Why Our Micro-Decisions are So Important

This is an excellent lecture of almost 50 minutes from Douglas Rushkoff, an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. He teaches media studies at the New School University, serves as technology columnist for The Daily Beast, and lectures around the world. In an epic lecture,he begins by providing a quick historical perspective on the creation of financial markets starting around 1600 to present, talks about way financial markets have reached their historical zenith and then ranges from why he fears America will not rise again to why our personal micro-decisions wil now be so important.

The Road to China: Fresh Insights into the World's Fastest-growing Economy From Wharton

Earlier this year, Harbir Singh, Wharton’s vice-dean for Global Initiatives, launched a series of trips to foreign countries as a way for faculty to gain a deeper understanding of international economies and then use this knowledge in their teaching and research. Six professors recently visited the Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and met with executives from Lenovo, Haier and Huawei, among other companies. Knowledge@Wharton asked three of the participants – Singh, management professor Saikat Chaudhuri and health care management professor Lawton R. Burns – to share insights from their trip. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

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Content is No Longer King

Stephen Shapiro is a business writer who has earnt a living in the traditional manner associated with consultants. He has written two books to support his innovation consultancy. No difference to the norm here! However his blog "Content is No Longer King" is about his journey of discovery seeking to understand who makes profits from his writing now Amazon's Kindle threatens to revolutionise book publishing and distribution by taking his books on-line. Shapiro demonstrates clearly in this article that we are repeating the business models of old - business models stretching back to the turn of the 20th century to the Tin Pan Alley days when popular sheet music was first introduced to the masses. The profit takers in those days were the entrepreneur distributors who travelled door to door selling the sheet music - not the songwriters. The only difference now is the distribution method rather than being human is on-line and once it gets on-line there is almost no cost to the distributor!!

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Keynesian Economics and Its Importance in Understanding the GFC

The importance of how we might understand what has occurred with the Global Financial Crisis is wonderfully summed up in this essay on The General Theory, the title of Keynes economic opus written just after the depression

Ending the Illusion of Control: Let’s Kick This Bad Forecasting Habit, Spyros Makridakis, Robin M Hogarth & Anil Gaba

Many reputable institutions issue regular economic forecasts that are widely cited in the international press. And yet, how accurate are these forecasts? Should we really trust them? In April 2008, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that global economic growth would slow to 3.7 percent in 2008, and remain broadly unchanged in 2009. In addition, it predicted that the U.S. economy would tip into a mild recession in 2008 as a result of mutually reinforcing cycles in the housing and financial markets, before starting a modest recovery in 2009. In October 2008, the IMF stated that the world economy was entering a major downturn and that economic growth would slow substantially in 2009 with a modest recovery to begin only later in the year. In January, 2009 the growth forecast was cut to 0.5%. In February it was further reduced to 0.0%. And in March it slid into the negative for the first time since the 1940s.

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