NABE Bookstore
Business Economics® Book Reviews

From the July 2002 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

Richard N. Cooper and Richard Layard, editors. What the Future Holds: Insights from Social Science. (The MIT Press, 2002.)
"The authors in this interesting book of essays repeatedly emphasize that forecasting is difficult, especially when the time horizon is a quarter century or more into the future. But, as the editors point out in an introductory chapter, most human decisions, whether by individuals, businesses, or governments, involve making judgments about the future. “The oracles of today are science, which generates the new technology, and social science, which evaluates its impact upon human society.” Forecasts go wrong, but forecasting should not be abandoned; “systematic study of the future leads to clearer understanding.”

Thomas P. Murtha, Stefanie A. Lenway and Jeffrey A. Hart. Managing New Industry Creation. (Stanford University Press, 2001).
"...The three authors—two professors of management, and one of political science —endeavor to give us details on one specific sector as well as insights that can be transplanted onto other industries. For the most part, they are successful in this quest. On balance, this book is worth reading by those economists who have an interest in high-tech industries and in the birth of new industries in general."

From the April 2002 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

Christian Gourieroux and Joann Jasiak. Financial Econometrics: Problems, Models and Methods. (Princeton University Press, 2001.)
"According to the authors, the objective of the book is to report on the current state of scientific advancement in the development of econometric methods in finance. The book is intended for graduate students in statistics, mathematics, economics, and business who are interested in financial applications. It is also supposedly useful for applied researchers employed by banks and financial institutions."

J. Scott Armstrong, Editor. Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners. (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001)
This book is a compilation of peerreviewed articles from thirty-nine different authors and spans a wide range of practical forecasting issues ranging from role-playing methods for forecast decisions to econometric methods.

From the January 2002 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

E. Philip Davis and Benn Steil. Institutional Investors. (The MIT Press, 2001).
"...This book provides a broad and thorough review of both institutional investors (specialized financial institutions that manage savings collectively) and asset management (the process by which assets collected by institutional investors are invested in the capital markets). "

Ross B. Emmett, editor. Great Bubbles. (Pickering & Cattro Limited, 2000)
"... It seems clear that policy makers want to understand what causes financial bubbles and what effects they have on the economy in order to make policy decisions about whether or not to inhibit them. Business economists want to understand bubbles so that they can make better personal and business financial decisions. We think that these volumes can help achieve both goals. Moreover, they will prove to be interesting to those who simply want to know about the events."

From the October 2001 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

Michael J Brennan, editor. Empirical Corporate Finance (Volumes I, II, III, and IV). (Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd, 2001)
"These four volumes (72 articles) provide an overview of the empirical research in corporate finance between 1969 and 1999."

From the July 2001 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

Grace-Marie Arnett, editor. Empowering Health Care Consumers Through Tax Reform. (Univ of Michigan Press, 1999.)
"... It is relevant reading for those who want background on the current debate about tax credits for health insurance in the 107 th Congress."

By Marino Regini, Jim Kitay, and Martin Baethge. From Tellers to Sellers: Changing Employment Relations in Banks. ( The MIT Press, 1999).
"...Who would find this book interesting? Certainly, anyone employed in the financial services industry would gain a lot of perspective, not just about personnel practices in the United States and other major OECD countries but also about the organization
and operations of banks as they have changed and responded to the challenges of globalization and technology........ Finally, anyone who is a bank customer—and just about all of us are—will get some insight into the way you are treated by your local
bank and why, which will be an indication of how you stand in the bank’s customer pecking order!

From the April 2001 Issue - Read the Full Reviews

Peter L. Bernstein. The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession. (John Wiley & Sons, 2000.)
"...His latest book is fascinating to read, broad in concept, and highly informative."

Russell Roberts. The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. (MIT Press, 2001)
"...Not to let the cat out of the bag, but a book being reviewed in Business Economics and published by the MIT Press is not your usual romance novel. It is actually well
written dialogue between an economist and a fair-minded but unconvinced
humanities teacher. What is unique is using the romance novel as a vehicle for give and take between the two protagonists."

