Economics

CHICAGO -- Roger Myerson spent the bulk of his career as an economic theorist at Northwestern University, but when the telephone call came from Sweden he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Myerson and two other Americans were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics yesterday, adding to the University of Chicago's reputation as a powerhouse in the study of economics. "I could tell by the Swedish accents that it was a different kind of call," said Myerson, described as a brilliant economist and a decent harmonica player.

The Maryland Minority Contractors' Association endorsed mayoral candidate Lawrence A. Bell III yesterday, saying that under Bell's administration, minority-owned businesses would "get a better deal."Arnold M. Jolivet, president of the 1,000-member organization, said the City Council president was one of the chief sponsors of the 1989 bill that created goals for hiring minority contractors on city projects."He has worked hard on behalf of minority contractors," Jolivet said.As Jolivet spoke, about 60 huge trucks formed a caravan on North Avenue.

WHAT'S NATURE worth?I mean the whole, blue-green ball of fur, fin, feathers; Amazons to Kalaharis and Everests to ocean muds; lions' roars and hurricanes to aspens rustling, and the shell-scrape of horseshoe crabs jostling for spawning room on a moonlit beach.Let's start with an easy part of the calculation, one of the planet's biggest, showiest, rarest birds, the whooping crane.In March, I observed the last wild whoopers on Earth, wintering along the Texas Gulf coast.There are only 159, spread out so you'll not see more than a few any day. Yet more than 100,000 people a year each pay $28 to tour boat operators for a glimpse.

George P. Oslin, 97, whose idea for the singing telegram raised Western Union profits along with the spirits of Depression-era Americans, died Thursday in Delray Beach, Fla.He was public relations director of the New York-based telegram company in 1933 when he came up with the idea of having operator Lucille Lipps sing "Happy Birthday" to singer Rudy Vallee. Columnist Walter Winchell wrote about it and the singing telegram took off. Mr. Oslin also wrote yearbook reviews for encyclopedias and contributed articles on telecommunications to newspapers and magazines.

After Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan hinted darkly yesterday that the Fed might raise interest rates again to fight inflation, the Dow Jones industrial average headed downward and closed at 3,727.27, off 21.04 points for the busy session. Long-term bonds slipped almost one full percentage point.AND NOW WHERE? "The stock market's downside will be contained by the low level of bullishness among money managers." (Lehman Bros.) . . . "The economy looks sound and earnings are up, but with interest rates rising and stocks falling, buying stocks now would be like spitting in the air without checking the wind direction."

A lesson on supply-and-demand economics turned sweet and crunchy for 145 children at Carrolltowne Elementary School. And they had a ball. A thousand balls, to be precise.The first-graders and a few second-graders melted 63 pounds of marshmallows, 10 pounds of brown sugar and 12 pounds of butter, all to bind 300 quarts of popcorn into fist-size balls.The children spent three hours last week in an assembly line with hygienic plastic bags on their hands, forming the mixture into balls to fill orders already taken.

Life is more complex than newspaper headlines would suggest. Which is why I keep a blow-up of a September 23, 1956, Baltimore American story on my office wall.''$900 Million Plan Proposed To End City Slums By 1976,'' the headline trumpets. ''Would Raze 65,000 Homes.''Eighteen years after that presumed dawn of Brave New Baltimore, slums are getting worse. And not just slums. Abandonment is pockmarking even Baltimore neighborhoods that had been islands of stability. By the city housing department's accounting, Baltimore now has 410 blocks where more than 50 percent of the houses are vacant.

An article in the Business section Sunday incorrectly attributed a response to Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes' use of cartoons to criticize Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. The response -- "You've certainly elevated the intellectual level of this debate" -- was made by Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas.The Sun regrets the errors.WASHINGTON -- The man everyone expects to become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee next year had done plenty of what some say he does best, economics homework.

BONN, Germany -- Economics Minister Guenter Rexrodt delivered a gloomy assessment of Germany's short-term economic prospects yesterday, predicting zero growth this year as the country struggles to overcome the effects of a global slowdown and the task of rebuilding the former communist east."

The student protesters stood outside of Shriver Hall with loud and urgent messages for the big shots from Washington."Racism Must End Now!""L.A. was a Symptom!"But when it came time for class the demonstrators jammed their pickets into the lawn and disappeared."Quite a statement in itself," said Erin Chrvale, who works in the School of Continuing Studies.That was civics in action yesterday on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University as the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives came to town to discuss the nation's economy.

