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Author: Sudipta Sarangi
Publisher: Penguin Enterprise
ISBN: 9780143450375
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Why are all the good mangoes exported from India? Why should we pay our house help more? Why do we hesitate to reach out for that last piece of cake in a gathering? Are more choices really better? Why do many of us offer a prayer but are reluctant to wear a seatbelt while driving? Are Indians hardwired to get grumpy at a peer's success? What's common between a box of cereal and your résumé? Can economics answer all these questions and more? According to Dr Sudipta Sarangi, the answer is yes. In The Economics of Small Things, Sarangi using a range of everyday objects and common experiences like bringing about lasting societal change through Facebook to historically momentous episodes like the shutting down of telegram services in India offers crisp, easy-to-understand lessons in economics. The book studies the development of familiar cultural practices from India and around the world and links the regular to the esoteric and explains everything from Game Theory to the Cobra Effect without depending on graphs or equations-a modern-day miracle! Through disarmingly simple prose, the book demystifies economic theories, offers delightful insights, and provides nuance without jargon. Each chapter of this book will give you the tools to meaningfully engage with a subject that has long been considered alienating but is unavoidable in its relevance.
Author: Sudipta Sarangi
Publisher: Penguin Enterprise
ISBN: 9780143450375
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why are all the good mangoes exported from India? Why should we pay our house help more? Why do we hesitate to reach out for that last piece of cake in a gathering? Are more choices really better? Why do many of us offer a prayer but are reluctant to wear a seatbelt while driving? Are Indians hardwired to get grumpy at a peer's success? What's common between a box of cereal and your résumé? Can economics answer all these questions and more? According to Dr Sudipta Sarangi, the answer is yes. In The Economics of Small Things, Sarangi using a range of everyday objects and common experiences like bringing about lasting societal change through Facebook to historically momentous episodes like the shutting down of telegram services in India offers crisp, easy-to-understand lessons in economics. The book studies the development of familiar cultural practices from India and around the world and links the regular to the esoteric and explains everything from Game Theory to the Cobra Effect without depending on graphs or equations-a modern-day miracle! Through disarmingly simple prose, the book demystifies economic theories, offers delightful insights, and provides nuance without jargon. Each chapter of this book will give you the tools to meaningfully engage with a subject that has long been considered alienating but is unavoidable in its relevance.
Author: Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400884691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.
Author: Greg Ip
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118391578
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
An accessible, thoroughly engaging look at how the economy really works and its role in your everyday life Not surprisingly, regular people suddenly are paying a lot closer attention to the economy than ever before. But economics, with its weird technical jargon and knotty concepts and formulas can be a very difficult subject to get to grips with on your own. Enter Greg Ip and his Little Book of Economics. Like a patient, good-natured tutor, Greg, one of today's most respected economics journalists, walks you through everything you need to know about how the economy works. Short on technical jargon and long on clear, concise, plain-English explanations of important terms, concepts, events, historical figures and major players, this revised and updated edition of Greg's bestselling guide clues you in on what's really going on, what it means to you and what we should be demanding our policymakers do about the economy going forward. From inflation to the Federal Reserve, taxes to the budget deficit, you get indispensible insights into everything that really matters about economics and its impact on everyday life Special sections featuring additional resources of every subject discussed and where to find additional information to help you learn more about an issue and keep track of ongoing developments Offers priceless insights into the roots of America's economic crisis and its aftermath, especially the role played by excessive greed and risk-taking, and what can be done to avoid another economic cataclysm Digs into globalization, the roots of the Euro crisis, the sources of China's spectacular growth, and why the gap between the economy's winners and losers keeps widening
Author: Joseph Pearce
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
A third of a century ago, E. F. Schumacher rang out a timely warning against the idolatry of giantism with his book Small Is Beautiful. Schumacher, a highly respected economist and adviser to third-world governments, broke ranks with the accepted wisdom of his peers to warn of impending calamity if rampant consumerism, technological dynamism, and economic expansionism were not checked by human and environmental considerations. Joseph Pearce revisits Schumacher’s arguments and examines the multifarious ways in which Schumacher’s ideas themselves still matter. Faced though we are with fearful new technological possibilities and the continued centralization of power in large governmental and economic structures, there is still the possibility of pursuing a saner and more sustainable vision for humanity. Bigger is not always best, Pearce reminds us, and small is still beautiful. Humanity was lurching blindly in the wrong direction, argued Schumacher. Its obsessive pursuit of wealth would not, as so many believed, ultimately lead to utopia but more probably to catastrophe. Schumacher's greatest achievement was the fusion of ancient wisdom and modern economics in a language that encapsulated contemporary doubts and fears about the industrialized world. The wisdom of the ages, the perennial truths that have guided humanity throughout its history, serves as a constant reminder to each new generation of the limits to human ambition. But if this wisdom is a warning, it is also a battle cry. Schumacher saw that we needed to relearn the beauty of smallness, of human-scale technology and environments.
