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Over the past seven years within a small, liberal arts (LA) Canadian university, significant paradigm shifts in students’ programmatic choices have occurred reflecting student preference for business-related programs versus traditional LA offerings. Grounded in strategic foresight (SF) practices, this paper aims to investigate drivers of declining traditional LA enrolment that are currently a boon for management studies, positing implications for long-term futures of the LA Academy.

This paper lays out foundational research exploring phenomena in the academy, including disruptive forces, and explores how SF can clarify and shape long-term choices. Seeking to answer what paradigm-shifting forces really mean for the future of the academy, a case study approach is used to interpret disruptions to a Canadian institution facing present challenges and an uncertain future. Scenarios are developed for the broader academy using an environmental understanding to better inform predictive actions envisioned in academic institutional future planning.

The outcome of this research, including four scenarios, will be used to better understand student and stakeholder motivations informing future academic planning. As institutional paradigms appear resistant to change, these foresight-inspired findings are valuable considerations for institutional administrators, particularly those at stressed organizations facing unsettling realities.

The case study identifies that for the LA Academy, myriad future unknowns exist, including its continued existence in today’s form. Institutions are generally unresponsive to the precursors of future change and are not systematically exploring future options.

A television comic announces a satiric Golden Fleece Award for the faux pas of some government official. The San Diego Chicken hams it up in the stands of the baseball park. A Swiss mime troupe advertises the services of a communications corporation. All these may be more familiar to young people today than is a circus clown. These and other entertainers are all in the business of laughter and provide commentaries on current society.

It is generally believed that the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (SHTA) of 1930 was an electoral response on the part of the Republican Party to Midwestern farmers’ concerns in the 1928 general election which via the legislative process (pork-barreling and log-rolling) was transformed into a generalized upwards tariff revision. There are, however, problems with this view, not the least of which is the fact that the farmers themselves were well aware of the fact that higher tariffs would not improve their lot, and hence favored the price support/equalization measures found in the Haugen–McNary Farm Relief Bill. This paper presents an alternative explanation. Specifically, it is argued that the SHTA had its origins in manufacturing states where the demand for a comprehensive upward revision of tariffs was transformed via the electoral process – and not the legislative process – into an omnibus upward tariff revision that included agriculture. The omnibus nature of the bill, it is argued, was intended as both (i) an electoral strategy and (ii) a hedge against near-certain revolt in rural America over anticipated higher prices for manufactures. We show that while successful electorally (i.e., in the 1928 presidential election), the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Bill fell apart in the legislature in the summer of 1929 when 13 Insurgent Republicans broke with the party to vote with the Democrats to lower tariffs on manufactures.

This paper analyzes the two main divergent interpretations of Federal Reserve monetary policy in the 1920s, the expansionary view described by Rothbard (2008a [1963]) and earlier “Austrian” writers, and the contractionary view most notably held by Friedman and Schwartz (1993 [1963]) and later monetary historians. This paper argues in line with the former that the Federal Reserve engaged in expansionary monetary policy during the 1920s, as opposed to the gold sterilization view of the latter. The main rationale for this argument is that the increase in the money supply was driven by the increase in the money multiplier and total bank reserves, both of which were caused primarily by Fed policy (i.e., a decrease in reserve requirements and an increase in controlled reserves, respectively). Showing that this expansion did in fact occur provides the first step in supporting an Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) interpretation of the 1920s, namely that the Federal Reserve created a credit fueled boom that led to the Great Depression, although this is not pursued in the paper.

This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.

The paper is a study of Clarice McNamara, née Irwin (1901–1990), an educator who advocated for reform in the interwar period in Australia. Clarice is known for her role within the New Education Fellowship in Australia, 1940s–1960s; however, the purpose of this paper is to investigate her activism in an earlier period, including contributions made to the journal Education from 1925 to 1938 to ask how she addressed conditions of schooling, curriculum reform, and a range of other educational, social, political and economic issues, and to what effect.

Primary source material includes the previously ignored contributions to Education and a substantial unpublished autobiography. Used in conjunction, the sources allow a biographical, rhetorical and contextual study to stress a dynamic relationship between writing, attitudes, and the formation and activity of organisations.