Philip Hans Franses and Dick van Dijk. Non-linear Time Series Models in Empirical Finance. (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
"...Forecasting the values of financial variables has been an aim of all profes-sionals
who have ever had anything to do with financial markets....Quantitative business econ-omists will find the book useful in keeping up with current research, and practitioners will find it useful in understanding why the original objective of the Cowles Commission
remains unfinished."

From the January 2001 Issue- Read the Full Reviews

Marq de Villiers. Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. (Houghton Mifflin 2000)
"... The basic problem with water, as de Villiers points out, is that the supply is fixed- the same today as it was in ancient times- but demand has been increasing dramatically."

Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija. Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Great Debate over Tax Reform. (MIT Press, 2000)
"...An even-handed treatment of taxation written in plain language is rare indeed, but the authors of this volume have pulled it off nicely."

Alexandre Lamfalussy. Financial Crises in Emerging Markets: An Essay on Financial Globalization and Fragility. (Yale University Press, 2000)
"...The book is a pithy and penetrating analysis of the four major financial crises - Latin America 1982-83, Mexico 1994-95, Southeast Asia 1997-98, and Russia from 1998- that affected recent global financial markets."

Gerard Roland. Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets, and Firms. (MIT Press 2000).
"...This new field of economics uses as its laboratory the one-third of the world's population that left the market system for cetnral planning in the first half of the twentieth century and then launched an attempt to return to a market system toward the century's end."

From the October 2000 Issue- Read the Full Reviews (PDF 37K)

Henry Kaufman. On Money and Markets: A Wall Street Memoir. (McGraw-Hill 2000).
"...Reflecting on a momentous career spanning a half-century, this valedic-tory is at once a highly personal reminiscence, a unique perspective on the vital and fragile role of financial markets in economic progress, and an engaging, and often controversial, tract for regulatory reform."

Willis Emmons. The Evolving Bargain: Strategic Implications of Deregulation and Privatization. (Harvard Business School Press 2000).
"...Business economists often find it a challenge to communicate the practical uses of economics with man-agers and especially top management in the day-to-day operation of the organization. This book goes a long way in bridging some of that gap. It is not a cookbook that says here is what elasticity means in a practical sense, but when it discusses the necessity of “rebalancing” relative prices in accordance with market conditions, it is all there."

From the July 2000 Issue - Read the Full Reviews (PDF 111K)

Mathias Binswanger. Stock Markets, Speculative Bubbles and Economic Growth: New Dimensions in the Co-evolution of Real and Financial Markets. (Edward Elgar, 1999).
"...This book integrates economic theory and financial markets, with extensive empirical verification that provides much food for thought. The book is not an easy read but gives a more reasoned economic approach to current markets than can be found in the more popular texts cited earlier."

Deirdre McCloskey. Economical Writing. (Waveland Press, 2000).
"...E c o n o m i c a l Writing is well worth reading. Economists can learn much from this short book (I certainly did), and they can read it in less than two hours. McCloskey provides very useful advice, not only on style, grammar, and usage, but also on the writing process."

  Herbert Stein and Murray Foss. The Illustrated Guide to the American Economy. (The AEI Press, Third Edition 1999)
"... In 123 well-designed full-page charts with crisp and informative comments on the facing pages, this book provides a comprehensive review of the American economy, its growth and complexity, its good and bad features and the critical issues it faces."

Thomas L Friedman. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999)
" ...Friedman’s greatest insight and contribution is perhaps his vision of the new political matrix that has been created by globalization to replace the old liberal-conservative, communist- capitalist framework of the Cold War era. The framework he proposes has four basic political identities that people assume in the new system of globalization, depending on their attitudes about globalization and about income distribution."

From the April 2000 Issue - Read the Full Reviews (pdf format)

Norman Frumkin. Guide to Economic Indicators - 3rd Edition. (M.E. Sharp, 2000)
"...even the best of us cannot remember every-thing! Now in its third edition, this handy reference book is a reliable source of useful information about more than seventy economic indicators, mostly those issued by government agencies but also by private organizations as well. In total, just about every series likely to be used in interpreting economic information is covered."

