A few years ago, an MBA degree seemed like an instant ticket to riches. The typical graduating MBA would deluged with job offers, complete with signing bonuses and other nice perks. That, however, was before the Wall Street meltdown. Now,…

Illinois and Missouri both lost ground this year in Site Selection magazine’s influential business climate ranking. The magazine’s latest league table, based partly on a survey of executives and partly on actual plant-location decisions, has Illinois No. 14 and Missouri No.…

As I mentioned in Sunday’s column, St. Louis University economist Jack Strauss thinks the lack of an entrepreneurial culture is a big reason why St. Louis has a tortoise-like economy. At a conference Thursday sponsored by SLU’s Simon Center for Regional…

Big cities like St. Louis aren’t usually thought of as retirement destinations, but Forbes argues that maybe they should be. Cities offer job opportunities to senior citizens who think they may have to go back to work at some point, plus…

Housing prices haven’t yet bottomed out nationally, according to a forecast from Fiserv, but they’re close to stabilizing in St. Louis. Nationally, according to a CNNMoney account, the financial data firm expects prices to fall 11.3 percent between mid-2009 and mid-2010.…

A lot of states are competing for Hollywood dollars these days, and we now know what can happen when you compete too hard. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iowa has suspended its film tax credits after an audit pointed out…

Randal O’Toole is a scholar at the conservative Cato Institute. The Daily Kos is a liberal blog. You wouldn’t expect them to agree on much, and they certainly disagree on the subject of high-speed rail. In a lengthy post yesterday, the…

After reading STL JobWatch’s update on the unemployment situation in St. Louis, I headed for the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to refresh my knowledge on where the jobs are being lost. There are no surprises in the big industry categories, which I’ll…

Those spoilsports at the Show-Me Institute are throwing cold water on Missouri politicians’ dream of building a high-speed rail line. They’ve published a new study by Randal O’Toole that says a Kansas City-St. Louis linewould cost $875 million to build, post…

When the Federal Reserve released its Beige Book economic survey a couple of weeks ago, the St. Louis region was the only area that didn’t report stable or improving economic conditions. It should be no surprise, then, that when the St.…