging for a living than there are firefighters or computer programmers. Reportedly, there are over 20 million bloggers in the U.S., with 1.7 million of those reporting some income from their blogging and 452,000 using blogging as their primary source of income. And at the same time that the numbers of bloggers is increasing, the number of traditional journalists is decreasing rapidly. The implications are varied, with many unknowns...

"It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind..... But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training?"

"Capital Ideas" from the University of Chicago

The most recent issue of Capital Ideas from The Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory and The University of Chicago includes articles on the racial wage gap, the power of TV for women in India, the economics of prostitution, and climate change policies.

The goal of economic research at The Becker Center is "to show the world that economics–when properly done–can not only help us understand the world around us, but also make it a better place to live."

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Financial and economic crisis ... two articles looking forward

Two articles in a recent edition of Knowledge@Emory are centered on the current financial and economic crisis.

"A Historical Look at the Power and Impact of Stimulus" compares the Obama stimulus plan with Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression and Japan's economic crisis in the 1990s. Of course, academics differ on the lessons to be learned....

"Is Finance by Any Other Name Still as Sweet?" looks at brand-building and re-branding possibilities for financial firms such as AIG and Bank of America. Some options include the 'house of brands' strategy (Procter & Gamble); 'branded house' strategy (Citibank), and the 'master brand' strategy (Coca-Cola).

A business school library in a developing country...

Last week, I was in El Salvador and paid a visit to the ESEN - Escuela Superior de Economia y Negocios, a private, non-profit business school. Unfortunately, the school was closed for Holy Week but I had pre-arranged a visit and tour of the library with the Director of the Library, Maria Teresa de Velasquez. The school serves about 600 undergraduate students in a beautiful new and well-equipped facility. The library operates under what it calls the 'Chilean model', in which the student body is divided into groups of 5 or 6 students and one set of textbooks is purchased for each group and then maintained in the library. In addition to purchasing and maintaining textbooks, the library has a collection of magazines, reference books and a circulating collection, access to some electronic databases (in English), and a strong community service program in collaboration with the students. The ESEN is very different from some of the other Salvadoran universities that I've visited over the years.

Although the library does not have a separate Web page, you can visit the ESEN's web site here.

BDS Business Dynamics Statistics from the Census Bureau

There is a 'new' data series available for researchers interested in job creation and job loss in the U.S. -- the "BDS Business Dynamics Statistics" from the Census Bureau.

"BDS are created from the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), a confidential database available to researchers throughout the network of Census Research Data Centers.... A unique feature of the BDS is its longitudinal source data that permit tracking establishments and firms over time. The public use BDS tabulations are an effort to make information from the confidential LBD accessible to a broad range of data users. "

The BDS series provides annual data for 1976-2005, down to the state level, for the number of establishments, job creation and job loss by establishment age and size, and other statistics on business dynamics. Data can be downloaded in SAS, Excel, CSV formats.

Statistical briefings on the data will also be produced. The first briefing, entitled "Jobs Created from Business Startups in the United States, is available here.