A pleasure for the fiscally minded and a good introduction to applied economics for readers with a smattering of theory.
Invisible hand, meet trickle-down: a lightly learned but deep-reaching look at classic economic problems through the lens of classical economics.
Business schools across the land teach a set of canonical precepts: The free market is good and self-correcting, corporations have the sole duty of maximizing return for shareholders, and commerce is indifferent to larger matters of ethics. But are all those points true? Also, are they useful in addressing obdurate problems that seem custom-coined for our time, such as, in the face of economy-must-grow models, the future seems the province of low productivity and lower expansion? Enter BBC broadcaster and Oxford economist Yueh (China's Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower, 2013, etc.), who turns to Robert Solow, “the author of the workhorse of economic growth models,” for guidance. She also goes against Solow and on to the ground of endogenous growth theory but returns with a humane prescription: Just as Solow located growth in, among other things, how workers are treated, maybe we can learn to retool. (Yueh adds that Solow, still at work in his 90s, also counsels relaxing some: “learning to adjust, to adapt, is not a bad thing for economists to learn.”) And what of quantitative easing in recessive economies? Well, throw Keynes into the mix, then see what Milton Friedman would say about whether increasing the monetary supply is the right thing to do. Concludes Yueh, with sidestepping befitting a careful economist, “it’s fair to say the jury is largely still out.” The author, who once ran for Congress as a kind of made-for-TV thought experiment, has solid, interesting things to say about globalization, human capital, and kindred matters and a correct sense for which economist to bring to the problem at hand, whether Paul Samuelson (“the last of the great general economists”) or Alfred Marshall, the anti-socialist who still supported redistribution—with qualifications.
A pleasure for the fiscally minded and a good introduction to applied economics for readers with a smattering of theory.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-18053-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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