A sharply written rebuttal of prevailing orthodoxies about the realities of global economics after 2008.
Guardian contributor Clark and Heath (Sociology/Univ. of Manchester) seek “to identify the distinctive social maladies that flow from economic stagnation…in Britain and the United States.”
The authors debunk the opinions of experts who assert the supremacy of “the Anglo-Saxon societies” and their liberal, free market–based economics over capitalist alternatives from continental Europe and Japan. Clark and Heath probe deeply into the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath by evaluating the quality of the unemployment numbers, which are often the preferred metrics for assessing the impact of the crisis, especially against the members of the Euro zone. Their basis is a five-year (2007-2012) international investigation known as “Social Change: A Harvard-Manchester Initiative,” which Heath co-directed with Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard. The directors received assistance from a number of Anglo-American universities and institutes, as well as a variety of organizations, including Save the Children and the Resolution Foundation. The authors argue that the growth of inequality in both countries since the 1970s provides the key to deconstructing the significance of unemployment statistics. They consider social consequences—e.g., the increase in working women and unmarried females and the decline in household formation—and they draw on the latest research to show that “the reach of the recessionary damage” can also be identified by tracing the jobs that have replaced those lost. In both the U.S. and the U.K., this has produced a hollowing-out of the middle of the workforce, as job quality, skills, pay and security have been downgraded, especially since the 1970s; in continental Europe, this shrinking middle is not nearly as widespread. Furthermore, the proceeds of economic growth have been allocated almost exclusively to the top percentiles of the income pyramid—again, this is not the case in continental Europe. The authors also go on to indict “malign passivity towards the lowliest living standards.”
A sharply written rebuttal of prevailing orthodoxies about the realities of global economics after 2008.Pub Date: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-300-20377-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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