business climate

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A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, creative destruction, crony capitalism, debt deflation, declining real wages, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, financial repression, full employment, gentrification, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, labour market flexibility, land tenure, late capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage tax deduction, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, The Chicago School, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, union organizing, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Winter of Discontent

While there was considerable unevenness (Japan’s markets remained highly protected, for example), the general thrust was towards standardization of trade arrangements through international agreements that culminated in the World Trade Organization agreements that took effect in 1995 (more than a hundred countries had signed on within the year). This greater openness to capital flow (primarily US, European, and Japanese) put pressures on all states to look to the quality of their business climate as a crucial condition for their competitive success. Since degree of neoliberalization was increasingly taken by the IMF and the World Bank as a measure of a good business climate, the pressure on all states to adopt neoliberal reforms ratcheted upwards.2 Thirdly, the Wall Street–IMF–Treasury complex that came to dominate economic policy in the Clinton years was able to persuade, cajole, and (thanks to structural adjustment programmes administered by the IMF) coerce many developing countries to take the neoliberal road.3 The US also used the carrot of preferential access to its huge consumer market to persuade many countries to reform their economies along neoliberal lines (in some instances through bilateral trade agreements).

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And in these instances the success rate tends to be poor precisely because neoliberalism cannot function without a strong state and strong market and legal institutions. It has undoubtedly also been the case that the burden on all states to create ‘a good business climate’ to attract and retain geographically mobile capital has played its part, particularly in the advanced capitalist countries (such as France). But what is odd here is the way in which neoliberalization and a good business climate are so often held as equivalent, as in the 2004 World Bank Development Report.41 If neoliberalization produces social unrest and political instability of the order of that in Indonesia or Argentina in recent years, or if it results in depression and restrictions on the growth of internal markets, then it could just as easily be said that neoliberalization repels rather than encourages investment.42 Even when some aspect of neoliberal policy with respect to, say, flexible labour markets or financial liberalization has been solidly implanted it is not clear that this is in itself sufficient to lure mobile capital.

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This entailed confronting trade union power, attacking all forms of social solidarity that hindered competitive flexibility (such as those expressed through municipal governance, and including the power of many professionals and their associations), dismantling or rolling back the commitments of the welfare state, the privatization of public enterprises (including social housing), reducing taxes, encouraging entrepreneurial initiative, and creating a favourable business climate to induce a strong inflow of foreign investment (particularly from Japan). There was, she famously declared, ‘no such thing as society, only individual men and women’—and, she subsequently added, their families. All forms of social solidarity were to be dissolved in favour of individualism, private property, personal responsibility, and family values.

The Making of a World City: London 1991 to 2021 by Greg Clark

Basel III, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, congestion charging, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, East Village, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial intermediation, gentrification, global value chain, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, housing crisis, industrial cluster, intangible asset, job polarisation, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open immigration, Pearl River Delta, place-making, rent control, Robert Gordon, Silicon Valley, smart cities, sovereign wealth fund, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, working poor

There is a propensity in London not to seek integrated and reciprocal solutions but instead to polarise discourse between economic and environmental considerations, or between social needs and business needs. 182 London today and in the future Imperative 4: Business climate and openness The concerns of 2010–2013 that London’s tax and business climate might threaten its long-term competitiveness have begun to ease. The risk of tax rises, regulatory changes and visa restrictions to London’s ‘DNA’ as an open city have largely been placated by a national government keen to reduce the budget deficit by the end of the decade and enable the private sector to lift the UK out of a long recession. Nevertheless, the uncertainty in recent years suggests that an ongoing programme of joint business climate monitoring between national government, the GLA and London business will be required.

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Africa is witnessing an urban explosion. The continent is set to have over 70 cities with a population of between 1–5 million by 2025 (Patel, 2012), but only five are considered candidates for global city status over the next decade. Accra, Johannesburg, Lagos, Luanda and Nairobi stand out for their comparatively stable business climate and track record of attracting foreign direct investment. Johannesburg is the continent’s largest economy and most mature financial centre, but the city’s security and human capital challenges typically place it behind other emerging world cities in Latin America or Asia (AT Kearney, 2014). While Lagos, Nairobi and even Addis Ababa show promise, there is little risk that African cities’ business propositions will present any kind of competitive challenge to London in the medium term.

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As the World Cities Survey stated, “to matter as a world city you need to score well on all measures; you need a broad base of appeal … [a location] where the ideas and values that define the global agenda and shape the world are settled” (Knight Frank and Citigroup, 2010). Despite the more open global system, the 2008–9 financial crisis clearly widened the gulf between specialised, high-performing cities, and others that lack scale, quality of life advantages and/or exist within a high-risk business climate (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012; Tholons, 2012). Although EuroAmerican cities no longer represent the model to be adopted by others, equally there are only a limited number of new candidates currently capable of staking claims to world city status. The new comparative urban research base points to at least ten factors that established and prospective world cities will need to consider: 1.

World Cities and Nation States by Greg Clark, Tim Moonen

active transport: walking or cycling, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, business climate, clean tech, congestion charging, corporate governance, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, driverless car, financial independence, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gentrification, global supply chain, global value chain, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, low skilled workers, managed futures, megacity, megaproject, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, open economy, Pearl River Delta, rent control, Richard Florida, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stem cell, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transaction costs, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

The highly professional business leadership organisation London First has good channels of communication with central government, often working in tandem with the city government. It urges the national tier to be bold and decisive on major infrastructure projects (for example, Crossrail 2 and airport expansion) and to ensure that the business climate is kept attractive even during more t­ urbulent periods for the economy. London has found that forward‐thinking and planning that leads to bold advocacy documents can help national governments observe the need for reform. For example, in 2015 London’s Mayor, boroughs and the London Enterprise Panel (LEP) developed a long‐term infrastructure plan to 2050 to set out likely needs and costs of investment.

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The budget for Olympic projects is not as large as some cities, but the high level of indebtedness of the central government means it will be a challenge to keep costs (construction and labour) under control and ensure on‐time delivery of sustainable projects that can be showcased as something of a model for urban renewal (Inagaki, 2015). Credible macro reforms to enhance the business climate Many companies continue to prefer Singapore or Hong Kong’s business environment, and some have even relocated from Tokyo in the last decade. There is a growing advocacy for a cut in local and national rates of corporate tax and an upgrade of financial infrastructure and legal regimes to enable Tokyo to compete in pharmaceuticals, hydrogen energy and other green technologies.

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In Canada, the federal government is not licenced to intervene directly in indi­ vidual city affairs, but this chapter shows that it does collaborate more systemati­ cally than in other federal examples by sharing programme costs and jurisdictional responsibilities. Its agencies help fund Toronto’s outstanding universities and many of their research programmes; they have also helped facilitate integration of immigrants and improve Toronto’s business climate (Figure 10.1). More recently, sound national macroeconomic policy has enhanced the reputation of Toronto’s banking sector and financial risk management. Toronto’s high quality of public services (especially health and education) is a significant draw for mobile talent. In this chapter we explore the way in which relationships between the city and federal levels evolve informally and are shaped, to a large extent, by the changing impulses of federal leadership.

Off the Books by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", business climate, gentrification, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, independent contractor, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, labor-force participation, low-wage service sector, new economy, refrigerator car, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, urban renewal, working poor, Y2K

Moreover, even in these places, success is dependent on the kinds of non-ethnic-based resources that one finds to be lacking in Maquis Park. Namely, commercial success is a product a stable local customer base and sustained levels of consumer capacity in the surrounding area; safe, hospitable, and attractive business climates that have active police surveillance and decent city services; and a municipal commitment to make sure trash is picked up, cars are towed, and city development and economic funds are allocated to community businesses. Not only do predominantly African American inner-city neighborhoods lack these amenities, but African Americans differ from whites because they have never had the luxury of moving out of their community to develop new business opportunities when the local area runs dry.

