It seems fashionable to denigrate Malcolm Gladwell. Academics moan; “he is conceptually loose and borrows ideas from other people”. It reminds me of Louis in Casablanca. People seem shocked to hear that gambling is going on. What were the critics expecting? Of course, Gladwell popularizes other people’s ideas. (For the record he can borrow and…
Category: Public Policy
Shopping For Votes
Susan Delacourt’s Shopping For Votes is an enjoyable read. Lots of nice detail helps illustrate some interesting events in Canadian politics. The Political Marketing Literature I, of course, have a couple of quibbles. 1) Firstly I feel that her main thesis wasn’t well developed or supported. She has clearly become familiar with the political marketing…
Voters And Consumers
I recently read an interesting article in the Globe and Mail (a major Canadian paper). This talked about the political marketing techniques used by Canadian parties. The journalist asserted that “Canadian politics have moved into an era where voters no longer think of themselves as citizens, with duties and obligations and longer-term perspectives….” (Simpson 2013)….
Confusopoly
In the UK the agency responsible for promoting competition and generally getting consumers a good deal was the Office of Fair Trading, the OFT. (Written a few years ago this UK regulators have since changed). Interestingly this government agency used a concept from Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) to illustrate a major problem in competition….
Good And Bad Profits
Fred Reichheld is best known for his (over) exuberant advocacy of the Net Promoter Score. Introducing Net Promoter he suggests a difference between good and bad profits; an interesting, though theoretically imprecise, idea. Are All Dollars In The Same? Short of outright fraud, isn’t one dollar of earnings as good as another? Certainly, accountants can’t…
Understanding Numbers
Understanding numbers is vital to so many parts of life. It is a shame many otherwise sensible people don’t seem to take numbers seriously. Numbers Allow You To Understand Magnitude When I managed the finances of a political party the BBC’s political editor explained on TV that donations totaling 6 million pounds would run my…
Measuring Competition 2: The Bendle Panda Index
The Herfindahl Index covered in the prior post is an excellent way of measuring competition. Sadly it involves squaring market shares. This seems too much math so in the spirit of simple metrics I’m suggesting a new measure of competitiveness; the BPI or The Bendle Panda Index. It makes Net Promoter look complex and Gigerenzer…
Measuring Competiton 1 The Herfindahl Index
The competitiveness of any industry matters. One way to measure competitiveness is the Herfindahl Index, also known as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. Competition Changes Market Outcomes Consumers usually get a bad deal in “concentrated” markets. This is because markets with fewer significant players usually mean less competition. This matters to managers too. If you are considering entering…
A Reason To Be Cheerful
This post from 2013 is a hopeful one about declining overt bias found in polling. While we have had reasons to worry in the intervening years I still stand by the idea that declining overt bias is a good thing. We may not be perfect. I think this is pretty obvious to all, but, at…
Winning And Political Marketing
Winning and political marketing go together like curry and naan. You can have one without the other but it isn’t ideal. As a former political party Finance Director I would have cried if someone had suggested deliberately not using the best techniques we could to win. (More robust staff would probably have washed the person’s…
