5 comments about Applied Computational Economics and Finance.

1. This is one of the few books that covers the topics of numerical methods to solve finance and economics problems. It provides a large number of generic applications.

   Readers that can use Matlab will especially benefit. If so, be sure to get the author's toolbox and see the errata on the author's page.

   There are two other books that might be useful to those interested in this text: Dixit and Pindyck's Investment Under Uncertainty (1994), and Patrick Anderson's Business Economics and Finance (2004) [my book], which cites the Dixit and Miranda texts.

   Readers should be prepared for some math, although it is much more accessible here than in most graduate texts in financial mathematics.




2. I was looking for a book that teaches how to use MATLAB to solve certain finance and economics problems, and purchased this book. The book covers very interesting topics and discusses many types of solution methods. However, the applications to MATLAB are not presented in a user-friendly way. In particular, they do not present things in a step-by-step manner and assume many things. The reader is then left to figure out how to complete programs either from some other part of the book or from prior knowledge. Thus, the book is successful in letting the reader become aware of the capabilities of MATLAB (i.e. what sort of computational techniques the program can do). However, it would havae been best if the authors wrote all the programs with complete codes. They often mention that the code assumes that the reader does this and does that.



3. I bought this book b/c its required for a course I'm taking; my professor is one of the authors. Coding is a pain regardless of how good your instruction is, so I'm hesitant to criticize the book. That said, I didn't love it. However, I've looked at other books and this is by far the most relevant for using MATLAB for econ and finance.



4. This is a really good book in numerical methods. It goes step by step and has exercises you can do while reading the book that help you not only understand the topics and do it yourself, but apply numerical methods to every-day problems.



5. In Economics I often find it difficult to write the codes that replicate the models in many papers. This book is an excellent introduction to computational economics and for actually solving things in Matlab.

5 comments about Why People Buy Things They Don't Need: Understanding and Predicting Consumer Behavior.

1. Because I sell luxury home and gift items, I was drawn to the title of this book. Sometimes that is not always a good indicator of what is inside, but in this case it was dead-on. The book helped me understand what I've seen over the last few years, as well as gave me some insight into where things are heading (and why). I keep talking about the book, and the list of friends and associates who want to borrow the book keeps growing, although I may not want to give it up. Only a few more pages to go....



2. Its an interesting study.
   
   I found that much of the people is a rehash of statistical studies in words. You may as well just look at the mathematical figures rather then read the words.
   
   The other issue is the book was written not long after 911 and its long terms effects were over estimated by the writer.



3. This book is written for marketers.
   
   If you're a consumer, don't fail to read it - especially if you shop too much and save too little!
   
   Delves into the reasons consumers want things and can be manipulated into believing they need them.
   
   - Eric Tyson
   Author of Personal Finance for Dummies and Mind Over Money: Your Path to Wealth and Happiness



4. The comments by others about how the book at time rehashes statistics are true. At times I found myself glossing over pages just because it was number after number. I lost interest.
   
   I also got to the point with the author's repeated fixation on 9/11 that I had to put the book down. Enough is enough. That fixation only revealed to me the fact that the author's insight and point of view is very limited to the current and is United States centric. The author doesn't address a broader global view of wants and have a historical perspective of why people want to help other spot future trends.



5. I thought this was a book to help consumers realize why they buy things they don't need, and thereby stop doing it. But it's the opposite -- it's aimed at helping businesses tap into our buying impulses and sell us MORE stuff! If you're a business looking to raise your sales, you might like this, but it was not at all what I wanted.

3 comments about The Macro Economy Today.

1. This textbook is quite a comprehensive of introductory macroeconomics. Great graphs, well-explained, carefully thought out. The one downside is that it is quite idealistic, as one would expect of a neo-classical economist. The author does not recognize flaws in the theories nor does he acknowledge that the real world is not so cut-and-dry and ordered as we would be led to believe. However, as stated before, this is a wonderful introductory text for anyone who wants to understand the economy today.



2. Although the concepts are presented in a fairly understandable way, they are not tied together well for someone new to macroeconomics. Particularly annoying are the missing variable definitions for formulas. With Barron's as a supplement, it makes more sense.



3. I've just started to try and read this book as part of my MBA, however the book is of terrible production quality. The pages are all out of order, and some are falling out as I turn over the pages. If you have this book mandated as part of a course as I did, you'll just have to live with it, otherwise choose another book that you don't have to hop around in just to get the pages in order.