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But regardless of whatever cooperation exists between elite MAPAD board members and struggling store owners, the fact remains that it is tough to do business in the ghetto. Maquis Park, like many other inner-city neighborhoods, simply suffers from the lack of a community that consistently spends money. Few store owners claim that demand is sufficient enough to create a steady, reliable business climate. Only the (Korean and Middle Eastern) managers of the two respective liquor stores suggest that they are not overly concerned about the general loss of demand. As one said, "We're busy day and night. Our problem is not enough people, but too many people. Look at all these people in here not buying anything, just hanging around."

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Only 9 percent of the stores on the street have been in existence for longer than ten years. The average tenure appears to be three to five years, at which point the owner declares bankruptcy or sells the store. For all of the small businesses (including those affiliated with MAPAD), the underground economy shapes the business climate. Not surprisingly, underground economic activity most often appears to these businesspeople as a set of activities over which they have limited direct control and that jeopardize public safety. Prostitutes, drug dealers, handymen, and other underground traders who loiter in front of their stores are a nuisance.

Hawai'I Becalmed: Economic Lessons of the 1990s by Christopher Grandy

Alan Greenspan, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, dark matter, endogenous growth, inventory management, Jones Act, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, Maui Hawaii, minimum wage unemployment, open economy, purchasing power parity, Silicon Valley, Telecommunications Act of 1996

If as many people as possible who affected Hawai‘i public opinion could be brought into the process, then the recommendations, however they turned out, would stand a better chance of surviving. 66 Hawai‘i Becalmed With luck, the Economic Revitalization task force (ERTF) could present the legislature with a political mandate for important changes that would prevent the disintegration of proposals through the contention of different interests. The desire for buy-in explained why so much time was devoted to assembling a series of five working groups to discuss issues and make general recommendations. The planners created working groups for five general economic areas: (1) education and workforce development, (2) taxation, (3) business climate, (4) role of government, and (5) economic development. Functionally, the groups were to assemble a list of issues under each topic and forward recommendations to the task force. Politically, the groups were to extend the concept of buy-in further than the task force could. Ideally, the working groups would broaden the support for the ultimate proposals that would go to the legislature.

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The ad, titled “The Lingle Plan,” purported to offer Lingle’s detailed program to fix what was wrong with Hawai‘i, and especially with Hawai‘i’s economy. Table 2 reproduces the content of the ad pertaining to the economy.4 A more detailed explanation of the potential responses available to Cayetano appears in Appendix 2. The Lingle Plan had three elements. First, it called for improving Hawai‘i’s business climate by eliminating unnecessary regulations, establishing zero tolerance for favoritism in government contracting, introducing privatization and performance-based budgeting, and establishing a small-business preference program in government contracts. Second, the plan proposed tax reform that would include cash rebates for increasing payroll, reducing the general excise tax on commercial leases, returning the counties’ share of the transient accommodations tax (TAT), and eliminating the GET on exported professional services.

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The advertisement’s blunder is clear: The Cayetano administration could claim to have addressed or seriously considered nearly every item on the list. As a result, the ad did little more than highlight the breadth of the administration’s response to the economic crisis. By implication, it revealed 80 Table 2 Hawai‘i Becalmed The Lingle Plan and Potential Response* Lingle Proposal Potential Response* 1. Improve the Business Climate Eliminate unnecessary regulations ✓ Addressed Zero tolerance for favoritism ✓ Addressed performance-based budgeting ✓ Addressed Small business preference program ✓ Addressed Selective privatization and 2. Tax Reform Cash rebate for Hawai‘i businesses that increase payroll ✓ Addressed Reduce 4% GET on commercial leases to 1% ✓ Addressed Eliminate GET on exported professional services ✓ Addressed Fight attempts to tax pensions X Rejected Return counties’ share of TAT X Rejected ✓ Addressed Addressed 3.

Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage by Douglas B. Laney

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, banking crisis, behavioural economics, blockchain, book value, business climate, business intelligence, business logic, business process, call centre, carbon credits, chief data officer, Claude Shannon: information theory, commoditize, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, digital rights, digital twin, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Erik Brynjolfsson, full employment, hype cycle, informal economy, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, it's over 9,000, linked data, Lyft, Nash equilibrium, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, performance metric, profit motive, recommendation engine, RFID, Salesforce, semantic web, single source of truth, smart meter, Snapchat, software as a service, source of truth, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, text mining, uber lyft, Y2K, yield curve

The same with those who cannot creatively curate and deploy information assets. If we dig deeper into our exploration of likening information environments to living ecosystems, we’re awakened to the concepts of climate changes, disturbances, and sustainability, and how to apply them in an information context. Business climates are changing more rapidly than ever. Call it “global business climate change.” This affects information ecosystems to the extent that these changes must be anticipated by any information vision. No longer can organizations afford merely to sense and respond to worldwide or industry changes brought about by widespread digitalization, business model disruption, and disintermediation, nor by the resulting orders of magnitude increases in the volume, variety, and velocity of information.

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It may be more comfortable to call these “intersections” instead since, as I mentioned previously, in these early days of the Information Age information is not yet an autonomous actor. Both ecosystems also have climates and topographies which determine organisms’ access to resources. Information ecosystem topographies are characterized by data and system architectures, and climate relates to periodic or cyclical changes in the availability of resources dictated by business climate changes. Biodiversity is a feature which translates into the variety of information. Ecosystems with high degrees of biodiversity or “infodiversity” are capable of generating a greater amount of goods and services upon which businesses and consumers depend. But these ecosystems may be more complex and fragile.

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We often see how disturbances bring about or impel structural changes in the way we manage and leverage information. Even climate change affects both ecosystems. In an information ecosystem, however, the climate is a macroeconomic function. Therefore, it would seem that just as with biological ecosystems, man-made (anthropogenic) global effects upon the business climate may alter or stress information ecosystems. Ecosystem Management Many biological ecosystems are managed to ensure the ongoing optimal production of organisms for ultimate consumption (e.g., eating, viewing, playing, commuting, etc.). Correspondingly, information ecosystems are managed to ensure the ongoing optimal production of information consumed by businesses and individuals.

The Streets Were Paved With Gold by Ken Auletta

benefit corporation, British Empire, business climate, business logic, clean water, collective bargaining, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Lewis Mumford, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, Parkinson's law, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rent stabilization, Ronald Reagan, social contagion, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, working-age population

Alcaly and David Mermelstein trace the roots of the crisis to “a system of economic growth dictated by capital’s need to seek ever greater profits.” It became less economical to do business in New York. Labor was cheaper in other parts of the country, where unions were less strong, taxes and costs lower, the business climate better. In a competitive system, New York lost its edge. Larger, older cities are uneconomical in still another way: they cost more. Ponder, for a moment, the sheer size of New York City. In 1977, it generated 30,000 tons of garbage and other waste daily—more than the combined total of London, Paris and Tokyo.

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And the public pays, since financially pressed landlords often cut back on building maintenance, giving many middle-income residents another excuse to leave New York. The issue of rent control received little attention in the 1977 mayoral campaign. Each of the candidates was too busy promising to forge a new, pro-business climate. The candidates never made the connection between this stance and their sworn opposition to even a means test for rent control. Certainly, Mayor Ed Koch never understood the contradiction. Like many legislators and judges who pass on rent legislation, this foe of special privilege knew a good thing when he didn’t have to pay for it.

