An economics professor's sometimes charming, sometimes glib, always counterintuitive guide to evaluating the small anomalies of daily life in a free-market society. In a series of interchangeable chapters, Landsburg (University of Rochester) asks questions like: Why do laws mandating use of seat belts increase the rate of traffic accidents, as statistics show they do? Because, he says, drivers have been given an incentive to drive more quickly and less carefully by being made to feel protected. In the service of what he calls efficient markets, Landsburg argues that wheat farmers, say, ought to be forced to pay damages done to their crops by sparks thrown off from railroad trains, since such damages can be borne more cheaply by farmers than by the railroad companies that are at fault. When analyzing the costs and benefits of legalizing drugs, he admonishes that increased tax revenues from a heretofore untaxable criminal activity are a neutral item; transfer of wealth from individuals to government is never equivalent to the creation of new wealth and may even be a societal drain. In general, Landsburg cheerily points out, economists value efficiency rather than justice, market solutions over legislated compromises, consumption over saving, and the creation of wealth above all else; these principles secretly drive the profession's public analyses of criminal penalties, tax policy, environmental legislation, and the ultimate good of market- based free trade. For all his cleverness, Landsburg never seriously questions the ``neutral'' assumptions of the dismal science—a fact that considerably decreases the value of his book.
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-917775-8
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
Much has happened to America's depository institutions in the more than two decades since Mayer wrote The Bankers, and his elegant update provides an informed guide to the convulsive change that has brought a remote, buttoned-down profession into the rowdy, high-tech world of financial services. Before assessing the past, present, and future of banking, the author assesses the nature of money, a demanding task that nonetheless permits him to examine the role commercial banks play in the way debts were, are, and could be paid. Moving on to ATMs, so-called smart cards, and the Internet's boundless potential, he documents why even multinational banks have good reason to fear problem-solving enterprises like Microsoft that have been poaching on their hitherto protected precincts. Mayer next evaluates the decline of bank lending, a drop that occurred despite mergers which have created regional and national powerhouses. He also offers an astute appreciation of the concurrent trend to gamble in futures trading, a high-stakes zero-sum game in which risky derivative instruments are trumps. Having reviewed the sudden death of the UK's venerable Barings Bank (to date, the highest profile casualty of casino capitalism), the author casts a cold eye on the S&L disaster in America. From this sore subject, he segues gracefully into a detailed appraisal of the many agencies that regulate the domestic banking industry in one way or another. In a concluding chapter, Mayer ventures provocative opinions on the successful efforts of the Federal Reserve System (which has a vested interest in sorting checks) to stymie private-sector rivals eager to establish a utility-like clearinghouse system that would offer universal access (at reasonable rates) to individuals and entities needing to transfer money in or out of the country. Engrossing and perceptive perspectives on developments that could signal the twilight of traditional over-the-counter banking.
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-93865-6
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
An investigative reporter's cautionary overview of a persistent problem for American industry: the theft of its vital technology by friend and foe alike. Drawing on a wealth of sources, Wall Street Journal correspondent Fialka offers a coherent (if anecdotal) briefing on the economic-espionage campaigns that have been waged against the US down through the years, as well as a broad assessment of their impact on commerce and national security. While the erstwhile Soviet Union was the first to make an organized effort to obtain classified information from America's defense contractors, it was not the last. Such putative allies as France, Israel, and Japan routinely gather intelligence on Uncle Sam's mercantile secrets, as do mainland China and a host of lesser Asian lights. Although the stakes are no longer mortal (as during the Cold War), the author points out that the costs in terms of lost jobs and sales are considerable—and mounting. Employing case studies from the files of federal prosecutors, he illustrates the ways in which foreign nations exploit the bedrock institutions of an open society (e.g., by infiltrating student spies into US universities and their affiliated research laboratories) to keep themselves abreast of advances in the biosciences, solid-state electronics, space-age weaponry, and other fast-growth fields. Covered as well are: the vulnerability of America's telephone system along with other computer-based communications links; the refusal of business and government to acknowledge that US resources (and riches) are being siphoned off by enterprising thieves from abroad; and the ominous privatization of well-trained KGB operatives in a Russia which still finds it more convenient to steal than to develop state-of- the-art technology. A timely, tough-minded, and persuasively documented reminder that some of the Global Village's states do not play as fair as others.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-04014-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996
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