Tag: Fads

The notion that extending intellectual property rights in the music industry would provide pensions for ageing and impoverished crooners is an engaging fantasy.

Confidence in the models used for risk management in financial institutions is a casualty of the credit crunch. Only information from outside the model – what we call general knowledge and common sense – enable us to judge the validity of the model itself.

There are historic lessons to be learnt from the recent high definition format war: the importance of the installed base and the unpredictability of consumer markets.

Mr Buffett’s success demonstrates the weakness of one economic theory, the efficient market hypothesis, and the strength of another – the central role that the pursuit and defence of economic rents plays in modern corporate life.

Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in England – or in Scotland. What matters is not what is legal tender, but what others will accept.

The analytic mind argues that those promoting incomprehensible financial products or military invasions must either be liars or fools. But neither need be. Beliefs and values that matter are local, not global; subjective, not objective; and to question the prevailing culture is to exclude yourself from the group.

People who hold to a single idea, or a fixed design, generally lose in chess, as they lose in battle, in business and in economics.

There are many ways of interpreting the complexities of published economic statistics, with the result that commentators can find snippets of data to support any story they want to tell.

European companies are increasingly imitating US ones in the cult and remuneration of chief executives. Political organisation may evolve similarly as party membership declines and ideology fades.

The capacity of politics to get in the way of economic growth has dominated most of the economic history of most of the world.