894 Posts Found

Content: Online Resource | Subjects: Courses / Tutorials, Economics

Content: Online Resource | Subjects: Courses / Tutorials, Economics

Repugnance is different in different places and at different times, says Harvard economist Alvin E. Roth in this Q&A. As someone who designs and builds new markets, he marvels at how society decides whether a transaction is “good” or “bad”-even when such transactions are very much alike.

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

Over the past decade however there has been a growing interest in the role which territory (in the form of regions, industrial districts or innovative milieux) plays in fostering technical change and industrialinnovation…One of the many virtues of this book is the way it penetrates beneath these superficial similarities, exposing a more complex, more telling set of differences which help to explain the very different … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: AnnaLee Saxenian | Subjects: Economics, Innovation

A fascinating and playful guide to how economics explains the simple but profound ideas that govern our world.

Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando?

For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Robert H. Frank | Subject: Economics

Emma Lazarus’s words at the base of the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” — are well known. According to new research by Vivek Wadhwa, executive-in-residence at Duke University, “highly educated” and “entrepreneurial” should be added to the list. Following a survey of 28,000 U.S. startups, Wadhwa and his coauthors found that a vast majority of immigrant entrepreneurs … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Economics, International

Why do people choose one thing over another? And why do they stop choosing something at all? Over time, cravings, habits and over-saturation make some things appealing and others less so. Economists have attempted to predict consumer choice by applying a “discounted utility model,” which aims to account for how people’s habits and preferences change. In “Predicting Utility Under Satiation and Habituation,” Professors Manuel Baucells … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Manuel Baucells, Rakesh K. Sarin | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Economics, Marketing / Sales

As far as I know, economics does not teach us anything about the artistic dimension of management, despite the many insights it offers.

Content: Quotation | Source: Quest for Prosperity: The Life of a Japanese Industrialist | Subjects: Economics, Management

Think Small. This slogan launched the Volkswagen Beetle back when Americans drove tanks with fins and it might well be the slogan of small business today. Small businesses often look a bit insignificant next to the Hummers of the Fortune 500, but like the Beetle, small business actually has economics on its side: it’s the bugs of the business world that are creating the most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Emory | Subjects: Economics, Entrepreneurship

Economist Joseph Schumpeter was perhaps the most powerful thinker ever on innovation, entrepreneurship, and capitalism. He was also one of the most unusual personalities of the 20th century, as Harvard Business School professor emeritus Thomas K. McCraw shows in a new biography. Read our interview and book excerpt.

Content: Article | Authors: Sean Silverthorne, Thomas McCraw | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Economics, People

As a resource, knowledge is totally different from the other resources economists have studied before. To begin with, it’s intangible, and it’s not depletable: the more we use it, the more we can create. The fact that knowledge is inherently inexhaustible knocks a gigantic hole in the economics that grew out of the industrial era. And, by and large, our economists haven’t caught up with … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Knowledge

The more refined and specialized tasks become, the harder and more expensive it becomes to integrate them – especially in an innovation-driven economy. At some point, the costs of integration may exceed the value of such super-specialization. Narrowly-focused specialists may be good at incremental innovation, but breakthrough innovation is most often the product of temporary teams whose members cross disciplinary boundaries.

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Innovation

Three cheers for “exuberant, foolish, mad overinvestment!” Slate columnist Gross takes a counterintuitive look at economic bubbles-those once-in-a-generation crazes that everyone knows can’t last, and don’t. With each one, we lament having gotten in too late, and then not having gotten out soon enough, and finally shake our heads at the inevitable bankruptcies and lost jobs and general financial wreckage. The pattern is all too … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Daniel Gross | Subjects: Economics, History

The unsystematic approach [of Wall Street analysts] misses the consistent sequence in which the cycle passes through our business sectors. In every single cycle, momentum starts in retail and consumer spending and then moves to manufacturing and then to capital spending. The research director should review them in that order. These three business sectors – I didn’t mention services, because it’s much harder to measure … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Economics

Conservative economists who say that capital spending drives consumer spending are about one-third correct and two-thirds wrong. Yes, when you put up a new plant, you create jobs and wages and, therefore, consumer spending power. But that impact pales relative to the causality that exists in the other direction: the influence of consumer spending on capital spending. Consumer spending represents the demand for goods and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Economics

I strongly believe that the concept of cause-and-effect charting should be part of the way economics is taught. Today the field is dominated by the teaching of economic theory, with no numbers attached. Students need to be able to understand basic economic indicators, choose the ones relevant to the issues they care about, track them over time, and understand the sequence of cause and effect. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Economics

“Chapter 7, ‘The Process of Creative Destruction,’ is only 6 pages long, but it perfectly captures the essence of capitalism. The 2 chapters preceding and the 2 following it flesh out the argument. So in the space of a little more than 40 pages, we have probably the richest material ever written on the broad subject of capitalism. The rest of the book is full … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Joseph A. Schumpeter | Subject: Economics

Despite their cost, speculative bubbles may have an enormous upside, a new book argues.

Content: Article | Author: Edward Teach | Source: CFO Publishing | Subject: Economics | Industry: Investing

A degree of mutual trust is an essential component of any economic exchange.Recent research suggests that this trust is not only based on objective considerations of trustworthiness, but is also affected by cultural heritage. This cultural bias in trust has important effects on global trade and investments.

Content: Article | Authors: Luigi Guiso, Luigi Zingales, Paola Sapienza | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Economics, International

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