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By 1975, it ranked first, averaging $1,025 per person. In those years, New York’s taxes multiplied thirteen times faster than the national average, expanding by 178 percent. It was no surprise, then, that the Fantus Company, the world’s largest business location consultant, concluded in 1975 that New York had the worst business climate of the fifty states. Sometimes, increased taxation was perceived by New York officials as a less painful, more expedient short-term solution than cutting the budget. “It never was recognized (or, if recognized, never was accepted politically),” observed the final report of the Temporary Commission, “that the City’s taxpayers, its revenue providers, represented a long-term asset of the City that had to be maintained rather than a short-term asset that could be exploited.”

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, complexity theory, computer age, credit crunch, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, G4S, George Akerlof, global macro, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jitney, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market design, megaproject, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, operational security, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, risk-adjusted returns, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Stuxnet, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, working-age population, yield curve

The Berlin Consensus, as conceived in Germany and applied to the Eurozone, consists of seven pillars: Promotion of exports through innovation and technology Low corporate tax rates Low inflation Investment in productive infrastructure Cooperative labor-management relations Globally competitive unit labor costs and labor mobility Positive business climate Each one of the seven pillars implies policies designed to promote specific goals and produce sustained growth. These policies, in turn, presuppose certain monetary arrangements. At the heart of the Berlin Consensus is a recognition that savings and trade, rather than borrowing and consumption, are the best path to growth.

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However, Europe has lagged behind the rest of the developed world in mobility-of-labor terms, partly due to linguistic and cultural differences among the national populations. This problem is widely recognized, and because steps are being taken to improve labor mobility within the EU, prospects for growth are greater than many observers believe. This brings the analysis to the final element of the Berlin Consensus—a positive business climate. What economists call regime uncertainty is a principal differentiator between long, anemic depressions and short, sharp ones. Monetary policy and fiscal policy uncertainty can negatively impact an economy, as was seen in the United States during the Great Depression of 1929 to 1940, and as is being seen again in the depression that began in 2007.

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Both the United States and the EU suffer from regime uncertainty. The Berlin Consensus is designed to remove as much uncertainty as possible by providing for price stability, sound money, fiscal responsibility, and uniformity across Europe on important regulatory matters. In turn, a positive business climate becomes a magnet for capital not just from local entrepreneurs and executives but also from abroad. This points to an emerging driver of EU growth harnessed to the Berlin Consensus—Chinese capital. As the Beijing Consensus collapses and Chinese capital seeks a new home, Chinese investors looks increasingly to Europe.

Smart Cities, Digital Nations by Caspar Herzberg

Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, business climate, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, Dean Kamen, demographic dividend, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, Hacker News, high-speed rail, hive mind, Internet of things, knowledge economy, Masdar, megacity, New Urbanism, operational security, packet switching, QR code, remote working, RFID, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart meter, social software, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, telepresence, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, working poor, X Prize

Others see a playground filled with tempting and expensive opportunities for consumption and exploration. Detractors hear the noise, resent the crowds, and complain about congestion, unsanitary conditions, and overcrowded residential areas. Urban planners see great potential for both progress and problems. Corporations analyze the opportunities for growth and a favorable business climate. Most everyone senses the future already exists, in some budding form, within cities, but whether one sees a paradise, a dystopia, or something in between depends greatly on economic status, geographical location, and personal experience. These variations in perspective are nothing new. Cities have been inspiring and horrifying us in turn for generations.

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Meanwhile, the push for economic diversification remained of paramount importance to the city planners. “The whole objective is job creation,” al-Dabbagh told the New York Times in 2010. “The biggest oil refinery produces at most 1,500 jobs. We will produce a million.”6 The KSA government’s approach to reform also extended to the business climate of the economic cities. These would be regions where the standards of Westerners and Saudis could mingle without tension. The promise to let business do business tacitly confirmed that multinational corporations should expect no problems sending their best people to work in Saudi Arabia, man or woman, provided the normal amount of respect for cultural traditions was displayed.

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Songdo stood out as an anomalous greenfield in a fully developed nation. India, meanwhile, had the potential to become a breadbasket for international technology companies. Although GDP growth had slowed in recent years, the 2014 elections did seem to be like a bellwether. Notorious for its dysfunctional business climate, India seemed intent on untying its own hands. After years spent trying to lay necessary groundwork, Cisco was ready to aid the push toward a modern India. The potential for growth was rivaled only by China, which by 2014 had become more challenging for many multinationals. JAPAN AND INDIA: AN UNUSUAL PAIR OF ECONOMIC ALLIES In terms of smart and connected cities, perhaps no nation better encapsulates both the urgent need for modern city planning and the tremendous possibilities for improved quality of life.

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake

23andMe, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, book value, Brexit referendum, business climate, business process, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer age, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, dark matter, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, financial innovation, full employment, fundamental attribution error, future of work, gentrification, gigafactory, Gini coefficient, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, income inequality, index card, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Kanban, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mother of all demos, Network effects, new economy, Ocado, open economy, patent troll, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, place-making, post-industrial society, private spaceflight, Productivity paradox, quantitative hedge fund, rent-seeking, revision control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, tacit knowledge, tech billionaire, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, TSMC, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban planning, Vanguard fund, walkable city, X Prize, zero-sum game

The manufacturing businesses that tend to thrive in high-wage economies are ones that invest a lot in intangibles, from the R&D programs of Pfizer or Rolls-Royce to the lean production techniques of the Japanese motor industry. (To the extent that globalization requires the construction of more complex organizations and networks, it could also drive increased intangible investment directly.) A Changing Business Climate Figure 2.7. Intangible intensity in manufacturing and services (real shares of real sector value added, EU and US, non-farm business). Source: authors’ calculations from INTAN-Invest (www.intan-invest.net) and SPINTAN (www.spintan.net) databases. The years since 1980 have seen a steady relaxation of a whole range of regulations on both products and labor markets in most of the world’s biggest economies.

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., 195 Bernstein, Shai, 171, 172 Bessen, James, 114–15, 127 Black Cap pub, 150 Blaug, Mark, 54 blocking patents, 113–14 Bloom, Nicholas, 82, 129, 195 Bodypump®, 17–18, 21 Bonnet, Odran, 128 Bono, Pierre-Henri, 128 Boulevard of Broken Dreams, The (Lerner), 178, 220 Braggion, Fabio, 132–33, 134 branding, 49, 76 Brexit, 122, 141–42, 143 British Airports Authority (BAA), 1–2 British Airways, 49 British Coachways, 162 Brooker, Charles, 183 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 30, 82, 123 Buffet, Warren, 19 Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), 39–41, 244n3 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 76 Bush, Vannevar, 232 business climate, changes in, 31–34 Callaghan, James, 127 capital, 10; definition of, 19–21; human, 54, 119; social, 156, 236 Capital (Marx), 126 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 19, 121, 128, 136 capitalism, 158, 243n3 capitalization, versus expensing, 202–4 Chapelle, Guillaume, 128 Chen, Ester, 204 Chesbrough, Henry, 83 Citibank, 40 Clayton, Tony, 42 clusters, 147–48, 235–36 Coase, Ronald, 190–91, 192 Coca Cola Company, 9–10, 49 code of laws, of Ur-Nammu, 75 codified knowledge, 65 Collecchia, Alessandra, 40 collective intelligence, 217 ComCab, 82 competitive advantage, 185–87 computerized information, 43–45 Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, 4, 42 contestedness, 87–88, 115, 132; venture capital and, 177 Cook, Tim, 51 copyright, 76–79, 165, 213 Corbyn, Jeremy, 223 Corrado, Carol, 4, 5, 42, 43, 45 cost of intangible investment, 28 Cowen, Tyler, 93, 228 Coyle, Diane, 4, 36 “creative class,” the, 215 Criscuolo, Chiara, 96 crowdfunding, 166 CT scanners, 59–61, 104, 204 cult of the manager, 184 Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, 79 DARPA, 218, 226–27, 232 data, 63 David, Paul, 151–52 Davies, Richard, 168 de Soto, Hernando, 153 Digital Copyright Exchange, 213 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 76 Dillow, Chris, 110, 136, 188 disbenefits, 79 Disney, 78–79, 209 diversified investors, 205 Dodgson, Mark, 197 Doerr, John, 176 Domesday Book, 2–3 dot-com bubble, 4, 42, 145–46 Downing, Kate, 148 DunnHumby, 23 economic competencies, 43–45 economies of scale, 185 Edgerton, David, 146 Edmans, Alex, 170, 171, 172–73 education and training, 51–52, 170, 228–30 Einstein, Albert, 127 e-mail, 217 EMIDEC computer, 59 EMI Records, 59–61, 104, 204 employment strictness, 32 End of Accounting, The (Lev and Gu), 201, 220 endogenous growth theory, 62 Engelbart, Douglas, 217 Enron, 42 Entrepreneurial State, The (Mazzucato), 232 EpiPen, 85–86, 112, 239 Ericsson, 104 esteem, inequality of, 122–23, 141–42; intangibles’ effects on, 129–40 expensing, versus capitalization, 202–4 Facebook, 34, 67, 170, 175, 217, 222 Fang, Vivian W., 171 fast followership, 110 Federal Reserve.

