Day: November 17, 2016

by Lisa Ventriss, President
On the Friday before Election Day I came home to find my copy of Hillary Clinton’s memoir of her time as Secretary of State, Hard Choices, lying on the floor with half of its cover chewed to shreds. Because the only thing my dogs regularly destroy are squeaky tennis balls, I took this as a bad omen and said so to my dogs. (more…)

(South Burlington, Vt.)  Today, Lisa Ventriss, President of Vermont Business Roundtable (VBR) and Jeffrey Carr, President, Economic & Policy Resources (EPR), announced the Q4 2016 outlook results of their joint initiative, the VBR-EPR Business Conditions Survey.

Methodology

The quarterly survey is a tool for tracking business conditions and forecasting the future of Vermont’s economy, by providing insight into business sentiments and trends. Specifically, the survey provides both a look back at the previous quarter and a predictive index going forward.

The data for both the backward and forward-looking questions are weighted to the Vermont economy by sector employment and turned into “diffusion indices”.[1] These diffusion indices provide a tool for analyzing and presenting insight into the Vermont economy over time through the sentiments of the Roundtable members. The survey asked eight retrospective and prospective questions about the CEOs’ economic outlook, demand, capital spending, and employment. (more…)