McNamara was an unconventional thinker whose writing urged the case for radical change. She kept visions of reformed education alive for educators and brought transnational progressive literature to the attention of Australian educators in an overall reactionary period. Her writing was part of a wider activism that embraced schooling, leftist ideologies, and feminist issues.

There has been little scholarly attention to the life and work of McNamara, particularly in the 1920s–1930s. The paper indicates her relevance for histories of progressive education in Australia and its transnational networks, the Teachers Federation and feminist activism between the wars.

This chapter problematizes the body politics of American liberalism, as viewed through the lens of health policy. The author suggests that American efforts to pursue basic health goals are undercut by the particular way in which American liberals – and their state – conceptualize bodies. To understand the theoretical basis of this body politics, the chapter examines policy preoccupations such as the institution of informed consent, malpractice reform, and efforts to establish a Patients’ Bill of Rights. Finally, considering the ideological contexts that have given rise to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the author gestures toward the establishment of a stronger liberal – and possibly post-liberal – health care system that takes the embodiment of its subjects seriously.

The essence of the modern asset‐market approach to the analysis of exchange rate behavior includes the role of the trade balance account. We examine the relationship between exchange rate changes and US trade balance announcements. Statistically significant exchange rate adjustments to these announcements are documented using for the first time the comparison period approach to testing the significance of trade balance announcements on exchange rates. The evidence is consistent with the predictions of the modern asset‐market exchange rate model. There is also evidence that the foreign exchange market is more sensitive to increasing rather than decreasing trade balance deficit announcements. To date, a number of theoretical papers have investigated the possible sources of the exchange rate determination process (see, Dornbusch [1976,1980], Dornbusch and Fisher [1980], Frenkel [1976, 1981], Kouri [1976], and Mussa [1982], among others). There is no consensus on how exchange rates are determined and why they have exhibited increased volatility lately. The interpretations vary widely among the various theories, ranging from the flow‐market approach to the modern asset‐market view. The asset‐market approach of exchange rates is based on the principle that the current value of the exchange rate (i.e. the relative price of two national currencies) is influenced not only by current economic conditions but also by expectations of its future value and, therefore, by the information that underlies these expectations. The asset‐market literature on the determination of exchange rates establishes a direct relationship between changes in the exchange rate and the current account (or trade balance account). For example, Mussa [1982] shows that the equilibrium exchange rate depends on expectations about the exogenous factors that affect the current account in present and future periods. A central implication of the asset‐market view is that “innovations” in the current account induce unexpected changes in the exchange rate. This is because an innovation in the current account, defined as a deviation of the current account balance from its previously expected level, conveys information about changes in economic conditions relevant for determining the equilibrium exchange rate (see Mussa [1982]). For example, if a country experiences an unexpectedly strong trade balance performance, this might be perceived to imply changes in relative economic efficiency, product demand, or international competitiveness that will improve the current account in future periods leading to an appreciation of the foreign value of the domestic currency. In essence, the asset‐market view argues that information about changes in real economic conditions requiring exchange rate adjustments can be inferred from innovations in the trade balance and/or the current account. Dornbusch and Fischer [1980] also argue that while asset markets determine exchange rates, it is the current account through its effect on net asset positions, and subsequently on asset markets, which influences the path of the foreign exchange rate. Thus, it can be argued that unanticipated current account announcements should be associated with exchange rate movements immediately following such announcements. While the relationship between the current account and the exchange rate has been extensively analyzed, the empirical evidence pertaining to the association between exchange rates and the current account has produced mixed results. Hardouvelis [1988] examines the effects of macroeconomic news, including US trade balance announcements, on three interest rates and seven exchange rates over the October 1979 to August 1984 period. He reports that announcements of the trade deficit have no statistically significant effects on interest rates, with the exception of the three‐month T‐bill rates and the exchange rates. The evidence with respect to the short‐term interest rate reactions may be associated with the fact that the “Federal Reserve Bank throughout the 1977–1984 period was unable to establish full credibility among market participants about its fight against inflation” (see Hardouvelis [1988]). Deravi et al [1988] have also investigated the financial market's response to US balance of trade announcements. They find similar results to those reported in Hardouvelis [1988] for the February 