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., 168 Haskel, Jonathan, 42 Hayek, Friedrich von, 190 Hermalin, Benjamin, 199 Hewlett Packard, 170 high-intensity interval training (HIIT), 17 Hilber, Christian, 216 Home Depot, 194 Horizon 2020 program, 218 Hounsfield, Godrey, 59, 61 housing, 122, 128–29, 136–39; affordable, 148–49; creative class and, 215; planning of, 215–16 Howitt, Peter, 41 HTC, 73, 112 Hubbard, Thomas, 134, 135 Hughes, Alan, 223 Hulten, Charles, 4–5, 43, 45, 48, 56 human capital, 54, 119 IBM, 39, 170 ICI, 167, 169 income, 119–20, 127–28; implications of an intangible economy for, 143; intangibles, firms, and inequality of, 130; intangibles’ effects on, 129–40; scalability and, 133–34 industrial commons, 84–85 Industrial Revolution, 126 industrial structure, 30–31 inequality, 118–19; accumulation of capital as reason for, 124–25; and differences in wages between firms, 129; of earnings, 120–21, 127–40; of esteem, 122–23, 129–40, 141–42; field guide to, 119–23; between the generations, 121–22; in an intangible-rich economy, 130–32, 135–35, 236–38; measures of, 119–20; of place, 122, 128–29, 136–39, 249n3; as result of improvements in technology, 123–24, 126–27; role of housing prices in, 122, 128–29, 136–39; standard explanations for, 123–25; symbolic analysts and, 133–34; and taxes, 139–40; trade and, 124; of wealth, 121, 128–40; worker screening and, 134–35 influence activities, 196 information, definition of, 64 infrastructure, 144, 157; definition of, 144–45; enabling character of, 145; hype and false promises surrounding, 145–47; institutional, 153–56; physical, 147–51; role of norms and standards in, 154–55; soft, 156; telecommunications, 151–52 innervation, 18 innovation districts, 215 innovative property, 43–45 Institution of Cleveland Engineers, 83 Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 83 intangible economy, the, 182–85, 206–7; competition in, 185–87; cult of the manager and, 184, 188; financing of (see under financing); inequality in (see under inequality); investing in, 201–6; managing in, 188–200; public policy and (see under public policy); R&D in (see under R&D [research and development]) intangible myths, 135–36 intangibles, 10–11, 201–6, 239–42; accounting treatment of, 202–4; banking industry and, 162–66; changing business climate and, 31–34, 239–40; contestedness of, 87–88, 115, 132; cosmopolitanism versus conservatism and, 141–42; depreciation of, 56–57; differences between tangibles and, 7–10, 58; effect on GDP growth of, 117; effects of institutional infrastructure on, 153; effects of low levels of investment in, 102–3; effects on income, wealth, and esteem inequality of, 129–40; emergent characteristics of, 86–88; equity markets and, 169–74; as explanation for secular stagnation, 101–16; financial architecture for, 218–21; the four S’s of, 8–10, 58, 61–63, 88; future challenges of measuring, 52–55; globalization and growing market sizes and, 34–35; in gyms, 15–19; and income inequality, 130–32; industrial structure and, 30–31; measurement of, 7–8, 46–49; mobile, 139–40, 248n4; properties of, 8–10; public procurement and, 226–28; as real investment or not, 49–52; reasons for growth of investment in, 27–35; research on, 5–7; and secular stagnation (see under secular stagnation); solving underinvestment in, 221–30; steady growth of investment in, 23–27; types of, 21–22, 43–46; venture capital as well-suited for, 175–77; worker screening and, 134–35.

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, full employment, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, interest rate swap, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, land reform, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, means of production, megacity, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, place-making, Ponzi scheme, precariat, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, statistical arbitrage, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, the built environment, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, white flight, women in the workforce

While ways can be found for capital to operate successfully under, say, conditions of lawlessness, corruption and indeterminate property rights, this does not in general constitute an optimal environment in which capital can flourish. What to do about ‘failed states’ and how to ensure the creation of ‘a good business climate’ (including the suppression of corruption and lawlessness) have therefore become leading missions of international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as a project of various arms of contemporary US and European imperialist practices in many parts of the world.

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By territorial logic I mean the political, diplomatic, economic and military strategies deployed by the state apparatus in its own interest. The first aim of these strategies is to control and manage the activities of the population within the territory and to accumulate power and wealth within the state borders. That power and wealth can be used either internally for the benefit of the people (or more narrowly to create a good business climate for capital and a local capitalist class) or externally to exert influence or exercise power over other states. Tribute can be extracted, for example, from colonial possessions or from weak states falling within the sphere of influence of some dominant state. Failing that, access to the resources, markets, labour power and productive capacity that exists in other countries can be secured so that surplus capital has some place to go when conditions at home are unfavourable for further accumulation.

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The ‘moral hazard’ that was the immediate trigger for the financial failures is being taken to new heights in the bank bail-outs. The actual practices of neoliberalism (as opposed to its utopian theory) always entailed blatant support for finance capital and capitalist élites (usually on the grounds that financial institutions must be protected at all costs and that it is the duty of state power to create a good business climate for solid profiteering). This has not fundamentally changed. Such practices are justified by appeal to the dubious proposition that a ‘rising tide’ of capitalist endeavour will ‘lift all boats’, or that the benefits of compound growth will magically ‘trickle down’ (which it never does except in the form of a few crumbs from the rich folks’ table).

The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends That Will Disrupt the World by Shaun Rein

business climate, credit crunch, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, glass ceiling, high net worth, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income per capita, indoor plumbing, job-hopping, Maui Hawaii, middle-income trap, price stability, quantitative easing, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, trade route, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, urban planning, women in the workforce, young professional, zero-sum game

While the rest of us listened, the man doing tai chi started to talk about the business environment and the economic problems facing the country due to the financial crisis in America and Europe. The man’s name was Guo Guangchang, the founder of the Fosun Group. The Hurun Report, which tracks the net worth of the Chinese rich, estimates Guo’s wealth at nearly $5 billion. As I listened to Guo and the others discuss the business climate, I looked around the room at their faces. All seemed to have the intensity of Olympic athletes about to compete. Optimism and confidence, born from being raised with nothing but making it big through their own sweat and grit, seemed to ooze from their pores. They knew they could overcome any challenges with enough hard work and patience.