Watch out, baby boomers. The Millennials are coming for your jobs. This generational warfare is the story developing in the media, and as with most trend stories, it does have a kernel of truth. The baby boomer generation - born between 1946 and 1964 - has had a stranglehold on nearly every arena in American life, including politics, economics and the culture wars, since I was born. Even President Barack Obama, who campaigned on a promise to leave behind the boomers' old campus feuds, is, technically, one of them.

An economics professor from Loyola University in New Orleans traveled to Baltimore's Loyola last week to give a lecture, and everybody's been apologizing ever since. Everybody, that is, but the professor, Walter Block, who chalks up the flap to political correctness. Block said he knew he'd step on toes, since, by his account, he started off with a bit about how the Jesuit order has been "hijacked by a bunch of Marxists and liberation theologians." "I imagine that didn't go down too well with the Jesuit audience," he later told me by phone.

CHICAGO -- Roger Myerson spent the bulk of his career as an economic theorist at Northwestern University, but when the telephone call came from Sweden he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago. Myerson and two other Americans were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics yesterday, adding to the University of Chicago's reputation as a powerhouse in the study of economics. "I could tell by the Swedish accents that it was a different kind of call," said Myerson, described as a brilliant economist and a decent harmonica player.

It seems as though every ticket I buy -- except plane tickets -- can be transferred to someone else. I understand the airline's need to know who is on a plane, but they must have the ability to change the passenger name on a reservation. Why are plane tickets nontransferable? Ask a simple question; get an answer that's so complicated it takes a professor of economics to explain it. On its face, this seemed like a pretty easy question. Surely, this just had to be a government regulation.

Dr. Satish B. Parekh, a Baltimore businessman who was active in civic and cultural affairs, died of a stroke Wednesday at Sinai Hospital. He was 68. Dr. Parekh was born and raised in Rajkot, India, and earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1958 from St. Xavier's College in India. In 1959, he earned his master's degree in economics, finance and strategies from New York University, and his doctorate in economics, also from NYU, four years later. While attending graduate school, he worked as an economist for the National Industrial Conference Board in New York City.

On the Wealth of Nations P.J. O'Rourke Atlantic Monthly Press / 242 pages / $21.95 Getting burned in effigy, P.J. O'Rourke acknowledges, is "a fate not always undeserved by amateurs who write about economics." Apparently, he's willing to take the risk. In the inaugural volume of an Atlantic Monthly Press series on "books that changed the world," O'Rourke brings the 21-century sensibility of a political satirist and unabashed booster of free-market capitalism to Adam Smith's canonical text, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.

Katherine Henneberger, a retired Goucher College economics professor who believed that the study of financial trends did not have to be dull, died of cancer Friday at her Owings Mills home. She was 61. Born in Baltimore and raised on her parents' farm, Milford Meadows, she was a 1963 graduate of Milford Mill High School and earned a bachelor's degree in English at Goucher College. As a young woman, she rode horses and was a model and an orientation and training director for the Hecht Co., where she also edited the retailer's in-house employee publication.

Anirban Basu Occupation A member of the Baltimore city school board, an economic consultant and an economics instructor at the Johns Hopkins University. In the news Basu cast the sole vote at a June school board meeting against a policy that would reduce the minimum passing marks, from 70 to 60, in reading math and some science classes for students in the first through 12th grades. Career highlights After completing an undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, master's degrees in public policy at Harvard University and in economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a law degree at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore, Basu began as an economics lecturer and researcher at Towson University.

William Michael Bailey, a longtime heart transplant survivor whose career teaching economics at Washington College spanned more than three decades, died of cancer Saturday at Chester River Hospital Center. The Chestertown resident was 68. Born in Hobbs, N.M., and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, he earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1959 from North Texas State University in Denton. He earned a master's in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park and earned his doctorate there in 1973.

In America it would be called a stalemate, or a standoff, or gridlock. In Germany, when the voters can't give a clear sense of direction, they dress it up and call it a Grand Coalition. For three weeks following an election in which voters split down the middle with Germanic precision, party leaders bargained and politicked and postured like aggrieved soccer players trying to draw a phony foul, and now they have created a government that puts both major parties in power, to keep an eye on each other.