Airport, agents work to recover -
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Published on: 9/8/2002
Last Visited: 9/8/2002
According to Ben S. Branch, professor of finance for the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the terrorist attacks affected consumers, business people and investors in a variety of ways.
"The initial effect was fairly dramatic for the consumer, but fairly short-lived.They got back to spending fairly soon," Branch said."The business community was in a pretty negative mode before, during and after . . . and investors have been extremely cautious."
While Sept. 11 undoubtedly changed the economy, it's difficult to analyze it because of other factors, Branch said.For example, the country had been in a recession since March, the stock market was down and travel was also down compared with the previous year.
"The economy was weak before Sept. 11.It turns out it was weaker than we thought it was," Branch said.
The terrorist attacks affected all industries, but the hardest hit were travel and tourism.
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As for the long-term, Branch, the UMass professor, said it will take longer than expected to emerge from the downturn, and the country has not seen the last of accounting scandals.But he was hopeful for the future.
"We'll muddle through," Branch said.