market-economics Books

"Innovate or Perish" is an astute look at the long-term benefits of a rising IP-centric manufacturing base in East Asia. It highlights the good news and eschews the prevalent hysteria over China, while providing down to earth wisdom on balanced patent strategies for a fast-changing global tech economy.

Soumodip Sarkar (Indian economist, former consultant and university professor in Management), one of Europe's leading researchers in entrepreneurship and innovation, has managed to produce an intuitive yet rigorous account of basically all the concepts and relationships that matter for the study and practice of innovation. Newcomers to the field will greatly appreciate the first third of the book, where much of the jargon surrounding the study, practice and politics of innovation is decodified and explained, and all important definitions and their implications are presented to the reader. But for researchers and those initiating the complex analysis of innovation phenomena, it is the second third of the book that delivers. Drawing upon such different schools of thought as Strategic Management, Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Sarkar proposes a a new, unified theoretical framework within
which to examine the dynamic relationships between competitive pressure, market archetypes, product differentiation and innovation outcomes. In the last third of the book, the author ilustrates the soundness and usefulness of his integrated framework by employing it in the analysis of selected corporate developments (Lego, Barbie, Apple's I-Pod, Netscape, Ikea, to mention but a few) and widely recognisable phenomena like customisation, product life-cycle, disruptive technologies and technology adoption. Much to the practitioners' appreciation, he also discusses in detail what for and how the framework's insights can be employed (including diagnostic tools, metrics and so on) in the Strategic Management of everyday corporate life. Finally, he highlights other areas in which the framework could be applied and which are worthy of further investigation - open innovation and organizational management, for instance.
This book is informative, accurate, up-to-date, easy to read and often downright witty and fun. It provides a significant contribution to the progress of our understanding and practice of innvation, and blessfully bridges the gap between the different disciplines that have tried, in their separate ways, to explain the connection between the determinants, practices and outcomes of innovation.
It is a pitty that figures are, at times not as clear and self-explanatory as they could be, and that the supporting text often does not contribute to clarify matters as it should. I also noticed the existence of many typos and other editorial mistakes. However, none of this is enough to really obscure the rigour, quality, pertinence and straightfowardness of the matters here presented. I hope that these drawbacks can be corrected in upcoming editions of this book and look foward to further theoretical and empirical expansions of the integrated innovation framework proposed. I am quite sure I won't be alone in this!

My dad wrote this book and its great!

Steven Drobny delivers a treasure trove of useful information in a very readable and user-friendly format. The book focuses on Global Macro hedge funds, providing a history starting with GM pioneer John Maynard Keynes to the mega funds run by Soros and Robertson, to the 21st century evolution of the leaner funds and their tactics. After describing the function and history of Global Macro, Mr. Drobny takes us deep into the minds of the operators themselves with over a dozen fascinating interviews.

For those who are new to the subject, Global Macro is basically a fund whose approach allows them to act nimbly in any global market using any class of asset including stocks, bonds, currency, and commodities. These funds employ a wide variety of hedging and arbitrage strategies using complex combinations of assets, and constantly seek out anomalies in any market that can offer superior returns.

I particularly liked the interview with Jim Leitner who has a very personal and unorthodox style that is hard not to marvel at. Jim offers this definition of GM, "The willingness to opportunistically look at every idea that comes along, from micro situations to country-specific situations, across every asset category and every country in the world. Its the combination of a broad top-down country analysis with a bottom-up micro analysis of companies. In many cases, after we make our country decisions, we then drill down and analyze the companies in the sectors that should do well in light of our macro view....Macro themes expressed in a micro style. Global Macro only means that you start at the top and work your way down." Jim also says that if there was only one thing he could ever read before choosing investments, it would be "The Economist".

If you are curious about hedge funds you will find this glimpse into the rarefied world of Global Macro a real eye opener. If you are an investor or investment professional, the book is loaded with gems of trading strategy. There are many great charts throughout the book, but it is not bogged down with heavy math. The format is similar to the Market Wizard books and there is something for everyone here. The main difference between this new edition and the 2006 is the addition of 2 new appendixes by Dr. Lee R Thomas III: "The Crash of '08"; and "Who Controls Liquidity?". Enjoy.