1 comments about The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America.

1. Thompson's book is not only laudable for its precise intellectual and historical command but for the topic it rejuvenates. The subject of inequality has been extant for as long as human beings have been around from Egypt to Greece to Rome to Imperial Britain to the industrious nation of America. Thompson's analysis traces the ideas and concepts of inequality through to today eloquently and smoothly. His command of literature, history, and ideas on inequality of the times is commendable in and of itself.
   
   However, the paramount reason for this book to deserve praise is the topic it attempts to revive. Inequality among people in a society causes social friction, unrest, disproportionate resources, and leads to eventual degradation and decay of a democratic state, in which the citizens are expected to be equal. Thompson makes the case, soundly, that since the New Deal era of state intervention and the creation of a welfare state, the country's opinions and politics have shifted and reacted against state intervention leading up to present times. The fear of state intervention (possibly linked to the Soviet Union's demise) creates greater inequality as businesses and corporations take advantage of the all but false concept of America's "free market" economy.
   
   This book begins a much-needed discussion on American politics in relation to economics, democracy, history, and our future as a country of equality.

5 comments about Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts.

1. This timely and important book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the India that does not make it onto the covers of coffee table books and glossy magazines. Sainath spent years in the poorest districts in India, attempting to understand how people with absolutely nothing by way of resources manage to eke out a living--one story is about men who transport over 900 pounds of coals on their bicycles, walking marathon-length distances every day, to earn the princely sum of 10 Indian Rupees (25 cents) per day.

   Sainath is the most irreverent and committed journalist in India today. His stories, written for the Times of India, are full of pathos, but also of optimism--optimism born of his discovery that the poor in India are organizing to fight for their rights, have maintained a sense of dignity, and continue to live their lives against the most difficult odds.

   The stories of government mismanagement of funds earmarked for rural uplift are perhaps not surprising, but for many, the stories of the venality of corporations and the tales of institutions like the Army running roughshod over the rights of hundreds of millions of India might just open eyes that were glued shut to the injustices prevalent in the Indian social matrix. The stories of India's 80 million tribal and indigenous people, Adivasis, are heart wrenching and fantastic--such stories cannot be found in mainstream publications.

   Sainath has done an enormous and important task here: I recommend this book to everyone.




2. Sainath's book provides vignettes of soul-destroying poverty and degradation in the poorest states in India. It is an attempt to correct the `event' approach which the majority of the media takes to India's ills, which tends to view India's problems simplistically as singular aberrations, rather than taking a broader `process' approach, which looks to less immediate causes. His writing is angry and passionate, but always clear.

   What certainly comes through in Sainath's book is the incredible arrogance of much of the Indian administration. Save a few isolated cases, the examples of the arrogant official class are myriad - the official insistence that they know better than the very natives who had lived in an area for years; the mass sterilisation of perfectly good cattle, already adapted to the environment, in order to make way for a so-called "super cattle", which turns out to be useless; or the mass uprooting of millions of people to make way for useless dams, now brought to the attention of the West through the thankless activism of Arundhati Roy (the author of the God of Small Things). A consistent theme running through Sainath's reporting is a lack of honest and sincere consultation with the very people the `reforms' are supposed to help.

   There are hopeful stories too - like the story of women's collectives. Sainath tells of how groups of women have gotten together and formed organised labour, and which do a better, more efficient work than the more `sophisticated' industries and companies. Indeed, industries come across as monopolies only interested in maintaining their corner of the market, and more than willing to resort to nasty tricks in order to maintain their dominance (for instance, creating rival groups to undermine the administration's trust in such organised groups, social ostracism, even physical abuse). Corrupt officials don't help these collectives' chances either - since the collectives' cheaper and more efficient labour threaten the kickbacks the officials get from the industries.

   The Indian middle class are also chastised by Sainath. Like their Western counterparts, they require a diet of horror stories to grab their attention. Hence, stories are often reported as ahistorical events, rather than dealing honestly with the process which led to the `event' in question. More than this, the middle classes have become so numbed to the poverty of the majority, that they require exceptional suffering to warrant their time - thus, there are reports of `epidemics' and `droughts' which are often exaggerations or mistruths.