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In many cases, the drive to make money has resulted in excesses, including many unscrupulous businessmen who lie, cheat, and cut corners as they try to get rich. Many Shanghainese girls told me they would not even consider marrying someone who has not already bought a house (without a mortgage) and car. An electric business climate is pulling and pushing everyone to pursue money. Everyone knows someone, or maybe even has a relative, who was formerly a peasant raising pigs or tilling rice paddies covered in night soil, but who now drives a Mercedes and owns multiple villa-style townhouses. Fifteen years ago you only needed $6 million in total assets to make the top 100 on the Forbes China Rich List; last year the mark was $120 million.

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, income per capita, inflation targeting, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil-for-food scandal, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Tragedy of the Commons, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

More judicial transparency and global 227 P o i s o n e d We l l s cooperation in this would also fundamentally alter political power in poor countries. African politicians loot their treasuries, knowing that once their plunder is offshore, it is safe—theirs for keeps. If they knew that their successors could get the looted cash back, they would suddenly find new incentives for getting the business climate right. This is one way to break radically from a vicious circle of oil dependence. Supporters of offshore secrecy use several arguments in their defense. First, the system delivers prosperity, so why fix it? Next, the problem is already being tackled, with initiatives from the United Nations, the OECD, the European Union, and others.

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Personally, I could imagine a radical zero percent tax rate on citizens’ share of the oil revenues. To get the money for schools, roads, and police forces, the politicians would have to tax the telephone and internet companies, hairdressers and taxi drivers that spring up to cater for the newly wealthier citizens’ needs. It would become urgent for politicians to get the business climate right—meaning better lives for all. Citizens wanting to get ahead would no longer look upward to their rulers, like chicks in a nest looking to their mother, but sideways to their fellow citizens. They would trade and deal with each other more, helping rebuild the trust that oil has eroded. This matters not only for Africans, but it should concern everyone in the West, too.

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With modern technology—fingerprint and iris recognition and the like—direct distribution should get easier, from a practical point of view. As for the idea that giving people free money makes them lazy: people in poor countries are idle not because they are lazy, but because they lack opportunities. Fix the business climate, and they will work. 233 P o i s o n e d We l l s How could the international community back this, if it has so little influence? A good way might be with a demonstration model, perhaps using foreign aid instead of oil money. The clean slate in Iraq after the American invasion would have been an ideal opportunity.

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles by Ruchir Sharma

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, book value, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, Gini coefficient, global macro, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, informal economy, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, rolling blackouts, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, zero-sum game

In fact this is probably the only major emerging market suffering a large and accelerating outflow of private capital: based on Russian central bank estimates, the outflow hit $80 billion in 2011, up from $42 billion in 2006. This pace suggests that the tycoons are increasingly worried about slow growth and the decay of the business climate at home. Sometimes it’s clear where this money is going—one Russian magnate recently made real estate headlines by paying $78 million for a mansion in Silicon Valley. Sometimes it’s murky. One of the anomalies in the books kept by Russian companies is that high profits are not always reflected in cash flow, suggesting that the cash has been diverted to debatable purchases.

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One of the anomalies in the books kept by Russian companies is that high profits are not always reflected in cash flow, suggesting that the cash has been diverted to debatable purchases. I suspect it is no coincidence that realtors in the South of France say that many of the top-end villas in Cap Ferrat and Monte Carlo—those in the $200 million to $400 million range—have been purchased by Russian oligarchs and big state companies as retreats for the top brass. The Russian business climate is equally maddening for foreigners. World Bank surveys rank Russia 120th out of 183 countries for the ease of doing business. Russia is the only major country in the world that still requires business travelers and tourists to file an official request with the Russian foreign ministry ahead of a trip to the Russian embassy to fill out a visa application.

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Though his country is still known by a name that evokes the bygone influence of the Soviet Union—“Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka”—Rajapaksa’s regime is working to trim the fat left over from the socialist experiments of the 1970s, including high taxes and government debts that still equal 80 percent of GDP. It aims to raise Sri Lanka from 102nd to 30th in the World Bank rankings of nations by business climate before 2014. It is working to bring the vast swaths of formerly rebel-held territory back into play, and to exploit the country’s long-standing strengths, including a highly literate population and an advantageous location along key shipping routes to India and China. Most economists tend to ignore war because their data sets don’t capture it.

Think Like an Engineer: Use Systematic Thinking to Solve Everyday Challenges & Unlock the Inherent Values in Them by Mushtak Al-Atabi

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, business climate, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, corporate social responsibility, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, follow your passion, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, invention of the wheel, iterative process, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Lean Startup, mirror neurons, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, remote working, shareholder value, six sigma, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking

This section is largely inspired by the concept of Business Model Canvas outlined in ‘Business Model Generation’ by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. While the book provides an excellent representation of the business model, I thought it is necessary to include competitors and the prevailing business climate as essential parts of the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Therefore, the entrepreneurial ecosystem described here is an extension of the business model canvas anchoring it into the prevailing business climate and introducing the competitive pressures to continuously keep competition in mind while creating and delivering value. Different components of the entrepreneurial ecosystem are discussed below.

The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--And How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier

agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, business climate, carbon tax, Doha Development Round, energy security, food miles, G4S, Global Witness, information asymmetry, Kenneth Arrow, megacity, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price elasticity of demand, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, search costs, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Stewart Brand, Tragedy of the Commons

An official from the International Monetary Fund had also been invited to address the meeting. As I listened to her well-crafted PowerPoint presentation I realized that her talk could equally have been delivered to virtually any government audience in the world. Budget deficits should be moderate; the business climate should be conducive to investment; and so forth. There was nothing much wrong with it, but it did not take into account the distinctive nature of the decisions facing a resource-rich, low-income country. Yet each of these decisions poses difficulties. For example, it is easy to say “capture the value of nature assets for the government” but doing it involves technically complex incentive problems.

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(For the moment I will park discussion of the ethics of using aid to force compliance with global carbon standards and turn to the other countries that might potentially free-ride.) The low-income countries are not the core of the free-rider problem. Between them they do not emit much carbon, and even if they offered global industry a haven from action against carbon other aspects of their business climate might deter relocation. The key problem group is the emerging market countries, which collectively emit a lot of carbon. They offer credible havens for the evasion of global carbon policy, and do not receive significant amounts of aid. What stick could be used against such countries? Regrettably, the only credible leverage is likely to be trade restrictions.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - 30th Anniversary Edition by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

air freight, business climate, industrial robot, means of production, six sigma, Socratic dialogue, the scientific method, transfer pricing

So we actually began to implement team bonuses instead of individual-based bonuses. Today we’re working on disconnecting the link between compensation and performance feedback. Feedback is going to be all team-based. DW: You said you had 300 employees before and now you’re at 280. Is that the fault of a bad business climate or a benefit of being more efficient? CM: It’s both. The business climate has not been healthy. But at the same time, some of the changes we made freed up capacity, and as people quit we didn’t replace them, which built profitability. No layoffs. We just didn’t replace everyone who left. And we moved individuals around. DW: Is the constraint still in the presses?

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What was happening was that we were being forced by the market to reduce our prices across the board, but then any job done the old way was not very profitable. Hah! Not profitable at all! People were expecting PDF pricing for conventional work, and that just doesn’t work. Bottom line: In a harsh business climate, in which the market is the new constraint, and sales are declining, we’ve actually built profitability. Significantly. DW: Does it help that you’re an ESOP company? Does that make it easier for employees to align their interests with the goal? CM: It depends on the individual. Someone who is ten years from retirement is more interested in the value of the stock.

