Reviews and Comments

While many modern economists push back against the idea that one can make money from projecting forward past market trends (which Lo and Hasanhodzic push back against in later chapters), given market frictions in the past this was much more plausible. Commodity prices could take weeks or months to propagate to other regions, making prediction profitable and immensely challenging. This book charts the mystical roots of these predictions in early history, moving towards more data-driven and accurate approaches developed in Japan and a few other areas in more recent centuries.

The tight coupling of technological changes with new methods of technical analysis is generally instructive, having implications for many other industries and practices that rely on arbitrage, market power, or gut instinct to drive decisions. Highly recommend

If you want to gain a good, introductory level understanding of the economic underpinnings of different types of auctions this is the book. Hubbard and Paarsch distill volumes of research into methodical examinations of optimality and strategies in different auction types, when these types of auctions are useful, and what factors tend to influence their outcomes. If there's a gap here it's in the sidelining of psychology and irrationality that humans exhibit. There is some discussion of that when considering auction types whose rules are too complex, but I would've liked to see that get a bit more coverage.

That being said, auctions are an essential economic structure that influences many areas of business and society today. I highly recommend this book as a solid first step into understanding them

Friedman has compiled an impressive review of the history of US business, including excellent although fairly brief acknowledgements of the centrality of Native Americans and slavery in building the US into the economic power it is today. I was hoping for more examination of the roots of different business practices, and while they are mentioned here - stock-based acquisitions, organizational hierarchies, franchising, etc. - as with most things in this book it's quickly on to the next event.

Obviously the title says it all - "a very short introduction." For research and reference purposes this book is excellent, but don't expect to come out with deep insight into the evolution of American business.

When it comes to the promise and perils of workplace surveillance and automation, long distance trucking is the canary in the coal mine. Uniquely positioned as a highly regulated, supposedly easily quantifiable workplace, the mandated rollout of electronic logging devices in trucks has significantly transformed the industry. Through rigorous ethnographic analysis Levy pulls open the curtain on this critical but oft-overlooked industry, exposing the issues with technological solutionism and the problems with focusing workplace measurement and improvements on the easy to measure rather than more systemic issues.

For folks in the people analytics field especially this is required reading, as long distance trucking almost certainly makes these more systemic problems easier to detect than in most other workplaces. While I would've liked a bit more economic analysis here, overall I highly recommend this book

As humans, we like to think that we're radically different than other animals. When it comes to our closest living relatives, however, it is often quite challenging to articulate our precise differences. Tomasello dives into the vast pool of fascinating experimental academic research in this area, taking us through stages of human and ape cognitive, social, and cultural development through childhood to illuminate uniquely human traits and their importance is our rise to global dominance.

Tomasello deftly marries readability with academic rigor, which I've found to be extremely rare. It doesn't hurt that the experiments themselves are ingenious and often accompanied by hilarious quotes from small children. If you're at all interested in child development, evolution, or cognition, this is a must read. Highly recommend