The first of a three-case series, this is a classic business-government relations (BGR) challenge for Southwest Airlines. The A case takes the student from the problems SWA had with competitors and the Civil Aviation Board in the early years of attempting to fly through the passage of the Wright Amendment in the late 1970s. House Majority Leader Jim Wright championed the cause for the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Authority and the big DFW airlines, most prominently American Airlines. The case then updates the situation 25 years later, when SWA is a big airline and the events of September 11, 2001, hurt the short-haul business of low-cost airlines. The case presents BGR strategies of SWA over time.

The second of a three-case series, this is a classic business-government relations (BGR) challenge for Southwest Airlines. The A case took the student from the problems SWA had with competitors and the Civil Aviation Board in the early years of attempting to fly through the passage of the Wright Amendment in the late 1970s. It then updated the situation 25 years into the future when SWA was a big airline, and the events of September 11, 2001, hurt the short-haul business of low-cost airlines. This case affords the opportunity to update the analysis performed in the A case in the context of almost every strategic and political aspect of Southwest and Love Field having changed.

Housing investment, a highly cyclical subcomponent of GDP, is a significant source of its fluctuations. Recent events in the housing market have been central to the meltdown of financial markets and the deep recession that began in late 2007. This note provides some background on the so-called housing bubble and, in doing so, highlights some of the primary sources of volatility in housing investment and real estate markets.

The "big three" performance variables--growth in real GDP, inflation rate, and unemployment rate--are important starting points for delving into the macroeconomies of any country. This note offers some brief background on the policy environment surrounding performance reporting in the United States and the Eurozone; exhibits show historical performance on each of the big three variables for both. Students are asked to relate important events in the world economy to the path of the three variables from 1999 through mid-2009. Differences in performance in each country/region over time and differences among the regions are also requested in the assignment questions.

This note provides an overview of fiscal-policy tools and how fiscal policy influences GDP through the income multiplier. The mechanics behind the income multiplier are explained and an algebraic derivation is provided. The note also provides examples of how parameters associated with disposable income (e.g., the tax rate and marginal propensity to consumer) influence the magnitude of the income multiplier.

This note provides a summary of the primary fiscal and monetary policies. It also provides a matrix of the expected effects on GDP and interest rates when these policies are enacted simultaneously.The matrix reflects the interactions of the policy mix when both policies are expansionary and contractionary, and when one is expansionary and one is contractionary.

The objective of this note is to provide an overview of monetary policy tools and the primary policy objectives. The mechanics behind the money multiplier are explained, and an algebraic derivation is provided. The note also provides examples of how parameters associated with the money multiplier influence its magnitude, including the propensity of the public to hold currency relative to demand deposits and the propensity of banks to hold reserves relative to demand deposits. The companion exercise allows students to walk through the mechanics of expansionary monetary policy.