   After a while, I felt myself becoming numbed by the stories. There were simply too many tales of woe. This isn't really a complaint about Sainath's reporting, but maybe more of a plea for longer, more detailed stories from him. But this is the nature of his book, which is essentially a compilation of newspaper articles. Although Sainath makes a plea in his book for a view of Indian poverty as process rather than event, sometimes I felt his stories were too short to support the process approach he himself advocates. Still, this should not stop any reader interested in India from reading this book. It is a shocking indictment of the India that should have been.

   A standard criticism of works like Sainath's would be that it is merely critical, and doesn't provide any answers. How can one learn from the mistakes of one's predecessors? The impression I got from Sainath was that the best that could be done is more consultation, more historical awareness, more backup studies, more studies of the actual effects of the reform process itself on the environment and the people actually involved, and so on. It's not a particularly innovative conclusion, but it's probably realistic.




3. Anyone who has been to India can be a real pooper at any party by just telling a few road-tales from the subcontinent. But even the most hardcore traveller should marvel at what Indian journalist P. Sainath reveals. Palm Tree-climbers, bicycle-wallahs, well just about anyone outside the outlawed (!)caste-system living on 20 rupees a day could testify, could they only read. Just one thing, the teachers' associations are being favoured by Indian politicians because the profession has a monopoly on counting the ballots in elections. Hence they are a privileged group not to be messed with. Are things really that bad in India? Goittagertbackktacheckiteout!!



4. With the recent hype of globalization and the changes transpiring in India, the myth that poverty has been eradicated, or is at least receding in India has pervaded the media. P Sainath takes this illusion head on and dispels it in this compelling account of the realities of rural poverty in India. Gritty, no-nonsense, Sainath avoids sensationalism and sticks to the facts through well-researched accounts of the living conditions of what is, in truth, a majority of Indians. Over 600 million people still live below the poverty line in India(depending on what source one uses for defining poverty) and Sainath, through years of work in the field, details their plight. He brings to light that hunger is but a single element of poverty--one might meet the minimum caloric intake to be considered "above the poverty line", while in truth living in a state of real poverty. Having had the opportunity to hear him speak live, I can say with the confidence that the book conveys his firebrand approach to the issues; with passion and verve he relates his tales of woe with critical insight and uncompromising integrity.
   
   If this book has a weakness, it is in its repetition of account upon account of despair without offering potential solutions to alleviate the crisis. A great companion book to this excellent work would be Abraham George's "India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty", which examines the crisis of poverty and offers realistic and pratical solutions that have been implemented.



5. Mr. Sainath captures the plight, hopes, and loss in rural villages in India. Farmers are committing suicide at an unprecedented rate. People are trying to adjust but hope is lost. As I regularly network with friends in the Telangana, I can honestly say that farmer suicide is a huge issue and a tragedy. Yet we still seem to move resources to the wealthy rather than address the serious issues in rural areas of the world. Even in the US, if we fully understood the tragedy of the destruction of the family farm, we would learn that here too loss leads to suicide. Despair and loss of hope is a horrible thing.
   
   Read this compelling study into a problem happening all over the world. If you get a chance to hear Mr. Sainath speak, make sure you do not miss it. He is fantastic. One of the great investigative reporters in Indian.

5 comments about Macroeconomics (Addison-Wesley Series in Economics).

1. This book makes me feel like I am studing macroeconomics. I could not find any book in the library that is as comprehensive and detailed like this publication. An invaluable text for undergraduate economics majors dying to understand the economy and enonomic policies. A marvellous book I will treasure.



2. The book is a favorite at the University of Chicago, an institution that has produced 20 Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics. You couldn't ask for a better recommendation.



3. I have the good fortune of studying under Prof. Abel at The Wharton School. Of course, we use this book as our required text! The book is excellent, and is very easy to understand. A good introduction for the layperson interested in the macro economy.



4. I have the good fortune of studying under Prof. Abel at The Wharton School. Of course, we use this book as our required text! The book is excellent, and is very easy to understand. A good introduction for the layperson interested in the macro economy.



5. This book was required for my intermediate macroeconomics course at Cornell University. I found the book to be very confusing, especially on the more technical topics such as the Solow growth model. I give Abel and Bernanke credit for trying to develop a unified, balanced approach to macro... which they do; unfortunately, the exposition is not clear and the book is extremely wordy and not concise. I highly recommend N. Gregory Mankiw's Macroeconomics text instead.

