George Akerlof and Robert Shiller have good points, excellent stories, and a clear aim in Phishing for Phools. The aim is to convince economist colleagues that all market outcomes aren’t perfect. I applaud their aim. That said, their conceptualization assumes consumers (and others) are robots with a monkey on our backs. The monkey prevents us from being “fully rational”. I’d say, however, that we…
Category: Management Theory
Why Gift Cards Are Interesting
In a special holiday edition I focus on why Gift cards are interesting. They are central to many retailers’ strategies and yet economic theory often seems premised on the idea that they shouldn’t exist. Why Give Gift Cards? The argument against them is that a gift card is a bit like cash, just worse. Closed loop cards, those…
Is The Leadership Industry Just Nonsense?
I’m pretty cynical about “Leadership”. A such, I enjoyed Jeffrey Pfeffer’s attack on the Leadership industry. He suggests that the leadership industry is built on un-researched platitudes. What is more every retired leader who writes a book doesn’t necessarily tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So is the leadership industry just nonsense? Testing…
Improving Forecasting
Philip Tetlock’s book on expert political judgment was a classic. That said, he clearly thinks that the message taken from that book was too strong. Previously he suggested that experts just aren’t that good at forecasting. He still retains that theme in his new work — but now he is more interested in improving forecasting. Improving Forecasting…
What American Football Can Tell Us About Management
One problem in studying managerial behavior is that firms aren’t very open about their failures. Still, a scholar trying to show that managers make mistakes won’t have many volunteers to serve as examples. This can, therefore, leave the perception that most organizations run smoothly. This has always seemed improbable to me. I’ve worked in several fields. I’ve encountered numerous committed, hardworking people…
Explaining Omitted Variable Bias
Charles Whelan’s Naked Statistics is an enjoyable and informative read. He does a very good job of simplifying statistics. He explains what statistical methods can do but also the problems that people get into using statistics. Here I’ll focus on him explaining Omitted Variable Bias. Whelan tackles this problem very clearly. Explaining Omitted Variable Bias Omitted variable bias sounds like…
Who Doesn’t Want Nudges And Competent Government?
The idea of nudging, structuring decisions to encourage people to make good choices, is surprisingly controversial. An example of a nudge might be to encourage those who are qualified to take up a social benefit or to get a tax break to do so. The nudge might be as simple as creating an easy to use application…
What Use Is An Evolutionary Definition of Rationality?
Eyal Winter’s book, Feeling Smart, is interesting but frustrating. There is much good content. Indeed, some of the stories are great. My biggest problem was the casual use of concepts. This was exemplified by the central idea of his book. He said that feelings/emotions can help you make smart decisions. I totally agree but the big problem was…
How Managers Decide
My second delve into Richard Thaler’s Misbehaving concerns managerial decision making. How managers decide is a massively important topic. Equilibrium Conditions Don’t Describe Any Point In Time Economic models often study equilibrium conditions. These apply where no manager will want to change their decision. Given they model this some academics seem to think that this describes…
Understanding Canadian Electioneering
Tom Flanagan’s Winning Power is an impressive piece of writing. This is because it combines academic research with practical knowledge of campaigning. Flanagan worked for a variety of “Conservative” parties. This is in addition to being a professor which has given him great experience to draw upon in helping with understanding Canadian electioneering. Positioning And…
