A disappointingly superficial and inconclusive critique of US pay practices. Relying mainly on secondary sources and anecdotal evidence, former Harvard president Bok (Higher Learning, 1986, etc.) first surveys the widely variant financial rewards afforded by business, education, government, law, and medicine from the turn of the century to the present. Equity apart, he deplores the fact that differentials in earnings potential have lured America's best and brightest college grads away from careers in teaching and the federal civil service. Bok goes on the castigate attorneys, corporate executives, and physicians, among others, on grounds that their superior incomes aren't determined by supply/demand forces in genuinely free markets. While the author's concerns about comparable worth have obvious economic implications, he stops short of linking compensation norms to American competitiveness (or lack thereof) in international trade. Bok also fails to employ objective data or standards in his adversarial review of income. To make his essentially populist points, he depends largely on worst-case examples and pejorative phrases—``swollen paychecks,'' ``undeserved wealth,'' ``bloated compensation,'' etc. In some cases, Bok seems to ignore inconvenient realities: He's way off the mark, for instance, in his unattributed estimate of directorial pay. Nor does his canvass of pay for performance, stiffer taxation of high incomes, industrial policies, and other means to attract more talent into the public sector carry much conviction. In summation, in fact, he merely suggests America would be well advised to examine its values and priorities. Detached analysis that sheds more heat than light on an issue of critical importance.
Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-903755-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating and intelligible introduction to central banks, the immensely influential institutions that constitute virtually a fourth branch of government in most industrial democracies. These banks' low-profile operations affect a wealth of workaday affairs, including how much home buyers pay for mortgages and what business travelers or tourists get for their money in foreign ports of call. In tracing how they evolved, Deane and Pringle (journalists turned consultants) offer a comprehensive if episodic guide to central banking from its origins in 17th-century Europe through the turbulent present, when the deregulated, high- tech international marketplace is at constant risk from, among other things, sporty new financial instruments like the hedging/trading vehicles known as derivatives. In the process of outlining the clubby vocation's past, present, and future, the authors address three salient issues. To begin with, they probe just why over the past couple of decades America's Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, Germany's Bundesbank, and their lesser-light counterparts have focused on containing inflation rather than fostering economic growth that could curb domestic unemployment. They also examine the increasingly independent, albeit not quite autonomous, role played by central bankers in the brave new post-Soviet world order. Last but not least, the authors evaluate the extent to which monetary authorities (so called because they control the supplies of money in their own countries) have assumed supervisory responsibility for transnational capital markets. Along their anecdotal way, the authors are at pains to explain the complex means by which central bankers achieve their many-splintered ends in the face of frequent pressures from host-country politicians. Despite the authors' occasionally irritating penchant for chatty reportage underscoring their status as privileged observers with access to top-drawer insiders, a first-rate primer on central banking and why the lay public should care about it.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-84823-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
An overstated case for the proposition that Japan Inc. has artfully hoodwinked a credulous West about the extent of its economic ambitions. Fingleton, Asia editor of Euromoney magazine, makes many valid points about the differences between Anglo-American free-enterprise capitalism and the mercantilist approach of Japan's government- industrial complex. In an effort to prove that the island nation is engaged in a conspiracy orchestrated by the formidable Ministry of Finance (MOF) to achieve global commercial supremacy, however, the author exaggerates the challenge to a degree that discredits legitimate concerns about Japan's bent for cartels, collusive labor relations, managed trade, encouragement of a high savings rate (at the expense of consumption), and an undervalued yen. Without going into detail, for instance, Fingleton ascribes all five of the postWW II crashes that have convulsed Japan's securities exchanges to cunning plots engineered by the MOF. He only hurts his case with selective attacks on Western publications (notably, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal) and scholars he believes have been gulled into a false sense of security by diabolically clever Japanese bureaucrats. Fingleton ignores a wealth of evidence at odds with his invincibility scenario. Cases in point include the demographic fact that Japan's population is aging at a faster pace than those of other developed countries and its unfortunate record of international investment (in US film studios, real estate, etc.). Overlooked as well is the risk that rivals will eventually take draconian steps against a competitor that desperately needs foreign outlets for a relatively narrow line of export goods but doggedly defends its own turf against significant offshore incursions. Occasionally perceptive but essentially hyperbolic prophecy from the I-alone-can-save-them school of analysis.
Pub Date: March 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-63316-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