Modern technology and the internet have made securities trading available 24 hours a day, every day, around the world. The three biggest securities markets (Tokyo, New York, London) trade world securities with one market closed and another open all around the clock. This has proved both a boon and bane to individual investors and has increased the problems of insider trading in recent years. Insider Trading And The Twenty-Four Hour Securities Market discusses the problems of transnational insider trading, legal systems traders can employ to avoid sanctions for a particular country, and whether or not the global financial community should prohibit insider trading. Shen-Shen Lu concludes by offer a proposal to resolve transnational insider trading problems that is both thoughtful and persuasive. Insider Trading And The Twenty-Four Hour Securities Market is "must" reading for investors, fund managers, policy makers, financial community authorities, and regulatory staff.

This book is a perfect blueprint with step-by-step instructions on how to go about writing, publishing, and marketing your very own online book/ebook creation. I've been searching for and purchasing books and courses that promised such services, but they all fell short. Well, this one truly delivers and then some!

I was feeling overwhelmed, confused, and unsure what to do next until I found Shaun Fawcett's resources, and now I am completely certain that if I follow his well thought out and tried and tested plan, I can and will achieve the same success that he has.

His integrity and wisdom shine through. This is for sure the best 47 bucks I've invested since the beginning of my book-writing endeavor. Do yourself a favor and buy this book! Thank you, Shaun, for producing such a long overdue and invaluable tool!

This book offers a widespread explanation of China's successful rural industrial development and contains all relevant informations about the township and village enterprises. What must be emphasized is that it is not only a theoretical analysis but is enriched with invaluable insights and numerous data upraised by field research, containing the motivation of Chinese rural leaders as well as "entrepreneurs" in China's rural areas which were responsible for that impressive growth. To understand China's growth reading this book is a necessity.

This is a very well written book about social innovation and social research.
The roots of social innovation are clearly exposed and the reader is gradually led to understand the origins and development of the most recent trends and approaches to social innovation and its practical grounds.
The authors propose an integral approach (architecture of social innovation) in which researchers with different epistemologycal perspectives (rationalism, holism, pragmatism and humanism) contribute during the distinct paths of social research to knowledge creation relevant to social cultures.
This book is extremely useful to understand how social research can become an important source for social development.

This book's primary audience consists of SAP consultants and IT business systems analysts, and the ideal secondary audience should consist of business process owners in an R/3 environment, IT managers in all functional areas who are involved with developing, implementing and supporting supply chain and extended logistics solutions.

The theme is logistics management, using SAP, in an extended supply chain or a corporate hub and their vendors. There are three key sub themes in the book: (1) an explanation of the business benefits of extending buyer-seller systems in an extended supply chain (with an emphasis on using the Internet as the communications infrastructure), (2) specifics on how to accomplish this using SAP, and (3) evidence that it can be done.

I like the practical approach taken by the authors - instead of succumbing to the temptation to careen off into blue sky solutions, they stick with what can be done in the here and now. Although it's almost blasphemy to discuss EDI when everyone else seems to be hyping web services and other approaches and solutions that are relatively new, the authors show the strengths and weaknesses of this proven approach. They also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of XML, although ebXML is curiously missing. The reason its absence is so curious is that the EC appears to be wholeheartedly embracing it, and this book has a distinct European bias, especially in the chosen case studies.

More importantly, though, this book goes into the details SAP's internet components and how they relate to other modules that support logistics and supply chain management for an enterprise. The details go well beyond technology - this book gives equal treatment to business and technical issues, and that is one of the reasons why it's so valuable to the primary and secondary audiences I cited above. Although I thought ebXML should have been covered in depth, I found this book to be complete and to realistically cover the topic's key issues.

The current Wall Street economic melt down underscores the value of investing in art as an alternative to stocks and bonds. James Goodwin draws upon his many years of experience and expertise in "The International Art Markets: The Essential Guide For Collectors And Investors", a project for which he serves as the consultant editor and compiling informed and informative contributions by fifty-eight of the finest minds working in the field today. Each alphabetically arranged chapter showcases the international art markets of different countries and areas around the world from Sub-Saharan Africa, Argentina, and Australia, to The United Kingdom, The United States, and Venezuela. Included are the art shows and fairs, galleries and museums, auctions and art market histories of the various nations. Packed with relevant and useful information, "The International Art Markets" is strongly recommended reading for anyone seeking to engage in the buying and/or selling of art internationally, as an invaluable reference for art dealers, art collectors, and art investors, as well as a core and seminal addition to academic and community library reference collections.