I do enjoy the holidays but it does bring up some interesting concerns. I have always given a Christmas bonus to my employees. However with the economy being a little rough I am tempted to cut those back this year. It would certainly help the bottom line but what about morale? I need to keep these people happy so I have them when things take off again. So I have decided to give the Holiday bonus to help keep everyone happy. Besides who wants to be called scrooge all year.

Everyone with an interest in business remembers learning about how prices are determined in a free market economy based upon supply and demand. In economics courses, professors give an equation or a graph that shows the supply and demand and we (students) have to determine where the two intersect. This has been a useful thing to learn, but has left a big question in my mind – how does a real business determine how much consumers , system, in which they try different prices to discover which result in the highest profits. I am especially curious to know how businesses determine prices for new products or services, without the benefit of existing financial models or data.

As a student with a lot of classroom experience but little exposure to the corporate world, I hope that those of you with real business experience can tell me what you know about how pricing is done.

I am glad the election is over. The economy always gets a little stagnant around the election with all the talk of change and cut this or that. This election was a bit worse with all the bad economic news the last couple of months.  A couple of things we have in our favor are the low interest rates and drilling for gas and oil has been a plus. I had a lady retire last week and I am not going to replace her until I have a better idea which way the economy is going. I am hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.