What Does Fortune 500 Turnover Mean?

In The Princess Bride, the lead kidnapper, Vizzini, dismisses missteps in his ill-fated scheme with a frustrated exclamation, “Inconceivable!” At length, his soft-spoken mercenary, Inigo Montoya, ventures: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” An equivalent asymmetry in the world of economic analysis is the use of turnover on the Fortune 500 list. For years, many people have cited turnover — and ostensibly...