market-economics

Problems of Market Liberalism first appeared as the summer 1998 issue of the journal Social Philosophy and Policy. It is good that such valuable issues are made available to the public, for the quality of this journal over its comparatively short life span has been high, and the present volume is certainly no exception.

Overall, the volume stands on the cutting edge in its combination of academically responsible yet generally down-to-earth analyses. There's plenty to make one think, and plenty to equip the aspiring libertarian with intellectual weapons of a badly needed kind. By all means, read it. It won't be a quick read--it's high-density material--but it will repay the effort.

Product Juggernauts is a book not only for corporate executives or senior management. I am a graduate student with little product development experience. However, the product examples that the authors focused on were very insightful to the course material I have been studying. It had better examples and flowed easier than a book we are using in class, "Revolutionizing Product Development: Quantum Leaps in Speed, Efficiency, and Quality," by Steven C. Wheelwright and Kim B. Clark. This book is a must for anyone wanting to learn more about product development.

I have read several books regarding the stock market, charting and so forth that pretty much left much to be desired. And after the stock market fiasco of 2000 - 2001 where virtually everyone's equity evaporated, many people were left asking themselves, what happened? George Dagnino's book explains the concepts of the business cycle and how all economic factors correlate together. It gives you a clear outlook on how to anticipate market trends, keep an eye on indicators and protect your investment.

Overall, probably THE best book I have ever read on the economy and the stock market.

This book is very easy to follow and explains lots of concepts critical to understanding the stock market. Concepts like: program trading, diversification, mutual funds, risk analysis, random walk theory, how "baskets of stocks" are constructed, hedging - including index future sales, greater fool theory, and much more.

What happened in the stock market "break" of black monday in 1987? Is program trading actually to blame for increased volatility in the markets? How and why are baskets of stocks traded? Why is it so difficult for fund managers to consistently beat the market? Can anyone expect to consistently beat the market? This book gives well documented answers to these questions and many others.

If you're looking for clever tricks to get rich quick, forget this book. It's focus is on the steady accumulation and growth of capital, the approach with by far the highest success rate. Actually, if you think you can outpick the market, you really owe it yourself to read this first. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than being wrong about investment decisions.

For me, reading this was an eye openning experience. The book is solidly based on academic research, and essentially proves that attempts to time the markets and pick the perfect stock are largely futile. In essence, research shows that for every person who timed the market perfectly ten times in a row, someone else timed exactly wrong ten times in a row. The only difference between the two is that the second guy didn't get anybody to come to his seminars.

Good explanations, and a clear presentation of the economics of investing. Combine this with practical advice on building a portfolio for the long haul. Great stuff.

BTW, I made a fair amount of money picking stocks before I read this book. I now realize I was just lucky and any stock picking I do now is just a fun hobby. To make money, I follow the book.

This is a review that was written by Dr. Donald Light in the journal Social Science and Medicine, volume 55 (2002) 2073-2079.

Nancy Milio is an American authority on community health, and her field-based experience comes through in the pages of this articulate book. Though always tactful and helpful, she cannot help but describe the shambles to which public health has been reduced by the decision of employers and government to turn health care over to for-profit corporations. When stockholders are the prime constituency, ''it can confuse the aims of community prevention with those of public relations
and marketing, and impair accuracy of and access to data that are vital to public health assessmenty''(p. 267). Decisions on how goods, services and information are allocated ''place Americans' interests and opportunities as consumers above their rights, responsibilities and actions as citizens'' (p. 272). The situation is so fragmented and primitive (though she would never be so blunt) that she has to recommend that ''public health councils could more effectively guide public health agencies than the many hundreds of tiny boards of health, each with its own limited capacity to carry out even a few of the essential public health services'' (p. 280), and she has to remind her American readers that ''Healthy communities are first healthy places'' (p. 276). How embarrassing to have readers in Scotland, or Costa Rica or India learn how far behind public health organization is in the richest nation that is ready to spend billions on upgrading its military.

