A thoughtful examination of the mechanics of our one-click world.
How economic theories power our market-driven lives.
Fisman (Chair, Behavioral Economics/Boston Univ.) and Harvard Business Review Press editorial director Sullivan, co-authors of The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office (2013), show how key economic ideas of the past 50 years have given us “new forms of transacting,” most notably in the Internet marketplace (iTunes, Google, Uber, eBay and other e-commerce sites, etc.). In addition to well-known technological advances, “ideas that started in the academic study of economics…have had an outsized effect on how scarce goods are allocated—how, that is, we get the stuff that we want.” The authors’ bright, accessible account begins with the path-breaking research of British economist R.A. Radford, who in 1945 described a thriving POW–camp marketplace in Red Cross goods, and traces the postwar rise of mathematical modeling, which allows economists to make general predictions based on the specifics of any particular situation. Fisman and Sullivan consider the work of leading figures from Paul Samuelson to Kenneth Arrow and show how conceptual groundwork laid by Berkeley economist George Akerlof and his followers has allowed doctorate-level economists to help companies like eBay, Amazon, Airbnb, and Facebook to better compete in the marketplace. Among other things, readers learn how eBay auctions work; how increasingly common “platforms”—credit cards, Facebook, iPhones, etc.—bring together various groups to transact; and how the benefits of market efficiency are applied to the distribution of food among food banks and to such matchmaking challenges as admitting children to schools and connecting aspiring lawyers to clerkships. The authors caution that markets now reach so deeply into our lives that they can “transform” who we are. Market competition “can make us pay bribes, shirk on expenditures that would protect workers…and cut corners on product quality.” With a better understanding of innovations, write the authors, we can decide to what extent markets may need “a bit of help and oversight to perform their miracles of efficiency.”
A thoughtful examination of the mechanics of our one-click world.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-492-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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
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
SEEN & HEARD
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