A powerful way of looking at the market, of much use to investors and strategists.
What do we know about the way economies work? According to two British economists, less than we think.
As Donald Rumsfeld once observed, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, a vexation for the smartest strategist. Kay and King (The British Tax System, 1978) employ a like notion here: Although in economics there is a neat little concept called “perfect information,” and although pricing is assumed to incorporate shared knowledge, the governing principle of the real world is uncertainty—and most of the time, we don’t know what we don’t know. This “radical uncertainty” means that our understanding of the present is incomplete and of the future, even more fragmentary, meaning that economists are forced to rely on something akin to hunches. They must explain by way of “narrative reasoning…the most powerful mechanism for organizing our imperfect knowledge,” creating stories about the world that incorporate our experiences, the experiences of others, and such reliable data as we are able to assemble in a “world of uncertain futures and unpredictable consequences.” A repeated example throughout the book is the probabilistic assessment Barack Obama received when determining whether to launch the raid that killed Osama bin Laden: It wasn’t 100% sure that bin Laden was in that Pakistani compound, and a botched operation might have meant war. That things worked out as they did was by no means guaranteed, and neither is following the rules of economics: Supply and demand is a powerful explanatory tool, but it explains only so much about how people and markets behave. While a sophisticated knowledge of economic concepts is a desideratum for following the authors’ argument closely, many of their takeaways don’t require much expertise. “Never rely on data without asking ‘What is the source of this information?’ ” they counsel, helpfully, one of many dicta to help overcome the shadowy unknowns that elude us even with the benefit of hindsight, such as why recessions hit when they do.
A powerful way of looking at the market, of much use to investors and strategists.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-324-00477-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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