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Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to analyze the experience of managerial decisions in modern North American business systems, to develop an American model of decision making in modern business systems, to determine the possibilities of making of optimal decisions according to this model, and to substantiate the perspectives of its improvement.

Methodology: The authors use the methods of systemic, problem, and logical analysis, as well as modeling and formalization.

Conclusions: An American model of decision making in modern business systems is compiled – it is based on divisional organizational structure. This model is contradictory and, like other regional models, has advantages and drawbacks. On the one hand, an important advantage of the American model is making of well-balanced managerial decisions that conform to the interests of all interested parties in the business system (investors, management, employees) and beyond it (consumers, society). This advantage is achieved due to active and systemic marketing, which ensures the fullest consideration of the possibilities of business environment and high adaptability of business systems to its changes. Managers' readiness to take a risk allows them to make nonstandard decisions, thus strengthening the uniqueness and competitive advantages of the business system. On the other hand, high risk component of managerial decisions leads to unsustainable development of business systems in countries of North America and their strong susceptibility to internal and external crises. Another drawback of the American model of decision making in modern business systems is duration of this process due to necessity for consideration of opinions of all interested parties and marketing at all stages.

Originality/value: It is determined that in the conditions of crisis, the American model cannot ensure timely decision making, and this leads to their nonoptimality, which defines the perspectives of improving this model.

Conventional wisdom predicts that changes in macroeconomic conditions significantly affect income inequality. In this paper, we hypothesize that the way in which macroeconomic conditions affect inequality depends on how these conditions influence the constituents of total inequality: inequality of opportunity (IO) and inequality of effort (IE). Using the PSID database for the United States (1970–2009), we first decompose total inequality into these components. Then, we specify a dynamic model that relates each inequality component to a set of macroeconomic factors. Apart from real GDP and inflation rates, the most widely used factors in the literature, we also consider outstanding consumer credits and public welfare and health care expenditures. We find that real GDP and outstanding credits have a negative and significant effect upon IO and IE, while inflation has a positive and significant effect only on IE, and welfare expenditures have a negative and significant effect only on IO.