A Week's Worth

• Blame Islamist violence and North Korea's refusal to return to nuclear negotiations, analysts say, for last week's 3.2 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average – its poorest performance in more than a year.

• For all the grousing by Americans about how stressful their jobs are, a majority would put up with still more stress if that resulted in additional pay. Or so says the staffing firm Randstad USA. Its 2006 employee review also turned up this finding: 81 percent of employees and 69 percent of employers say it's commonplace to stay in a job that one doesn't like ... just to keep the paychecks coming.

• Somewhere between beinghired and completing a training course taught by the personnel department, not enough new employees are grasping their companies' strategies, according to Accenture, the management consulting and tech-services giant. Of 251 business executives it polled, 40 percent said less than half their staffs understood what was needed to achieve success. A leading culprit: overly broad training programs.

• Let's say you're selling something on eBay for the first time: Should you expect more or less for it than an established vendor offering the same item? Answer: 8 percent less, a University of Michigan study found. Its researchers speculate that would-be buyers value feedback on previous sellers and are leery of newbies, no matter how honest they may be.