Marina v.N. Whitman. New World, New Rules: The Changing Role of the American Corporation. (Harvard Business School Press, 1999)
"...Whitman has provided an extraordinarily well-documented assessment of the tectonic forces that pummeled American corporations in recent decades....Fortunately, the author does not leave matters with a simple cataloging of chronic problems. Whitman also discusses possible solutions and does so in a scholarly and balanced fashion, addressing issues ranging from tax policy to workforce “safety nets,” from educational reform to environmental policy."

From the January 2000 Issue - Read the Full Reviews (pdf format)

Stephen B. Adams and Orville R. Butler.  Manufacturing the Future: The History of Western Electric. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
"...The subtitle of this book might easily suggest that it is just another laudatory company history created by internal public relations specialists. Not so. Western Electric was unusual, if not unique, in several ways.....there are lessons for business economists in such a story, including economic history, regulation, technological innovation and implementation, plus labor and government relations. The authors have produced a readable and informative book."

Peter O'Grady. The Age of Modularity: Using the New World of Modular Products to Revolutionize Your Corporation. ( Adams and Steele Publishers, 1999)
".....O’Grady shows how modularity not only help organizations achieve mass customization, but also shorten product development cycles, speed technological change, and help lower cost."

Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, and Anthony J. Venables.  The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade ( The MIT Press, 1999)
The Spatial Economy will likely become the cornerstone of the revitalized field of economic geography....[they] bring together a variety of disparate models in an effort to bring geography and space back into the vocabulary of the economist. While much of the book is quite rigorous in its mathematical approach to economic geography, this is sure to become required reading for urban and regional economists.

Bruce Benson. To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. ( New York University Press, 1998).
"...... Benson is a veteran researcher on crime and law, and in this volume he integrates a sprawling literature in a way that transforms the whole discussion. The book works on two levels. First, it provides nearly encyclopedic coverage of private techniques in criminal justice that range from medieval Anglo-Saxon days to contracting out of corrections today. Second, it redirects attention away from social engineering goals like deterrence toward a focus on justice and individual rights and responsibilities."

Gerald Baldasty. E.W. Scripps and the Business of Newspapers. (University of Illinois Press, 1999).
"...Professor Baldasty has done a good job of recounting this history and its importance in 154 pages of text. Carefully annotated and a reaonable index, run the page total to 217. The story he tells is hardly earth shattering, but it is important. Only by understanding the ways in which economic institutions have evolved in the past can we begin to explain the present and predict the future."

H.E. Frech III and Richard D. Miller, Jr. The Productivity of Health Care and Pharmaceuticals: An International Comparison. (The AEI Press, 1999.)
"...The goal of the authors... was "to study the production of health with emphasis on the productivity of pharmaceutical consumption and other health care." In other words, they wanted to assess pharmaceuticals and other components of health care across international lines. 

From the October 1999 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

David C Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg. Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th Century America. (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
"...How a new innovation, invention or technology moves form initial discovery to becoming a major economic influence is not a simple, easily predicted process.... present a convincing argument that insight may be gained if viewed from a macroeconomic, historical perspective......"

George P. Baker and George David Smith. The New Financial Capitalists: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the Creation of Corporate Value. (Cambridge University Press: 1998).
"...Short and easily read, the book is deceptive in its thoroughness. It provides the philosophies and the operating details of one particular kind of financial engineering, describing both its successes and some of its failures. Certainly the operations of all financial engineers are not the same. This book provides a fascinating study of a pioneer and a most successful practitioner of the art....."

Kenneth Froot, editor. The Financing of Catastrophic Risk. (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)
"This is one of the first academic books in a small but rapidly growing trade and academic property-casualty (P/C) reinsurance literature that focuses on catastrophe derivatives and hedging for earthquakes and hurricanes. It is a collection of papers presented at The Financing of Property Casualty Risks Conference... sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Michael Szenberg, editor. Passion and Craft: Economists at Work. (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
"...presents the observations of twenty economists about the profession, work habits and careers....The contributors, most of whom are at about the midpoint of their careers, were selected based on their scholarly awards, positions in professional organizations, citations and diversity."

