หนังสือแนะนำ: Predictably Irrational และ พฤติกรรมพยากรณ์

Predictably Irrational ที่เขียนโดย Dan Ariely หรือฉบับแปลเป็นภาษาไทยที่เรียกว่า พฤติกรรมพยากรณ์ โดยคุณพูนลาภ อุทัยเลิศอรุณ เป็นหนังสือที่น่าสนใจและอ่านสนุกมากครับ เนื้อหาเกี่ยวกับวิธีตัดสินใจที่ไม่ค่อยมีเหตุผลของคนทั่วๆไป ที่แพร่หลายจนเป็นเรื่องปกติในชีวิตประจำวันของเราครับ นักการตลาดสามารถใช้ความไม่มีเหตุผลของเราเพื่อเพิ่มยอดขายหรือสร้างราคาและตลาดใหม่ๆเต็มไปหมดครับ

อาจารย์ป่านให้หนังสือ Predictably Irrational ผมนานแล้วครับ แต่พึ่งเห็นฉบับแปลภาษาไทยเลยมาพึ่งมาแนะนำ

Dan Ariely มีเว็บไซต์ของเขาด้วยครับ

An Interesting Book: The Big Questions, By Steven E. Landsburg

This is a marvelous book. Steven Landsburg attempted to answer some interesting questions* with ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics! If you have a chance, you should take a look at it--it should provide you with new perspectives on many things, even if you disagree with it.

-----------

*Questions like "Why is there something instead of nothing?", "Where does mathematical knowledge come from?", "How to tell Right from Wrong?", "How not to be a jerk?", etc.

Monkeynomics! :-D

This is super interesting. The talk suggests that our irrational decisions are hardwired in the brain, since monkeys (whose most recent common ancestors we share lived about 35 million years ago), make the same kind of irrational decisions.

(If you have trouble listening to English, there's a transcript on the linked page too.)

An Interesting Piece By Joseph Stiglitz

I stumbled upon "Obama's Ersatz Capitalism" opinion piece by Joseph E. Stiglitz in the New York Times.

Excerpt:

What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership” in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess.

So what is the appeal of a proposal like this? Perhaps it’s the kind of Rube Goldberg device that Wall Street loves — clever, complex and nontransparent, allowing huge transfers of wealth to the financial markets. It has allowed the administration to avoid going back to Congress to ask for the money needed to fix our banks, and it provided a way to avoid nationalization.

It seems that the American taxpayers will be screwed, even with Obama instead of Bush at the helm.

P.S. The New York Times website has a nice feature where you can highlight a word and a question mark will appear. If you click on the question mark, the site will show you the definition of the word. For example, you can highlight "Ersatz" and you will know that it means fake.

Financial Market ~ Ponzi Scheme?

One of my friends told me long ago that if I were to find the most corrupted industry in the world, investment banking would not be too off the mark.

I didn't understand fully the implication of that statement until today when I read Paul Krugman's simple essay.

So, should we pay extra special attention to ministers who came from investment banking background?

The Children Of Iraq

I found this collection of children pictures taken in Iraq. It's a reminder of how the record-breaking profits of oil companies are being achieved.

This war is based on a lie, but the suffering (and the profits) are real.

An Easily Understood Explanation Of The Sub-prime Crisis

From the BBC:

Traditionally, banks have financed their mortgage lending through the deposits they receive from their customers. This has limited the amount of mortgage lending they could do.

In recent years, banks have moved to a new model where they sell on the mortgages to the bond markets. This has made it much easier to fund additional borrowing,

But it has also led to abuses as banks no longer have the incentive to check carefully the mortgages they issue.

Once again, Greed + Stupidty + Bad Assumptions + Carelessness = Major Disaster

More Pornography --> Less Rape?

It does sound plausible to me that the number of rapes would decrease when the potential perpetrators are looking at porn instead of actually committing the crime. Todd D. Kendall, an economist at Clemson University presented a paper that claims exactly that.

I was directed to that paper because I read this article by Steven E. Landsburg, the author of a very entertaining book, The Armchair Economist.

I wonder what the data for Thailand looks like.

There's a criticism of the paper here. An alternative possibility is suggested that the Internet might reduce the number of reported rapes, instead of the number of the crime.

You Too Can Be A Banker!

Banker to the Poor, that is.

Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work advocating lending money to entrepreneurs too poor for traditional bank loans. The Grameen Bank became a prototype for microcredit lending organizations all over the world.

Through the wonder of the Internet, you too can be a banker to the poor entrepreneurs throughout the world. Check out Kiva.org and MicroPlace ("Invest wisely. End Poverty.") I think this is a good thing for the world. Less poverty, more freedom, more education, less chance of being exploited.