Author: Henry Hazlitt
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307760626
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
With over a million copies sold, Economics in One Lesson is an essential guide to the basics of economic theory. A fundamental influence on modern libertarianism, Hazlitt defends capitalism and the free market from economic myths that persist to this day. Considered among the leading economic thinkers of the “Austrian School,” which includes Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich (F.A.) Hayek, and others, Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993), was a libertarian philosopher, an economist, and a journalist. He was the founding vice-president of the Foundation for Economic Education and an early editor of The Freeman magazine, an influential libertarian publication. Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson, his seminal work, in 1946. Concise and instructive, it is also deceptively prescient and far-reaching in its efforts to dissemble economic fallacies that are so prevalent they have almost become a new orthodoxy. Economic commentators across the political spectrum have credited Hazlitt with foreseeing the collapse of the global economy which occurred more than 50 years after the initial publication of Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt’s focus on non-governmental solutions, strong — and strongly reasoned — anti-deficit position, and general emphasis on free markets, economic liberty of individuals, and the dangers of government intervention make Economics in One Lesson every bit as relevant and valuable today as it has been since publication.
Author: Diane Coyle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400838118
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
Why our economy is cheating the future—and what we can do about it The world's leading economies are facing not just one but many crises. The financial meltdown may not be over, climate change threatens major global disruption, economic inequality has reached extremes not seen for a century, and government and business are widely distrusted. At the same time, many people regret the consumerism and social corrosion of modern life. What these crises have in common, Diane Coyle argues, is a reckless disregard for the future—especially in the way the economy is run. How can we achieve the financial growth we need today without sacrificing a decent future for our children, our societies, and our planet? How can we realize what Coyle calls "the Economics of Enough"? Running the economy for tomorrow as well as today will require a wide range of policy changes. The top priority must be ensuring that we get a true picture of long-term economic prospects, with the development of official statistics on national wealth in its broadest sense, including natural and human resources. Saving and investment will need to be encouraged over current consumption. Above all, governments will need to engage citizens in a process of debate about the difficult choices that lie ahead and rebuild a shared commitment to the future of our societies. Creating a sustainable economy—having enough to be happy without cheating the future—won't be easy. But The Economics of Enough starts a profoundly important conversation about how we can begin—and the first steps we need to take.
Author: John Perkins
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1576755126
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
Author: Robert H. Frank
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673832
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
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 learning how economic principles operate in the real world-which they do everywhere, all the time. Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it's cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons. The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost-benefit principle, the "no cash on the table" principle, and the law of one price. This is as delightful and painless a way to learn fundamental economics as there is.
Author: Robert Litan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118781805
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
A detailed look at how economists shaped the world, and how the legacy continues Trillion Dollar Economists explores the prize-winning ideas that have shaped business decisions, business models, and government policies, expanding the popular idea of the economist's role from one of forecaster to one of innovator. Written by the former Director of Economic Research at Bloomberg Government, the Kauffman Foundation and the Brookings Institution, this book describes the ways in which economists have helped shape the world – in some cases, dramatically enough to be recognized with a Nobel Prize or Clark Medal. Detailed discussion of how economists think about the world and the pace of future innovation leads to an examination of the role, importance, and limits of the market, and economists' contributions to business and policy in the past, present, and future. Few economists actually forecast the economy's performance. Instead, the bulk of the profession is concerned with how markets work, and how they can be made more efficient and productive to generate the things people want to buy for a better life. Full of interviews with leading economists and industry leaders, Trillion Dollar Economists showcases the innovations that have built modern business and policy. Readers will: Review the basics of economics and the innovation of economists, including market failures and the macro-micro distinction Discover the true power of economic ideas when used directly in business, as exemplified by Priceline and Google Learn how economists contributed to policy platforms in transportation, energy, telecommunication, and more Explore the future of economics in business applications, and the policy ideas, challenges, and implications Economists have helped firms launch new businesses, established new ways of making money, and shaped government policy to create new opportunities and a new landscape on which businesses compete. Trillion Dollar Economists provides a comprehensive exploration of these contributions, and a detailed look at innovation to come.
Author: Henry Petroski
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307427803
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Why has the durable paper shopping bag been largely replaced by its flimsy plastic counterpart? What circuitous chain of improvements led to such innovations as the automobile cup holder and the swiveling vegetable peeler? With the same relentless curiosity and lucid, witty prose he brought to his earlier books, Henry Petroski looks at some of our most familiar objects and reveals that they are, in fact, works in progress. For there can never be an end to the quest for the perfect design. To illustrate his thesis, Petroski tells the story of the paper drinking cup, which owes its popularity to the discovery that water glasses could carry germs. He pays tribute to the little plastic tripod that keeps pizza from sticking to the box and analyzes the numerical layouts of telephones and handheld calculators. Small Things Considered is Petroski at his most trenchant and provocative, casting his eye not only on everyday artifacts but on their users as well.