3 comments about The Economics of Risk and Time.

1. Gollier has written a book that not many others could have written. It is VERY complete, it is full of deep insights, and, for me, it is a pleasure to read. Don't be mistaken: this is a research book, not a textbook. But for those of us doing research in decision theory, general equilibrium, finance, or macroeconomics, it is simply a must. How could you afford NOT to buy it?



2. Amazing book connecting all the dots you know in asset pricing, macro, general equil'um, etc. You come out of it refreshed, feeling you are a different person.



3. This book presents an excellent summary of the toolbox that students and professionals must manage in order to understand the numberless amount of modern contributions on asset pricing. All recent advances in the use of risk and uncertainty are presented with simple and direct language, and without useless mathematical sophistication. A needed help for asset pricing courses intended to graduate students.

No comments about Culture And Consumption II: Markets, Meaning, And Brand Management.

5 comments about A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

1. To say you are an America is to say that you are, de facto, a consumer.

   This word is a defining aspect of our American world... Consumerism covers daily life, whether it be drug discounts, tourism, marketers, insurance, cars, homes, technology or just plain old product reviews. We Americans are defined by our consumption.
   
   Lizabeth Cohen has given us a thoroughly researched, readable history on consumerism, and how it came to be such a force and part of our lives in America. She argues that after WWII the "Consumer Republic" was launched, full force, affecting life styles, government and even belief systems. Though the beginning of a consumers movement had occurred before 1940, the "Consumer Republic" took form and force after the second world war.

   Cohen's writing style is informative, to the point of being academic. "A Consumers' Republic" is a history book. Thus, it may be a bit more pedantic than most general readers would like.

   I found a few omissions that distracted from the overall excellence of the book. One being that Cohen does not investigate how consumerism has been incorporated into, and seriously affected, American Christianity. She does not address how Christianity, especially considering the `Protestant work ethic', helped to shaped and drive consumerism into being. She does not explore `why' Americans live to consume, "shop til they drop." Neither does she reflect on the effects that unbridled consumption have on both the social fabric of our nation or the ecological impact on our land.

   That said, this book is a "need to read" for students of American history, marketing, those involved as consumer activists, and business. Recommended. 3.5 stars




2. Lizabeth Cohen's "A Consumers' Republic" does much to explain how citizenship has been significantly redefined by consumerism in postwar America. The thoroughly readable book is full of insights and should interest all readers of 20th century American history. It will also prompt many to ponder how America might try to heal its frayed society while there is time available to do so.

   In the Acknowledgements, Ms. Cohen explains that this impressive book was written over the course of ten years. Her thesis profited from audience feedback at numerous college lectures and presentations she made during this time and with able assistance from a number of talented student researchers. With over 400 pages of text and 100 pages of notes, the book represents a remarkable achievement and is a testament to Ms. Cohen's intelligent use of the academic research process.

   Ms. Cohen is in top form when she chronicles the struggles of women and African-Americans to assert their rights in what she calls the "Consumers' Republic" of 1945 to 1975. The author provides background material by documenting how a variety of bread-and-butter consumer issues mobilized millions into action from the Depression through WWII. Ms. Cohen then shows how power gained by women and minorities through their contributions to the war effort later found expression in the Civil Rights, women's liberation and other movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

   However, Ms. Cohen explains that policy makers in the aftermath of WWII were influenced and corrupted by, among other things, unparalleled levels of corporate power and ideological rivalry with the Soviet Union. Mass consumption was seen as a solution to help keep manufacturing profits high and was propagandized in order prove to the world that the U.S. was practically a classless society. The reality was different, of course. The author discusses how racial, gender and class biases were reaffirmed and institutionalized by the GI Bill and other legislative acts. As a result of Ms. Cohen's extraordinary research, the reader comes to understand that the increasingly stratified post-WWII American society that resulted was not inevitable but was shaped by powerful interests who privileged private sector solutions at the expense of the public.

   In my view, the only shortcomings in this ambitious book are Ms. Cohen's failure to discuss the environmental consequences of consumerism and her omission of the student revolt against the military/industrial complex in the 1960s. But overall, these are minor quibbles. "A Consumers' Republic" delivers plenty of thought-provoking material and is a pleasure to read. The book is highly recommended to everyone who might want to gain perspective on contemporary American society and further consider where it might be headed.




