Tag: Value

People have a well evidenced tendency to overestimate their own abilities. This characteristic, common in the population at large, is particularly marked in business and political leaders.

Britain should have a new nuclear power programme, but one which represents the clearest possible break with the past. The structure should be simple, transparent, and have clear lines of ultimate responsibility to the consumers and taxpayers who will ultimately pick up all the bills.

Peter Drucker’s The Concept of the Corporation, and Alfred Sloan’s My Years at General Motors are probably the two most influential management texts ever written. The two had nothing in common but acute intelligence and deep interest in business.

Merger Monday has proved that in the merger market, hope springs eternal. The wall of money chasing alternative investments in hope of the returns achieved in the heady 1990s, made it possible to take almost any company private.

There are two broad models of the process of innovation. Both systems work, though both are imperfect. When science and technology policy is framed, both examples should be held in mind.

‘Make Britain proud. Back the bid’. There is nothing reprehensible about national pride. The role of the economist is not to scorn this desire, but to promote value for money in achieving them. So I propose we begin to measure PPPPP – pride per pound from prestige projects. And in this sense, the $6bn the London Bid is proposing to spend on hosting the Olympics in 2012 is poor value for money in PPPPP terms

The choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee may not matter much to the chooser but it matters a lot to Tweedledum and Tweedledee. While rich diversity may at times seem of little value, it is an axiom of modern economics that we benefit from choice - from products to public services and government.

When observing transport projects such as the tramways being built in Nice or Edinburgh, it seems that where rail transport is concerned, serious cost benefit analysis goes out the window while people are usually commercially hard-nosed in their attitudes to buses. Perhaps there is something psychologically irresistible about vehicles on iron roads, although it is difficult to know exactly what it is.

The paradox of the private equity business today is that although it permits long-termism it encourages short-termism. Companies move between public and private sectors, sweeping money out of pension funds into the hands of managers and advisers at every rotation.

Is the dollar overvalued or undervalued - will it rise or fall this year? The dollar will continue its bumpy ride, but the fundamental reasons why the trend is downward remain in place.