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

California taxes and leaving California: Phillip Reese, “Roughly 5 Million People Left California in the Last Decade. See Where They Went,” Sacramento Bee, August 28, 2015, www.sacbee.com/news/databases/article32679753.html; California and business: Evan Harris, “California’s Business Climate Continues to Receive Poor Scores,” Pacific Research Institute, July 16, 2019, www.pacificresearch.org/californias-business-climate-continues-to-receive-poor-scores; California as forty-eighth of fifty states according to the Tax Foundation: Jared Walczak, “2020 State Business Tax Climate Index,” Tax Foundation, October 22, 2019, https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-business-tax-climate-index.

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Some census estimates suggest that seven hundred thousand fled California in 2018 alone, at a rate of over two thousand per day. The usual complaints of the departing are exorbitant taxes on the middle class, poor schools and infrastructure, high crime, costly fuel and food, and astronomical housing costs. In many state-by-state rankings of the “business climate” (categorized by regulations and taxes), California now rates in the bottom tiers. It is usually judged dead last in terms of the cost of doing business. Translated, that means that small-business operators relocated to more business-friendly states (for example, seventy thousand Californians on average have left for Texas alone each year of the last decade, and the rate is climbing to over eighty thousand per year), as did retirees on fixed incomes and young people shut out of the high-priced coastal housing market.39 Oddly the state rarely lamented the loss of its once thriving middle classes.

The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Mason

active measures, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Easter island, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, planetary scale, post-oil, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, systematic trading, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

It also echoes John Maynard Keynes’ famous description of investment decisions as a realm ‘where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects average opinion to be’.6 The alert reader will have noticed that something important is missing from this story of growth and crisis: wages and the interest rate! They do not feature at all. While CEOs, employers, industrialists, etc. would love to pay lower wages and less interest on their loans, neither gets much of a look in when it comes to the large investment decisions, which depend on the overall business climate. If the business climate is positive, and expectations are buoyant, CEOs will give the green light to large investment projects. If not, no drop in the wage rate and no fall in the rate of interest can persuade them to invest. Period. As if this were not enough, once a recession has begun, following a Crisis, falling wage and interest rates may cause corporations to panic, to fire workers and to cancel whatever investment projects are already in train.

Are Chief Executives Overpaid? by Deborah Hargreaves

banking crisis, benefit corporation, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bonus culture, business climate, corporate governance, Donald Trump, G4S, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, loadsamoney, long term incentive plan, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, performance metric, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Snapchat, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, wealth creators

It can be argued that there is little a chief executive can do to influence the global attitude to a company, so that when WPP encounters an advertising slowdown and Burberry sees Asian customers turn to something new, the executive team has little room for manoeuvre. But this argument can cut both ways; if executives have little control over the share price on the way down, how can they also control it on the way up? Is it therefore appropriate for them to reap the rewards of a rising share price in a buoyant business climate? How much effect do chief executives have? In interviews for the High Pay Centre about executive performance, many interviewees who were company directors, academics and commentators pointed out that executives were seeing their individual finances and reputation boosted just because they happen to have presided over a successful company that may have achieved equivalent success without their presence at the helm.

The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Sugrue, Thomas J.

affirmative action, business climate, classic study, collective bargaining, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, Ford paid five dollars a day, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, indoor plumbing, informal economy, invisible hand, job automation, jobless men, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, oil shock, pink-collar, postindustrial economy, Quicken Loans, rent control, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, strikebreaker, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, white flight, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

Another nonprofit, Challenge Detroit, leveraged support from major employers and launched a fellowship program to recruit about thirty emerging leaders from around the world to Detroit each year.28 The sense that gentrification, creativity, and youthful talent are the ticket to Detroit’s rebirth is one manifestation of what urbanists call the neoliberalization of the city, namely the faith that market-based solutions are more rational and efficient than democratic processes: the reliance on the private sector to provide what were once public services such as education, sanitation, and housing, and the creation of a “favorable business climate,” by weakening of labor power and workplace regulations as well as reducing taxes to attract capital. In this view, cities are locked in perpetual competition—just like business firms—and need to cut costs and create incentives to promote capital formation and growth.29 This is an old story in Detroit, one that began with public-private partnerships during the era of urban renewal (using federal funds to demolish “blighted” neighborhoods, to construct market-rate housing, and to attract new investment).

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One such firm, Ex-Cell-O, a major machine tool manufacturer, built six new plants in rural Indiana and Ohio in the 1950s, and none in metropolitan Detroit. Ex-Cell-O’s president, H. G. Bixby, argued in 1960 that the reason for the failure of firms like his to expand in metropolitan Detroit was that “there was something seriously wrong with our business climate.” Bixby blamed union activity for the flight of industry from Detroit. The “militant and venomous attitude toward industry has and will continue to limit job opportunity…. Industries, like people, will not go where they are insulted and vilified daily. If Michigan labor union leadership is seriously interested in job opportunity for their members, they must change their attitude from one of conflict to one of cooperation with industry.”41 Forty-nine percent of Michigan industrialists interviewed in 1961 felt that “the labor situation” was worse in 1960 than it had been ten years earlier.42 Wage costs were also an important consideration in plant location, especially for small firms.

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If Michigan labor union leadership is seriously interested in job opportunity for their members, they must change their attitude from one of conflict to one of cooperation with industry.”41 Forty-nine percent of Michigan industrialists interviewed in 1961 felt that “the labor situation” was worse in 1960 than it had been ten years earlier.42 Wage costs were also an important consideration in plant location, especially for small firms. From the 1950s through the 1970s, high wage costs ranked first in small manufacturers’ complaints about the Detroit business climate. One small industrialist lamented that “the unions are so strong that they have more influence than they should have. Make unreasonable demands and get them.” In his words, “Unions have killed a lot of small industries. They raise union rates. This means costs go up and then prices have to go up.

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy by Robert Peters

Airbnb, bounce rate, business climate, citizen journalism, content marketing, crowdsourcing, digital map, fake it until you make it, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Hacker News, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, pull request, revision control, ride hailing / ride sharing, search engine result page, sharing economy, Skype, social bookmarking, TaskRabbit, turn-by-turn navigation, Twitter Arab Spring, ubercab

As more and more mobile users are becoming accustomed to streaming content from their devices, this is an excellent value-added proposition for the Prime subscription. Side-by-side with its offering of new books, Amazon allows sellers to market used books and small businesses can apply to sell their items on the site as well. While not as robust or active a small business climate as eBay or Etsy, the potential to earn money with sales on Amazon does still exist and given the size of the marketplace is attractive to individual entrepreneurs. The Amazon API has long been available to outside sources so products listed on the company site can be sold elsewhere on the web, with the poster earning small commissions on each sale.

Rebooting Democracy: A Citizen's Guide to Reinventing Politics by Manuel Arriaga

banking crisis, behavioural economics, business climate, David Graeber, digital divide, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, Gunnar Myrdal, John Bogle, Occupy movement, principal–agent problem, Slavoj Žižek

If—because of either general political uncertainty or the adoption of particularly strict regulations—some companies decide to stop operating in a given country, the relative scarcity of the products or services those companies used to provide will lead to an increase in their price until other companies that are well-positioned to provide those products or services enter that market because of the increased opportunity for profit. Because managers and entrepreneurs differ both in their judgment of situations and their appetite for risk-taking, what some regard as a less attractive business climate, others will invariably see as offering unexplored business opportunities. This is the very essence of how a market economy operates, and it makes the economy robust to any sort of political change. This is not, of course, to say that an economy will be unaffected by an increase in the perceived cost of (or uncertainty associated with) conducting business there.