1980 to February 1985 period, but they report a significant exchange rate response to trade deficit announcements over the March 1985 to July 1987 period. Irwin [1989], however, uncovered a significant breakdown in the relationship between trade balance announcements and dollar exchange rates during the month of June 1984; that is, larger trade deficits were found to be associated with the dollar's depreciations only in the post‐June 1984 period. Contrary to previous studies, Hogan et al [1991] find larger US trade balance deficits to have a significant effect on exchange rates throughout the 1980s. Because expected trade balance figures are available from the Money Market Service Inc. and since the trade balance figures according to Crystal and Wood [1980] represent 85 percent of the US current account, it apears that the trade balance serves as a good proxy for the current account. Therefore, we are able to test more directly the impact of the US trade balance announcements on the exchange rate. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between exchange rate changes and merchandise balance announcements using a sample of US trade figures spanning the period from August 1986 to April 1989. In the following, we refer to this relationship as the “current account hypothesis”. Unlike previous research, the analysis is based on unanticipated trade balance announcements in order to study the interaction between exchange rates and information contained in the trade balance announced figures as the asset‐market approach to exchange rate determination process predicts. Dornbusch [1980] used the official forecast errors of the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (i.e. biannual six‐month forecasts for current account and exchange rates). In this study, we focus on the major component of the current account‐the trade balance‐to test the current account hypothesis. The trade balance account is by far the best proxy for the current account. Another differentiating aspect of this study from the previous research is that it relies on systematic trade balance announcements. The use of the Commerce Departments' announcements concerning the US merchandise trade balance has also been motivated by the growing financial and non‐financial press coverage of the monthly trade balance reports. Examples of how the financial press covers the monthly trade balance announcements include: 1. “A wider trade deficit jolts a fragile market, shares off 101 points, dollar falls, and interest rates surge as big gap surprises investors, central bankers”, The Wall Street Journal, April 5,1988. 2. “London stocks rise sharply on US trade news; shares close firmer in Tokyo for the second day”, The Wall Street Journal, May 18,1989. 3. “Tricks of the Trade. The huge current‐account imbalances of the 1980s are disappearing fast. Good news? Maybe. But be warned: trade flows are less and less useful as indicators of economic performance” The Economist, March 30, 1991. 4. “Trade deficit grew in April to $6.97 billion… as exports continued to drop and imports jumped. The April deficit was the biggest monthly imbalance since a $9.49 billion deficit in November 1990. The trade gap in March was $5.58 billion. Economists say sluggish economic activity abroad is making it more difficult for US companies to sell their goods.” The Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1992. The different views registered in the financial press about the importance of the current account and trade balance imbalances in influencing exchange rate changes have further motivated the present study. Contrary to the current account hypothesis, it has been argued that because of the increasing integration of world capital markets, it is easier to finance current account deficits and therefore the trade balance or current account figures might be less useful as far as the determination of exchange rates is concerned. In addition, as a result of the increasing foreign investment activity, trade deficits may no longer represent purely national concepts. For example, a significant portion of a country's exports and imports may be accounted for by foreign firms with corporate operations there. Furthermore, US firms may decide to supply an overseas market either by exporting or by locating production abroad. Locally produced sales by US firms overseas, however, do not count as exports, nor do their local purchases of inputs count as imports. But from the firm's point of view, the local sales of a US subsidiary are viewed as being similar to exports. Therefore, it is argued that US trade balance deficits measured on the basis of residency rather than nationality of ownership, which is currently the norm, may mean less than it once did. Consequently, what emerges from the above is that the correlation between exchange rates and the information contained in the trade balance figures may be weaker than predicted by the asset‐market approach. Whether the current account or trade balance figures do matter as far as the determination of exchange rates is concerned is an empirical question. This article presents a first attempt at analyzing the impact of “innovations” in the US trade balance account on the exchange rate. An event study analysis is performed for the first time using trade balance announcement data from August 1986 to April 1989. The event methodology provides an appropriate direct test for the asset‐market model which predicts that unexpected changes in the exchange rate should be related to innovations in the current account (trade balance). The article is arranged as follows. Section II describes the data and methodology used. Section III presents empirical evidence on the relationship between exchange rates and innovations in the trade balance account. The article concludes with Section IV.