Edward Perkins. Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-Class Investors. (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
"...It's probably just as likely that most know very little about the history of the firm and its principal founder, Charles Merrill (1885-1956)...this is an interesting read for those seeking a fuller accounting of the history behind Merrill Lynch and, perhaps more crucial, the rise of today's investor class."

Stephen John Nash. Cost, Uncertainty, and Welfare: Frank Knight's Theory of Imperfect Competition.(Ashgate Publishing, 1998)
"...presents a broad survey of Frank Knight's contributions to economic theory... Nash's examination of Knights's work and his controversial argument in drawing from Knight's insights even at the most practical levels of policymaking are certainly an important development in the field of applied economics. Those economists involved in policymaking should especially look at Nash's conclusions and might be interest in many of the issues Knight addressed.

From the July 1999 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

Hugh Schwartz. Rationality Gone Awry? Decisionmaking Inconsistent with Economic and Financial Theory. (Praeger Publishers, 1998).
"...In Rationality Gone Awry? Professor Schwartz makes an important contribution to acquainting economists with the existing foundations of a behavioral theory of economics, particularly, but not exclusively, those originating in psychology. In so doing, he surveys a vast number of studies that provide evidence of specific kinds of departures of the decisions of individuals and firms from the neoclassical prescriptions...."

Michael Jensen. Foundations of Organizational Strategy. (Harvard University Press)
"...Between the covers of this dryly titled and presumably tedious tome is a lively collection of a dozen essays spanning over twenty years of original thinking and outstanding scholarship by one of Harvard's foremost professors. Jensen, with a bit of help from colleagues such as Eugene Fama, Kevin Murphy, and the late William H. Meckling, attacks such diverse issues as the nature of man, the theory of the firm, residual claims and organizational form, agency costs, executive compensation, and organizational performance measurement."

From the April 1999 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

Walter. A. Zelman and Robert Bereson. The Managed Care Blues & How to Cure Them. (Georgetown University Press, 1998)
...While public opinion seems to indicate Americans are suffering from the "managed care blues," the authors believe we can learn to live with them. They do not consider whether turning health care into a real market could be the appropriate antidote."

H. Nejat Seyhun. Investment Intelligence from Insider Trading. (MIT Press, 1998)
"Can insider-trading signals provide valuable investment information? ... The author's answer is that insider trading information is valuable, more valuable that several other valuation measures, and can be used to improve investment returns."

From the January 1999 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

A. Gary Shilling. Deflation. (Lakeview Publishing Company, 1998)
"The book is not a scholarly treatise, but is written in easily understandable terms, with charts and tables that illustrate the points made. Thus, this little book is a handy guide for anyone looking for a provocative statement of why deflation rather than inflation is likely to characterize the years immediately ahead.

Michael Niemira and Gerald Zukowski. Trading the Fundamentals: The Trader's Guide to Interpreting Economic Indicators and Monetary Policy, Revised Edition. (McGraw-Hill, 1998)
"Because of the rapid response of the financial markets to the latest economic data, especially unexpected information, [jobs] require a solid kowledge of the key economic statistics, their rapid interpretation and their significance for investment decisions....The book is aimed primarily at securities traders who must react quickly to economic information as it is reported on their TV screens. However, the book is a useful and an informative refernce text and investment guide for business economists and investors as well.

Thomas Gale Moore. Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry about Global Warming. (Cato Institute, 1998)
"Measurement of costs and benefits is one of the economist's favorite tools. Oddly, however, when it comes to global warming, economists have foucsed only on one side of the ledger: the costs......Moore concludes "...for most people, in most of the world, a warmer world would be a better world..." This is a provocative book that economists will find worth delving into. Read it, then look on the back cover and see if you agree with the three NABE Fellows (Milton Friedman, Paul McCracken and Murray Weidenbaum) who wrote complimentary endorsements about the book."

