Bryan Routledge, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, cautioned that the Beige Book contains anecdotal information about business trends, not hard numbers.

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Amazon focuses its campus recruitment on schools with analytics and entrepreneurship programs, including Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

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At the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, MBA students mentor teenagers, volunteer at soup kitchens or help the elderly.

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Allan Meltzer, a Fed historian and professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, warns that Bernanke and company should focus on maintaining steady economic growth while also keeping inflation in check.

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