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes by Peter D. Schiff, Andrew J. Schiff

Alan Greenspan, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, business climate, currency peg, hiring and firing, indoor plumbing, low interest rates, offshore financial centre, price stability, Robert Shiller, technology bubble

A few years later, a boost toward prosperity was provided by the election of Roughy Redfish to Senator-in-Chief. Roughy succeeded in lowering taxes, rolling back some burdensome regulations, and reducing barriers to free trade with other islands. However, he failed in his promise to reduce government spending. Despite the favorable business climate he instilled, the difference between what the Senate spent and what it raised in taxes continued to grow. In fact, under Roughy’s watch, the gap widened dangerously. Fortunately, fresh fish from foreign sources continued to roll into the bank. The notes that were used to pay for these fish were exported and never redeemed for actual fish.

Cyprus - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture by Constantine Buhayer

banking crisis, British Empire, business climate, centre right, COVID-19, financial independence, glass ceiling, Google Earth, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, lockdown, low cost airline, offshore financial centre, open economy, Skype, women in the workforce, young professional

Clearly there are laws and social order, but, he said, “the law here is not a strict procedure.” Though a political minority pushes for partition, the fact that many Turks benefit hugely from the unregulated status of the North indicates that Ankara would prefer it to be a Turkish Hong Kong. Business Climate and Meetings There are no short meetings—they can last one, two, or five hours. They usually end when the boss wraps it up. The managing director makes sure everyone is fed and contented. Personal relationships trump colleague relationships. Some people can have such good personal skills that it distracts from fact that they don’t have the required competence, and they may go high up the ladder.

The Global Citizen: A Guide to Creating an International Life and Career by Elizabeth Kruempelmann

Berlin Wall, business climate, corporate governance, different worldview, Fall of the Berlin Wall, follow your passion, global village, job satisfaction, Menlo Park, money market fund, Nelson Mandela, young professional

I didn’t get rich, but the experience made up for it in full. Read more about Elizabeth Kruempelmann’s international experiences in chapters two, five, and seven. This is an excellent online connection to chamber of commerce offices worldwide that can provide you with information about local business climates. • Learn the Language Among the things you should do sooner rather than later is get signed up for a language class, if necessary. If you wait too long, you’ll get too much in the habit of speaking English. University courses are cheap and allow you to meet locals. You could also arrange a language exchange with a local student who gives you an hour of language lessons in exchange for an hour of English lessons.

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If you want an expat-type package, working overseas might be the only way to get it. Otherwise, you’ll have to mold your expectations to the current job market at home. That’s reality. H O M E S W E E T H O M E : R E PAT R I AT I O N R E A L I T Y 351 A final challenge is when you find yourself job hunting in a changed business climate. This is precisely why keeping your network alive throughout your life is important. You never know when and who you may need to call on. You might have left during an economic boom and returned during a recession, or vice versa. Your company could have been restructured and key colleagues might have left the firm, or your company might have grown and added a lot of new employees with whom you must now build new relationships.

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos

affirmative action, Berlin Wall, business climate, cuban missile crisis, friendly fire, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Strategic Defense Initiative, upwardly mobile, Yom Kippur War

I left unspoken the obvious fact that I could not be taking over at a worse time, in the sour aftermath of the Vietnam War, when defense spending was about as low as military morale, and we were down to fifteen hundred workers from a high of six thousand five years earlier. The Ford administration still had two years to run, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was acting like a guy with battery problems on his hearing aid when it came to listening to any pitches for new airplanes. And to add anxiety to a less than promising business climate, Lockheed was then teetering on the edge of corporate and moral bankruptcy in the wake of a bribery scandal, which first surfaced the year before I took over and threatened to bring down nearly half a dozen governments around the world. Lockheed executives admitted paying millions in bribes over more than a decade to the Dutch (Crown Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana, in particular), to key Japanese and West German politicians, to Italian officials and generals, and to other highly placed figures from Hong Kong to Saudi Arabia, in order to get them to buy our airplanes.

…

Going “skunky” is a very practical way to take modest risks, provided that top management is willing to surrender oversight in exchange for a truly independent operation that can make everyone look good if its technology innovations really catch on, as with stealth. By keeping low overhead and modest investment, a Skunk Works failure is an acceptable research and development risk to top management. Frankly, in today’s austere business climate I don’t think a Skunk Works would be feasible if it could not rely on the resources of the parent entity to supply the facilities, tools, and workers for a particular project and then return them to the main plant when the task is completed. But given the right project and motivation, even the usually rigid corporate controls dominating Detroit automakers can benefit enormously from a Skunk Works–style operation for new product research and development, as Ford Motor Company proved recently in producing a new model of its classic Mustang automobile.

Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen, Franck Nouyrigat

Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, business climate, fail fast, hockey-stick growth, invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, pattern recognition, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, transaction costs, web application, Y Combinator

Users of the site are able to upload pictures of any object they find to a database via a mobile app, while others are able to search for missing objects on the website. Additionally, the whole service is being provided free of charge. We read recently about something called the Legatum Prosperity Index—a global study that looks at the business climates in a variety of countries. We were not surprised to find that a country's ability to foster a climate of entrepreneurship has a significant effect on that country's overall well-being. An atmosphere of trust is at the heart of both. It can be scary trying to be an entrepreneur. But we need to help people come together and move beyond that feeling.

Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States by Francis Fukuyama

Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business climate, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, crony capitalism, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, land reform, land tenure, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, New Urbanism, oil shock, open economy, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

If we undertake a rapid overview, looking not at the U.S. case but at countries with an even higher tax burden of direct and progressive taxes, such as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, we can find, based on international comparisons, that the force applied to the taxpayer does not appear to have a negative impact on the business climate nor on initiative for Why Institutions Matter 261 establishing new firms.60 This means, then, that the better the guarantee of property rights, the greater the likelihood that taxes will not be evaded. This does not mean that the above-mentioned countries are free of serious fiscal problems.

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See Antonio María Hernández, Daniel Zovatto, and Manuel Mora y Araujo, Argentina una sociedad anómica: Encuesta de cultura constitucional (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, 2005), pp. 81ff. 60. For example, see the study by the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006: Creating Jobs (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006). This situation also has to do with the business climate, for it is affected by the high corporate taxes imposed on companies (typical of poor countries that do not tax individuals as much as in the rich countries), which create incentives for evasion. 61. With respect to this notion, see the second section, “El desafío: De una democracia de electores a una democracia de ciudadanos,” of United Nations Development Program, La democracia en América Latina: Hacia una democracia de ciudadanos y ciudadanas (New York: UNDP, 2004), pp. 33ff. 62.

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business climate, business cycle, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, desegregation, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, John Bogle, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, moral hazard, Nate Silver, new economy, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, very high income, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

Within a few years, it was evident to all involved that the established legal framework for recognizing unions—the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA—placed few real limits on increasingly vigorous antiunion activities. Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1984, a prominent “union avoidance” consultant observed that the “current government and business climate presents a unique opportunity for companies… to develop and implement long-term plans for conducting business in a union-free environment.” The “critical test,” he continued, was whether corporations had the “intellectual discipline and foresight to capitalize on this rare moment in our history.”29 They did.

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Indeed, from the beginning, just as the DLC’s membership was limited to elected officials, its base of support was similarly select… In that sense, the DLC was an elite organization in every regard.31 The DLC’s economic message stressed the need for adjustment to “the new realities of the postindustrial global economy.” It emphasized that government should work with a soft touch to foster a strong business climate, promoting free trade and investments in technology, infrastructure, and training to enhance the productivity of the workforce.32 Perhaps most significant, the DLC placed heavy stress on deficit reduction as a key element of economic policy. Moreover, DLC leaders framed the deficit issue in a way that is now familiar but was at the time a substantial change, identifying “entitlements” as the biggest problem.

