A vibrant picture of a growing sphere of trade that already employs half the workers of the world.
A close-up look at the world of unlicensed and unregulated trade, which, in many developing countries, is the fastest growing part of the economy.
Neuwirth (Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World, 2004), who prefaces every chapter with a relevant quote from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, takes readers inside what he calls System D, from the French word débrouillardise, meaning resourceful and inventive. His first stopping place is Sao Paulo, Brazil, where a vibrant street market draws more than 400,000 people on an average weekday. Then comes Lagos, Nigeria, a fast-growing DIY city of more than nine million people, many living in shantytowns, where scavengers glean recyclable goods from the dump and where System D provides not just goods but water, electricity and public transportation. Using his personal contacts with merchants, Neuwirth describes the underground trade links between Nigeria and China, including an enormous business in the piracy of electronic goods, and the smuggling industry that brings goods across the border from Brazil to Paraguay. He also details the links between major U.S. corporations and System D; how the system operates today in Brooklyn, San Francisco and other American cities; and what measures governments have taken to regulate it. Throughout, Neuwirth cites other sources to demonstrate that aspects of System D have an ancient history. He is clearly an admirer of System D, seeing in it not chaos and confusion, but communities marked by cooperation and their own codes of conduct. He argues that governments need System D markets because they are creative and provide jobs, and that System D needs governments because governments can provide infrastructure, organized ports and currency with a stable rate of exchange. Developing a space where System D can thrive offers “a vision of empowerment, employment, and global equity based, not on the abstraction of the free market, but on the concrete principles of the flea market.”
A vibrant picture of a growing sphere of trade that already employs half the workers of the world.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-42489-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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