Money geeks are the primary audience, to be sure, but futurists and trend-watchers will also take interest in the author’s...
A noted economist imagines a modern society that functions without paper money and coins.
As former International Monetary Fund chief economist Rogoff (Public Policy/Harvard Univ.; co-author: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, 2009, etc.) notes, though the drift of modern economies is to provide alternate means of account to the paper-and-metal exchange of old, we are still awash in cash. There was enough of it outside of banks, he writes, for each man, woman, and child in the U.S. to have $4,200, mostly in big bills, which, he adds, “is a nearly universal problem in advanced economies.” Though it will likely be a while before we can see our way clear to adopting a system such as that used by the entrepreneurial Ferengi of the Star Trek franchise, who used a substance called latinum so volatile that it had to be encased in worthless gold, there are good reasons, by Rogoff’s argument, to want to do so. The first prong of the argument is easy enough to follow: cash enables crimes such as money laundering and tax evasion, and doing away with it serves justice. The second broad component is more rarified, involving the goal of zero inflation via negative interest, a matter so unthinkable recently that, as the author notes, the theory is just beginning to catch up to an increasing fact. Naturally, the speculators will be a step ahead of the economists, and there are ways to game even the negative interest system for profit; tax laws can be modified accordingly, though “the objective of negative interest rate policy is primarily macroeconomic stabilization, not raising revenue.” Rogoff strives to write accessibly, but such matters are so heady and technical that the latter portions of the book will be daunting to those without training in economics.
Money geeks are the primary audience, to be sure, but futurists and trend-watchers will also take interest in the author’s proposals for phasing out cash.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-691-17213-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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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