What phenomena defined business in the 1980s?
The most conspicuous phenomenon was that firms which had previously not been thought large or solid enough to issue securities began to be able to float their debt. This was the so-called junk bond market. This phenomenon converged with the previous one: the junk bonds were often issued in connection with attempts to change the ownership, management, and direction of firms which investors felt were not being properly run. As with most innovations, this development may well have run its course and kept on running. But there was an extended period during which investors in effect issued debt, bought up companies, made changes, and obtained superior corporate performance. Another phenomenon going on in the 1980s, albeit more quietly, was the growing appearance of personal computers and sophisticated telecommunications equipment in workplaces and offices. The economist Robert Solow remarked to a New York Times reporter late in the decade that you could see computers everywhere but in the p
