Category Archives: business economics

High-impact geeks

Posted on April 6, 2019 by Arnold Kling

Tyler Cowen quotes from Clive Thompson’s new book on high-impact geeks. The 10Xers he [Marc Andreessen] has known also tend to be “systems thinkers,” insatiably curious about every part of the technology stack, from the way currents flow in computer … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, business economics, Tyler Cowen is my Favorite Blogger | 11 Comments

What is a firm? an organizational culture

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Arnold Kling

I just received a review copy of Tyler Cowen’s latest, Big Business, which will be released in a week. As is my habit, I started reading it from the outside in, and I quickly landed on the appendix, in which … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, business economics, Tyler Cowen is my Favorite Blogger | Tagged , | 8 Comments

The West was lucky to win

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Arnold Kling

I have been delving into J.S. Sharman’s Empires of the Weak, which argues that the story we tell of the triumph of the West as inevitable is quite misleading. In general, he questions the assumption that competition will automatically strengthen … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, business economics, Economic History | 16 Comments

Mom-and-Pops have not died?

Posted on March 2, 2019 by Arnold Kling

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Pierre-Daniel Sarte, and Nicholas Trachter write, When Walmart enters, the total number of establishments in the ZIP code increases, though by less than one-to-one (about 3/4). In other words, Walmart generates some exit, but the net result of … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics | 10 Comments

Start-ups and hardship

Posted on January 21, 2019 by Arnold Kling

Handle, who has been on a comment roll in recent weeks, wrote it’s easy for kids to make and keep close – sometimes lifelong – friends when they see the same other kids at school, church, sports, and around the … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics, culture | 10 Comments

No such thing as a free ledger

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Arnold Kling

1. Joseph Abadi and Markus Brunnermeier write, A centralized ledger writer extracts rents due to its monopoly on the ledger. Its franchise value dynamically incentivizes honest reporting. Decentralized ledgers provide static incentives for honesty through computationally expensive Proof-of-Work algorithms Thanks … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics | 10 Comments

Tyler, Marc, and Ben

Posted on January 2, 2019 by Arnold Kling

That is, Cowen, Andreessen, and Horowitz, in a 40-minute podcast. I chose to annotate it. Annotating is, like writing a book review, a way for me to absorb the material. Some excerpts from my essay: 1. As far as I … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics, Growth Causes and Consequences, technology and the future, Tyler Cowen is my Favorite Blogger | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Klassic: the two systems people work under

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Arnold Kling

A reader suggested an old blog post on two systems. In the business system, your status comes from market acceptance. If the market likes your offering, you have high status. To hold onto that status, you must deal with competition. … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics, links to my essays | 9 Comments

Mariana Mazzucato

Posted on December 29, 2018 by Arnold Kling

I found myself frustrated by her conversation with Russ Roberts. She repeatedly points out that government has funded successful innovations. The implication, in her view, is that we should pay higher taxes in order to fund more innovation. But the … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics, links to my essays | 10 Comments

Paul Romer on management

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Arnold Kling

From the conversation with Tyler Cowen. the typical situation of an IT team or a research unit in a place like the bank is that there’s this almost unlimited set of requests you get, of which you can process only … Continue reading →

Posted in business economics | 6 Comments