Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages ReviewTechnological Revolutions and Financial Capital by Carlota Perez describes the interaction between the technical innovation and long-term economic cycles. Her book covers many of the same topics as The Innovators Dilemma (Clayton Christensen, Harvard) and Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove, Intel). Professor Perez approaches the subject as an academic economist (University of Sussex, UK), using the early 20th century work of Nikolai Kondratiev on long economic cycles (40-50 years) as a point of departure, whereas Christensen and Grove focus primarily on the near-term (2-5 years) implications of innovation on the individual firm. Her main points are summarized below.
The world has experienced five major technical-economic cycles:
(1)1771 - , The First Industrial Revolution in Britain, based on mechanization of the cotton industry.
(2)1829 - , The Age of Steam and Railways
(3)1875 - , The Age of Steel and Electricity
(4)1908 - , The Age of Oil, the Automobile, and Mass Production
(5)1971 - , The Age of Information and Telecommunications
The starting dates are all approximate and were selected based on some catalytic event or "Big Bang", such as the invention of Intel's first microprocessor in 1971. (Note to a scientist friend: I believe that Prof Perez chose the above dates and events based on their economic impact rather than their scientific impact. Thus, the 5th age could be dated from the invention of the vacuum tube or the radio but these events had less economic impact than the microprocessor. Also, these cycles certainly overlapped, with a new age gathering momentum as its predecessor lost it. Thus, the vacuum tube and radio were key predecessor events leading to the 5th age.)
Each age has followed a rough pattern of four phases:
(1)Irruption: Invention/development of the new technological paradigm, decay of the preceding paradigm, probably in conjunction with economic stagnation and unemployment.
(2)Frenzy: Rapid adoption of the new paradigm and intensive financial investment, often leading to irrational excesses and a financial bubble (e.g., 1998-2000).
(3)Synergy: The rationalization of the new paradigm and renewed economic expansion after a purging of the excesses of the bubble.
(4)Maturity: Market saturation and the gradual exhaustion of the potential of the new technology setting the stage for the next cycle.
Professor Perez also provides a useful description of the roles of financial (investment/portfolio) capital and production (operating) capital and their interaction over the course of the techno-economic cycle.
Economics is not an exact science. (I am a mathematician, not an economist, and suspect some economists might disagree.) One should not expect economic models to provide the same exact predictions as Newtonian mechanics, for example. Economics also suffers the disadvantage of not providing a mechanism for repeating an experiment to verify the results. With these disclaimers, I recommend Professor Perez's book as providing one of the best models available for understanding the long-term relationship between technological innovation and the economic cycle.
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages Overview

Want to learn more information about Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism ReviewThe book consists of roughly two parts. The first is the philosophical foundation of the "theory of reflexivity", with application to financial markets and historical process in general, resulting in the "Open Society" concept. The second is the assessment of the present moment of history and the author's vision of the future of the global financial and political architecture.
The "reflexivity theory", already developed by George Soros in his earlier books (e.g. "The Alchemy of Finance") can be summed up in his own words: "We are part of the world we seek to understand, and our imperfect understanding plays an important role in shaping the events in which we participate." This entails recognition of the fundamental limitations of the social science and our own understanding of society. "It (reflexivity) creates a cleavage between the natural and social sciences and it undermines the postulate on which economic theory has been based: rational behavior in general and rational expectations in particular."
This is a powerful statement indeed. It immediately follows that the future of humankind is not only unknown, or too difficult to predict, but unknowable, because self-awareness and attempts at prediction influence events and change the course of history.This line of reasoning has more immediate application in the financial markets. The widely accepted "efficient market theory" postulates that market participants absorb all available information in an objective and efficient manner, and new information is random and unpredictable relative to previous expectations. If any statistically significant pattern appears in the market data, it should be exploited by many players and will soon disappear. This seems to be similar to the conclusions of the "reflexivity theory". At the first glance the "reflexivity" process can improve market "efficiency" in line with the arguments of the "market fundamentalists" arguments that market processes automatically self-correct any mispricing. Yet this is not what typically happens according to Soros (and his experience and investment track record suggests that his arguments should be taken very seriously). Instead of self-correcting towards the equilibrium, which characterizes many physical phenomena (such as, for example, most types of wave motion), markets form self-reinforcing tendency which moves further away from the equilibrium. This tendency, eventually turning out wrong ("fertile fallacy", and "radical fallibility" in Soros's terms) is supported by several positive-feedback mechanisms.
G. Soros believes that development of the "reflexivity" and "fallibility" concepts should have as profound effect on the thinking of society and historical process, as the Enlightenment and ideas born with French and American revolutions. "It is high time to subject reason, as construed by Enlightenment, to the same kind of critical examination that the Enlightenment inflicted on the dominant external authorities, both divine and temporal. We have now lived in the age of reason for the past two hundred years - long enough to discover that reason has its limitations. We are ready to enter the age Fallibility. The results may be equally exhilarating and, having learned from past experience, we may be able to avoid some of the excesses characteristic of the dawning of a new age."
The remainder of the book deals mainly with the application of these ideas to the current moment in history and the author's vision for the global financial and political structure. This is not an easy task, and the author soon begins to fail his own recipe and the paradigm underlying this vision. To his credit, he never fails to recognize his own fallibility. He speaks at length, and very frankly, about his own investment mistakes and failed predictions. This provides a refreshing contrast with many others who prefer to ignore their failures, or, when they are too evident, spend many pages trying to justify or attribute them to some extraneous factors.
He begins to miss his beat when speaking about the global financial and political architecture. After presenting sharp, well-argued criticism of the present state of the world, his recipes for improvement look disappointingly weak. Essentially it's all about "kinder, gentler" IMF, WB, NATO and other such institutions. His definition of the "Open Society"(that is, the one based on ideas similar to "reflexivity" and "fallibility") eventually looks like nothing more than touched-up version of any liberal democracy today. It is contrasted with "closed societies", based on authoritarian or nationalistic ideas. Well, throughout the human history the strongest military and economic powers always viewed themselves if not perfect, as the only models truly capable of improvement and progress. Every colonial conquest, no matter how destructive and brutal, was based on the ideological support of "bringing civilization to the barbarians" in one or another form. The "Open Society Alliance" proposed by Soros, doesn't look too different from yet another reincarnation of such ideological foundation.
In the model of financial bubbles, which the author described as an application of the "reflexivity theory", the unsustainable booms happen not because skeptical views during the bubble build-up are suppressed by some official censorship, but because even in the presence of critical dissent, the prevailing erroneous consensus become self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. Similarly, the is no reason to believe that, just because of the democratic mechanisms and press freedom, the supposed "Open Society Alliance" will be free from the standard "arrogance of power". Such arrogance and delusion, which often leads to very costly political mistakes, wars or major crises, can happen not just because any other views are suppressed by censorship as in many authoritarian societies. Rather, because of artificial self-perpetuating consensus generated by and propagated through the media and political elite, while maintaining illusion of a genuine vigorous debate by endlessly pouring attention to peripheral issues.
The "fallibility" concept truly deserves serious intellectual attention. Too bad that most likely the "center" of the global system - the richest and most powerful nations - will invariable find it harder to apply these criteria to themselves, as opposed to the rest of the world.Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism Overview

Want to learn more information about Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...