The median price for resale homes in the Phoenix area has been edging up for several months. Does this signal that the market is approaching normalcy?

There's little margin for error when you're in the business of selling electrons. After all, if an electron traveled around the world instead of bouncing around the nucleus of an atom, it would circle the earth some 8.3 times in one second.

We've heard since the middle of last year that the recession is over. Why, then, do people still seem so pessimistic? Why are consumers still so restrained? Why is the housing market still weak?

According to the latest ASU-Repeat Sales Index (ASU-RSI), overall house prices declined by 13 percent in December compared to December 2008, an improvement over the 17 percent year over year decline seen in November and the 20 percent decline in October.

The Phoenix resale home market rebounded slightly in February, according to the Realty Studies Report from the W. P. Carey School of Business. Compared to January, the number of transactions increased and prices were up a bit.

Finance scholars have long urged corporate managers to hold less cash and assume more debt. Too much cash, the argument went, could make executives lax, encouraging imprudent acquisitions and spendthrift expansions.

One-third of U.S. adults are obese, and another third are overweight, according to data recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Marketing scholars Naomi Mandel, Andrea Morales and Steve Nowlis have been investigating what influences our decisions about diet.

To be a fly on the wall in the board rooms of corporate America would be worth a mint. To understand the social psychology behind boards' strategic decisions would be priceless. David H. Zhu has done that.

The 2007-2009 recession brought about shifting consumer demand that left wholesalers and manufacturers grappling with how best to change inventory and production strategies.

Foreclosures have traditionally accounted for only a small fraction of the real estate transactions in the Phoenix area market, but in January, as in past months, foreclosures were the whole story. Almost half of the existing-home transactions — 45 percent — were foreclosures.