3. The above quote from the book reveals its fundamental problem. Consumerism is stretched to include (for example) racial equality, housing policy, and politics: this dulls any edge the concept might have as an analytic tool. What is a consumer? We're told "the word's original meaning" - - "to devour, waste and spend" - - but not its current one. The author tries to distinguish between the "citizen consumer" and "purchaser consumer". The supposed dichotomy between these roles was no more obvious to me than to those consumer advocates who - - to the author's apparent surprise - - "found it possible to endorse both simultaneously".
   
   So the book is a kind of grab bag of the USA's post-war social problems, often using the author's home state as an example. At times, she seems on the verge of dissecting New Jersey as Mike Davis does Los Angeles (high praise from me), but never quite sustains such a level. For example, there's a fascinating account of how policies of "upzoning" were used to create homogeneous suburbs of large, expensive, detached houses. But when explaining how this led to racial polarization - - in an era of supposed desegregration - - she can only show us the 'after' map, not the 'before'. However, the use of photos, advertisements, and newspaper cartoons is exemplary: often amusing, sometimes shocking.
   
   Towards the end of the book, the author finds it necessary to expand the concept of "consumer" to "consumer/citizen", and finally to "consumer/citizen/taxpayer/voter": a clear sign of a dead end. On the final page, her vision is vague and feeble: we "could reinvigorate the liberating aspects of the purchaser" and "could seek to reverse the trend toward the Consumerization of the Republic by not shrinking from articulating the important things that only government can do". Hardly a programme of action. But maybe that's too much to expect.



4. I defer to the thorough review titled "Consumption and Greed" below for a synopsis of this book.
   
   The subject matter of "A Consumers' Republic" is engrossing and the book reveals many truths that are now forgotten and swept under the rug. Cohen uses an impressive plethora of examples to demonstrate her points, and in the end I know much more about the United States' economic and social history from the 30's to the present.
   
   Unfortuntately, Cohen's writing often becomes convoluted and difficult to read due to frequent lengthy and difficult to follow sentences. While reading, many times I had to re-read a sentence or paragraph in order to grasp the author's intent. A few times I even wanted to put the book down and pick up a less academic book - perhaps some fiction - to give my eyes and brain a break. Much of the book is well written and flows well, but these occasional roadblocks require determination to get through and prove frustrating. However, having finished this yesterday, I'm happy I persevered. The incredible amount of research and well thought out and supported thesis' are worth five stars, but the writing brings it down to four stars.



5. "A Consumers' Republic" is one of those kinds of books that exists on the premise that it illuminates some previously unknown phenomenon. The book purports to be a "bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book." I humbly propose that this book is none of the above. "A Consumers' Republic" is certainly not a "bold" book. Quite tepidly, actually, the author makes a weak case that is essentially a rehashing (and a mediocre one at that) of mainstream academic criticisms of popular market culture. Certianly nothing new, the ideas lamely presented by this author were actually prefigured by a factor of centuries by actual scholars such as Smith, Marx, and de Toqueville. Not bold for sure, but also lacking nuance; "A Consumers' Republic" condescends to its readers and its subjects alike. And is this book "profoundly influential," as the jacket pompously asserts? I hope not.

2 comments about Microfoundations of Financial Economics: An Introduction to General Equilibrium Asset Pricing (Princeton Series in Finance).

1. This is not meant to be a textbook though there are some exercises following each chapter. The book is very easy to read and must be read as an uptodate introduction to General Equilibrium models and asset pricing as used in Financial Economics, Macro Economics etc. The ideas are developed without resorting to anything more than undergraduate level Linear Algebra, Optimization and Microeconomics. Reading this book has helped to put into perspective the financial economic theory learned over several courses and levels. The book should be compulsory reading for Graduate and Doctoral students.



2. In my quest to read as many books on financial economics as possible, I came across this one from Lengwiler. I have a relatively modest math background, so I appreciate Lengwiler's approach. The book is heavy on intuition, rarely resorting to econ-math jargon (though without warning, it occasionally does so). For me, this has been a valuable supplement not only to LeRoy and Werner Principles of Financial Economics but also to Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green's Microeconomic Theory. It offers straightforward explanations of mathematical concepts in ways that are often missing from the canonical texts.