Attention Economy


Monday, January 30, 2012

Sunday, January 29, 2012

The Great Economic Shift

FT report from Davos:
http://video.ft.com/v/1419125318001/The-great-economic-shift


Meanwhile,

Tom Friedman of NYTIMES makes an interesting point:
“Politicians see the world as blocs of voters living in specific geographies — and they see their job as maximizing the economic benefits for the voters in their geography. Many C.E.O.’s, though, increasingly see the world as a place where their products can be made anywhere through global supply chains …”

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Why Aren’t There More Engineers?

NYTIMES reporter Catherine Rampell makes the following point (backed by some good data):
“So maybe students intending to major in STEM fields are changing their minds because those curriculums require more work, or because they’re scared off by the lower grades, or a combination of the two. Either way, it’s sort of discouraging when you consider that these requirements are intimidating enough to persuade students to forgo the additional earnings they are likely to get as engineers. There’s another way to read these findings, though. Perhaps the higher wages earned by engineers reflect not only what they learn but also which students are likely to choose those majors in the first place and stay with them.”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Hungarian Lessons

Why Currency Devaluation Is Not Always the Answer

As noted in the NYTIMES article:
“But economists and business people say the advantages of a weak currency are more than canceled out by negative factors, like soaring prices for imported fuel or imported components for Hungarian factories, not to mention higher payments on foreign currency loans.”

Highest Per Capita Income

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Groupthink

The obsession in business schools and corporations with group exercises/activities may have gone too far.
As Susan Cain notes in the NYTIMES:
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
...
But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers.”