894 Posts Found

The most immediate failure of the market mechanism lies in the things that the market leaves undone. Smith’s economic analysis went well beyond leaving everything to the invisible hand of the market mechanism. He was not only a defender of the role of the state in providing public services, such as education, and in poverty relief, he was also deeply concerned about the inequality and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Subject: Economics

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Editor’s Note: you may or may not agree with this short article, but it is thought provoking and thus I think worth reading (including the comments)…

Content: Article | Author: Robert Nadeau | Source: Scientific American | Subjects: Economics, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Amartya Sen takes on free-market orthodoxy by looking at what its patron saint, Adam Smith, had to say. In Capitalism Beyond the Crisis, Sen uses a Smithian prism to look at three big questions:

1. Do we need a new capitalism?
2. What kind of economics institutions and priorities do we need?
3. How can we get out of our current crisis with as little damage as possible?
[BNET … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Amartya Sen | Subject: Economics

Money: everyone wants it, dreams of it and schemes for it. Find out how U.S. currency is made, faked and protected, and meet the mastermind behind one of the biggest counterfeit operations in U.S. history. [Hat tip to FinanceProfessor.com]

Content: Multimedia Content | Source: National Geographic Channel | Subjects: Economics, Finance

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ronald Reagan | Source: FinanceProfessor.com | Subjects: Economics, Government

The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.

Content: Article | Author: Michael Lewis | Source: Portfolio | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History

Contrarians act against the market mood. “Buy when others are fearful, sell when they are greedy,” Warren Buffett has advised. The historical evidence for buying on the dips, however, is rather mixed.

Content: Article | Authors: Elroy Dimson, Mike Staunton, Paul Marsh | Source: The Economist | Subjects: Economics, Finance

A study of interactions reveals how pervasive they are. As they increase in number, answers to fundamental questions about integration, scale, and scope will change. But what will happen when workers can carry out their jobs in half the time?

Editor’s Note: written in 1997 and it shows in a few spots, but still a good read…

Content: Article | Authors: Ali Hanna, Anupam Sahay, Byron Auguste, James Manyika, Pat Butler, Ted Hall | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

Last year, on the 100th anniversary of their book’s subject, Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr published The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market’s Perfect Storm (John Wiley & Sons). A year later, as we weather a far greater financial storm, the book’s lessons are more relevant than ever. From their analysis of one of the worst banking panics in U.S. history, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Edward Teach, Robert F. Bruner | Source: CFO Publishing | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History

The problem is that globalization is being created by business firms, not governments. Business firms are so small that they put one brick in the wall at a time, and don’t think about where the wall is going.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lester Thurow | Source: CFO Publishing | Subjects: Economics, International

Why asset bubbles are a part of the human condition that regulation can’t cure

Content: Article | Author: Virginia Postrel | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subject: Economics

“Fishbowl” economics once provided the basis of corporate strategy, but no longer. New theories show that markets are “complex adaptive systems.” Can managers be more than blind players in an evolutionary business game?

Content: Article | Author: Eric Beinhocker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Strategy

There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. you can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. or faked. or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. so trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy-saturated … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Kevin Kelly | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Economics, Miscellaneous

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So what can we learn from all this? In the words of the great investor Jeremy Grantham, who saw this collapse coming and has seen just about everything else in his four-decade career: “We will learn an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the medium term, and absolutely nothing in the long term.” Of course, to paraphrase Keynes, in the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Henry Blodget | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subject: Economics

Financial bubbles are like epidemics— and we should treat them both the same way.

Content: Article | Author: Robert J. Shiller | Source: The Atlantic Monthly | Subject: Economics

What do self-respecting entrepreneurs do when subjected to new regulations? They learn the regulations backward and forward and then vow never to start another business that falls within the scope of those regulations. And so off the entrepreneur goes to find a new way.

The new entrepreneur often seeks ways to innovate outside the scope of the newly established regulations. In the beginning, all that … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Foster | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Government

The essence of capitalism is capitalizing—bringing forward the future value of cash to the present so that society can grow more quickly by taking risks. It goes back to the Dutchmen in the 16th century, sitting at their coffeehouses in Amsterdam and Leiden, loaning each other money for a guaranteed return. Someone said, “I’ll give you a little higher return if you give me a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Foster | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics

This paper presents a new database on the timing of systemic banking crises and policy responses to resolve them. The database covers the universe of systemic banking crises for the period 1970-2007, with detailed data on crisis containment and resolution policies for 42 crisis episodes, and also includes data on the timing of currency crises and sovereign debt crises. The database extends and builds on … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Fabian Valencia, Luc Laeven | Source: International Monetary Fund | Subjects: Economics, Finance, History | Industry: Finance / Banking

R. Preston McAfee offers his economics textbook online in MS Word and PDF formats for free.

Abstract:
This book presents introductory economics (“principles”) material using standard mathematical tools, including calculus. It is designed for a relatively sophisticated undergraduate who has not taken a basic university course in economics. It also contains the standard intermediate microeconomics material and some material that ought to be standard but … [ Read more ]

Content: Online Resource | Author: R. Preston McAfee | Subjects: Economics, Free Stuff / Tools