894 Posts Found

In an update to his popular A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics, David Moss explains how the state of the macro economy affects managers, executives, students—and all the rest of us. In this excerpt, Moss illuminates David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage.

Content: Article | Author: Sean Silverthorne | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Economics

The storyline of capitalism—and the technological innovation that simultaneously supports and drives it forward—is almost always one of ever-greater personal freedom and opportunity. With the liberal application of hard work, inventiveness, or entrepreneurial chutzpah, anyone can rise through the ranks of society. The sky is the limit. Or is it? This is the question that Gregory Clark, economics professor at the University of California, Davis, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Theodore Kinni | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Economics

If your neighbor’s out of work it’s a recession, but if you’re out of work, it’s a depression.

Content: Quotation | Author: Harry Truman | Source: Fast Company | Subject: Economics

There’s a pretty healthy tradition in the U.S. of socializing debt and privatizing gain. I don’t think it’s worked out very well.

Content: Quotation | Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, Government, Politics

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Richard Wilkinson | Source: TED Conferences LLC | Subject: Economics

Over the past 250 years we in the West have constructed a governance structure whose ‘micro’ aspects are geared to efficiency in acquiring and using capital and protecting the interests of the capital owner (shareholders being a much larger group today than a century ago). We have built a ‘macro’ governance structure based on nation states and which reflects this micro structure. Yet over the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ahmet Aykac | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, International

If one looks at the Western experience, one can distinguish several clear epochs: Antiquity, the Feudal order, and the capitalist order in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. In Antiquity slave ownership was the source of power; those who owned the people had a right to the fruits of their efforts. In the Feudal period, the source of such power was the land; those who … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ahmet Aykac | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics, History

It was only published in English a few weeks ago, but French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has already become inescapable. Over the past few weeks it has become one of those things that everybody’s talking about just because everybody’s talking about it. That, and it really is important. Still, chances are you won’t get to the end of the book, so … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Justin Fox | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Economics

The reason that the stock market is so important is not because it raises money; it’s because it is putting a price on your property. Somebody else can buy you. When your stock price goes down, you’re worried, not because you can’t raise more money—you weren’t doing that anyway. But suddenly, it’s as if your house is valued at half the price of the house … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Charles Handy | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Economics, Finance, Market/Investment

No single number has become more central to society in the past 50 years than GDP — Gross Domestic Product. Throughout the world, it has become a proxy for success and for failure. It is a profoundly important indicator. It is also a profoundly flawed one.

Content: Article | Author: Zachary Karabell | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Economics

The doctrine of collective dominance is derived from the belief that a concentrated market structure leads to higher prices and higher profits for all firms in that market because it reduces the effectiveness of competition. This doctrine does not imply or require that any particular firm enjoy identifiable market power. Nor does it imply or require that the firms in question collude or co-ordinate their … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Kay | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Economics

There are different approaches that may constitute business ethics, just as there are different ways to think about ethics in society. Firstly, there is the widely held view that the sole task of business ethics is to restrain the economic drive for profit in cases which raise considerable moral problems. This perspective restricts the role of business ethics to a corrective factor which needs to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Peter Ulrich, Thomas Maak | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Economics, Ethics

I think the knowledge-driven economy is an unfortunate phrase because I tell you, making cars or making forklift trucks, or other high positioned equipment, needs, in my experience, more knowledge and more skills than running service sector companies and e-commerce dot com companies. Knowledge economy talk is quite an insult to my plumber and my car mechanic and the farmers and people who do other … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Bob Bischof | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Economics, Knowledge

Western management philosophy may have created prosperity—for some people some of the time at least—but it has failed in the aim of ensuring betterment of individual life and social welfare. It has remained by and large a soulless edifice and an oasis of plenty for a few in the midst of poor quality of life for many.

Content: Quotation | Author: M.P. Bhattathiri | Source: ManagementLearning.com | Subject: Capitalism

For decades, governments and companies around the world have focused almost exclusively on tariffs as the biggest impediment to global trade. Despite tariffs dropping to a 30-year low, reform efforts have stalled in recent years and international trade remains seriously constrained. A big reason: The inefficiencies and choke-points that hobble the global supply chain turn out to be a much bigger factor than government-imposed tariffs … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Mark Gottfredson | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Economics, International

How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does this influence our children? More than we wish to believe. While it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favor of greater social equality, The Son Also Rises proves that movement on the social ladder has changed little over eight centuries. Using a novel … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Gregory Clark | Subject: Economics

[Economics and technology] are the wrong places to begin. The fundamental changes are social, and they are the greatest changes imaginable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Future, IT / Technology / E-Business

We are at the end of economic theory as we know it for three reasons. One is that information and knowledge don’t fall under the law of scarcity and under the law of diminishing returns. That’s a very important reason. When I sell you my book, you have it, and I don’t have it anymore. When I give you information, I still have it. In … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: Context Magazine | Subject: Economics

The Long Boom assumes that the market will somehow automatically take care of those who lose out because of advances in technology. And, as Peter [Schwartz] acknowledges, there will be losers. While those with relevant skills benefit enormously, the punishment for a lack of skills is brutal. Willy-nilly, technology creates winners and losers in a vivid and remarkable way. Yet I see no sign that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Yankelovich | Source: Context Magazine | Subject: Economics

The book aims to revolutionize the way people think about the economic history of the past two centuries. It may well manage the feat…It is, first and foremost, a very detailed look at 200 years’ worth of data on the distribution of income and wealth across the rich world (with some figures for large emerging markets also included). This mountain of data allows Piketty to … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Thomas Piketty | Subject: Economics