Public Health in the Market is divided into four parts and fourteen chapters. Part 1 provides a well-researched overview of the new world which market-based policies have created, in which public monies are privatized. Part 2 assesses the consequent policies. Part 3 lays out Milio's template for policy practice that informs the whole book and her work, and Part 4 provides two in-depth analyses, based on original research, of two contrasting states, as well as the concludingchapters.

Milio's template or model centers on one of those figures with 15-20 factors, combined into general boxes, with arrows going in all directions, that could be critiqued if one wanted to get down to specifics. The accompanyingtext is a mixture of observations about US public health policy since the 1960s and general observations. For example, each policy issue has its own web of participant groups; knowledge of the territory is prerequisite for any serious strategy; changing the beliefs of policymakers is almost impossible. Yet these and other truisms are often ignored by those who try to affect public policy.

The case studies of Arizona and West Virginia are eye-openers. We learn that the richest fifth earn about 13 times more than the poorest fifth, an amazingdeg ree of relative poverty, and that about one-quarter of the children live below the poverty line, an income set low as an emergency household budget. We learn that during World War I, public health officials in Arizona had to go from town to town, trying to persuade residents that they needed to pay for sewer connections. Some refused. By the 1960s, Milio reports, the Arizona State Department of Health had reached a budget of 12 cents per capita. Ironically, the credo of individual rights and unfettered growth have resulted in high rates of violent crime, poverty, unemployment, overcrowded classrooms and communities that are unhealthy places-a fistful of public health problems that cannot be solved with private medical care. Even in the 1990s, the state still lacked the ability even ''to estimate its
investment in the ten essential public health services'' (p. 180). This pair of chapters is full of complex detail about efforts to develop public health programs in the two states.

Milio sees clearly and documents well the effects of competition policy and markets on public health and health care. Cost containment programs have actually worsened access of vulnerable groups to health care. Managed care organizations have no responsibility for or interest in upstream public health causes of patient problems. Any given community is divided into each company's market share, thus carvingup any responsibility for the whole. Vital information for public health programs, once gathered routinely, becomes proprietary. The services and patients that are more profitable get siphoned off, leaving public health centers and programs in budgetary crisis. Large-scale fraud and bankruptcy are not uncommon and throw care into
turmoil, especially for thousands with serious problems.

In any market, there are a few winners and many losers. Overall, this book provides tellingdetail and timehonored insights into a tragedy of our times, enhanced by a wonderful collection of quotations that frame the issues in historical perspective. The book is well edited, indexed and printed by the Press.

A. David Silver has written many business books -- and most present his formulaic approach to evaluating (or starting) companies that have a proprietary advantage in the market place.

If you are going to start a company, or if you are going to invest in a company... you must get one of his books on this subject. This book provides a summary of that formula, and then applies that to stocks in existance at the time of its publication.

You couldn't ask for a better way to learn his method. About 1 year after I had read the book and talked about it to a friend, we went back and saw that his selections had done quite well.

Whether this is a great stock selection method remains to be objectively tested. But I believe his method of analyzing a company based on proprietary hold on a market... to be sound.

In general: buy anything by this author. I do.

John Dunbar

This is a great book! It is incredibly information-packed and focuses on the key information a traveller needs to know, which is crucial in this part of the world where custom may prevent your hosts from letting you know you have made a terrible gaff. The book itself is amazingly compact and small in format - you will feel like you have an encyclopedia at your fingertips, while carrying something small enough that it could be packed in a purse for quick reference checks in any situation.

This book is written like a textbook - starting with the most basic concepts - but moves on to discuss the tools and techniques of market analysis in considerable detail. Separate sections deal with residential, office and industrial, retail, hotels and resorts, and mixed-use developments. Case studies are given for each type of property. Technologies and data sources to assist analysis are discussed.

The two primary authors are a real estate consultant and an author/director of the Urban Land Institute. Many other professionals are listed as having contributed to the case studies.

The book includes an appendix of data sources of use to market analysts, a glossary of real estate terms and a thorough index.

Brilliant economic insight and a unique focus on the human element of banking.