From the October 1998 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

William Sherden. The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Selling and Buying Predictions. (John Wiley & Sons, 1998)
"If you're a forecaster, the book will help prepare you for arguments you're likely to face. But forecasters aren't treated very sympathetically. Sherden wants to show that virtually all forecasting effort is wasted, and at times it's even dangerous. In general, he presents a strong but, in the end, incomplete case."

Paul Krugman. The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science. (W.W. Norton, 1998)
The Accidental Theorist is a lively account of current economics, with Krugman deflating many popularly held shibboleths on the "new economy," globalization, calling it "globaloney," along with supply-side economics, and corporate downsizing, among others...Krugman writes with joy and humor about a variety of other economic topics and succeeds in dispelling much of the pernicious nonsense in the popular press that passes for reasoned thought.

From the July 1998 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

Harold Vogel. Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
"Since its first introduction in 1986, Vogel's book has been the first place professors sent students who wanted to begin serious study of the industry.....The book is a collection of professionally researched industry studies, complete with bibliographic references and data."

Andrew Caplin, Sewin Chan, Charles Freeman, and Joseph Tracy. Housing Partnerships: A New Approach to a Market at a Crossroads. (MIT Press, 1997)
"Purchasing a home is for many Americans the essence of the American dream. Unfortunately, the dream remains an unattainable dream for many... The authors propose an intriguing solution. they create Partnership Markets that they believe would enable millions more Americans to become home owners and equity investors."

DRI/Mc-Graw-Hill, Standard & Poor's, U.S. Department of Commerce. US Industry & Trade Outlook.
...is the result of a public-private partnership between the Department of Commerce and the McGraw-Hill Companies.... As a ready reference and a useful source of information on a multitude of industries, the Outlook is unsurpassed. It provides a valuable resource for business economists in performing their daily tasks."

From the April 1998 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

Edward Tufte. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (Graphics Press, 1997)
"....In his third book on data presentation and design, Professor Tufte of Yale University vividly demonstates that anyone presenting information should rethink their concepts about how and why information is presented....The book itself is a magnificent work. The design and execution of the text and the accompanying images are stellar, as befits a book about information design."

John Y. Campbell, Andrew W. Lo, and A. Craig MacKinlay. The Econometrics of Financial Markets (Princeton University Press, 1997)
...justly called a "landmark" by some reviewers, is the first survey and exposition of the existing empirical literature presented in the form of a textbook. It represents an impressive intellectual achievement of three highly regarded scholars who themselves made a number of significant contributions to the financial literature."

From the January 1998 Issue- Read the Reviews (pdf format)

Sherry Glied. Chronic Conditions: Why Health Reform Fails. (Harvard University Press, 1997)
".......Glied's analyses of the competing views on health care reform and their economic strengths and weaknesses are interesting and competent. This is an informative book for those who want to learn about the facets of the current health system debate from an economic analyst's standpoint."

Rita Ricardo-Campbell. Resisting Hostile Takeovers: The Case of Gillette. (Praeger Publishers, 1997)
"....is an insider's firsthand narrative of a significant event in contemporary business history- Gillette's successful thwarting of takeovers via tender offer and proxy fight. But it is more. The book takes the reader into the Gillette boardroom and presents the human emotion and drama of corporate economic warfare. For the business economist, there is nothing like it in the literature."

Peter Kennedy. Macroeconomic Essentials for Media Interpretation. ( MIT Press, 1997)
...will interest both educators who teach business students as well as practicing business economists. The book is designed to be used as a text in introdctory economics courses, with the objecctive of helpins students better understand news stories about the economy. In mnay ways, the book is a departure from the traditional way beginning students are introduced to textbook economics."

The opinions here are those of the reviewers and do not represent those of NABE.

National Association for Business Economics
1233 20th Street NW #505
Washington, DC 20036
Phone 202.463.6223 Fax 202.463.6239
nabe@nabe.com
© 2003, NABE®