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities by Michael Shellenberger

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, business climate, centre right, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark triade / dark tetrad, defund the police, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, gentrification, George Floyd, Golden Gate Park, green new deal, Haight Ashbury, housing crisis, Housing First, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, mandatory minimum, Marc Benioff, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peoples Temple, Peter Pan Syndrome, pill mill, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, South of Market, San Francisco, Steven Pinker, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, walkable city

And we started finding people passed out on the sidewalk, sometimes with their pants around their knees. But none of these problems started with the pandemic. Between 2008 and 2019, eighteen thousand companies, including Toyota, Charles Schwab, and Hewlett-Packard, fled California due to a constellation of problems sometimes summarized as “poor business climate.”1 California has the highest income tax, highest gasoline tax, and highest sales tax in the United States, spends significantly more than other states on homelessness, and yet has worse outcomes.2 “I came out here in 1983,” said HBO’s Bill Maher to Representative Adam Schiff in the fall of 2020.

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See contingency management Bellisario, Jeff, 245 Benioff, Marc, 4–5, 6, 31, 32, 35, 263–264 Berg, Steve, 37, 82 Berlinn, Jacqui and son Corey, 20–21, 26, 79, 82, 288–289, 290 Berne, Eric, 142–143 Best, Carmen, 172–176, 189, 198–199, 202–204 Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 181–182 Biden, Hunter, 246 Biden, Joe, 42, 246–247 Bigg, Dan, 66–67 Black Lives Matter movement, 165, 173–176, 189, 207, 208, 242, 256 Boden, Paul, 64, 124, 135 Boston, 6, 20, 36 Boudin, Chesa, 137–138, 155, 170, 189, 193–195, 229 Bratton, William, 200 Breed, London, 2, 4, 22, 23, 31, 89, 93, 111, 191, 238 Britt, Harry, 228 Brown, Jerry, 148, 192, 221, 222, 248 Brown, Willie homeless population and, 14, 24, 26, 82, 113–114 Jim Jones and, 219, 220, 222, 223–224 Burton, John, 221 Bush, George W., 10 California companies’ leaving due to “poor business climate,” xiv demographic age of voters, 255 drug laws in, 47 new state agency proposed for. See Cal-Psych as political swing state, 247–248 western frontier culture and individualism in, 257–259, 284, 286 California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), 251 Cal-Psych (proposed new state agency), 267–275 drug addiction and, 270, 271 homelessness and, 270–271, 274 law enforcement and, 271–272 mental illness and, 268–270, 271 money to fund, 272 possible opposition to, 272–273 Campos, David, 189 Canada, 66, 165 capitalism Foucault and, 183 Marx and, 213–214 “Care Not Cash” ballot measure, 15, 19 caring, differing progressive and conservative interpretations of, 211, 224 Carter, Jimmy, 11, 55, 148 Carter, Rosalynn, 221 Center for Policing Equity, 169 Cheema, Boona, 12, 121, 280–281 Chicago cash payment to homeless, 18, 19 homeless in, 6, 7, 11 overdose deaths and, 43 Chicoine, Louis, 33, 37, 120, 121 Chomsky, Noam, 261 civilization and cities, generally anarchy, disorder, and loss of freedoms in, 282–285 behavioral expectations and, 262 criminal justice and, 262–263 need for citizens to speak out against decline of, 287–290 progressive discourse and degrading of, 229–235, 247 redevelopment’s benefits to dignity and society, 277–280 values and conditions in, 261–discourse and degrading of life in, 229–235, 247265 Clark, Cory, 142, 143 Clinton, Bill, 42, 47, 128 Coalition on Homelessness, in San Francisco, 4, 11, 14–15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 31, 124, 210, 212–213, 240, 242, 281 Collison, Patrick, 4, 263–265 Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 213–215 Congressional Black Caucus, 42 conservatives ceding issue of homelessness to progressives, 248–250, 258 interpretations of Moral Foundations Theory, 211–213, 215, 224, 261 mental illness and housing, 267 conservatorship, mental illness and, 109–114, 120–121, 240, 246, 268–270, 272 Content of Our Character, The (Steele), 143 contingency management, mental illness and, 114–116, 258 Cops Across (Nadelmann), 45–46 COVID-19 California prison population reductions and, xiv, 22 deaths from, compared to overdose deaths, 290 disruption caused by, 267 harm reduction and, 163–164 hotel housing without accountability, 240–241, 244 housing scarcity and, 254 reopening of public schools in San Francisco and, 237–238 social safety net funding increase and, 130–131 crime and policing good policing and crime reduction, 199–202 homicides and, 176–177, 179–182, 194–200 hostility toward police, 205–206 law and order policies in 1970s to 1990s, 186–187 police violence and racism, 163–172 property crimes and, 179, 192–194 protests and autonomous zones, 172–176, 189–192, 202–203 public belief in government’s legitimacy and, 181, 183, 197 rise and fall of crime rates, 179–182 shrinking police forces, 204–206 “swift, certain, and fair” probation programs and, 201–202 see also law enforcement; prisons Crook, Jamie, 80, 117 Culhane, Dennis, 23, 38, 135, 244 Cuomo, Chris, 174 D’Amato, Al, 45 Dark Triad, of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, 146–147, 218 Davis, Angela, 222 de Blasio, Bill, 205 Death and Life of Great American Cities, The (Jacobs), 13 Defoe, Daniel, 102 Discipline and Punish (Foucault), 182 Dix, Dorothea, 102–103 Dorsey, Jack, 4 drug addiction abstinence-contingent housing and, 36–37 Amsterdam’s combination of law enforcement and social services, 73–77, 114, 115, 265–266 and burdens put on cities, 50–51 California’s discouraging tobacco use but allowing advertising of drugs, 62–63 decriminalization and, 45–49, 53, 55, 64, 66, 69–71, 73, 150, 189, 235, 242, 249, 266, 282 disaffiliation as result of, 13–14, 59–62, 259 displacement, poverty, and racism seen as roots of, 63–67 falling drug prices and, 46 harm reduction approach to, 35–36, 45–48, 56–58, 63–71, 150, 229, 247–249, 274 homelessness and, 7–9, 12–14, 20–24, 35, 44, 76–77, 240 mandatory treatment issues, 67–69, 77–83, 213 mental illness and, 90–91, 98 overdose deaths and, 42–44, 47–54, 56, 63–71, 83, 125, 246, 266–267, 289–290 proposed Cal-Psych agency and, 270, 271 unused housing services and, 22–24 drug courts, 54, 58, 69, 271 Drug Use for Grown-Ups (Hart), 70 Durkan, Jenny, 192 Earned Income Tax Credit, 127–129 Eide, Stephen, 249, 267, 275, 280 Emile (Rousseau), 151–152 Engels, Friedrich, 213 Euphemia (hospital ship), 103 fairness, differing progressive and conservative interpretations of, 211–212, 224, 261 Feinstein, Dianne, 87, 227–229 Fewer, Sandra Lee, 189 Floyd, George, death of and reactions to, xiii, 165, 172, 173, 175, 191–192, 208 Fonda, Jane, 184 Foote, Laura, 253, 254, 256 Ford, Gerald, 11 Foucault, Michel individual responsibility as myth, 141 Jim Jones and, 226 mental illness treatment and, 105–106, 108, 113 power of language and, 229–230 radical prison movement and, 182, 184–185, 190 sexuality and, 236 Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, 285 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 101, 217 Frankl, Viktor, 139–140, 143–144, 283, 284, 286 free will, human motivation and personal responsibility, 139–144, 155–158 freedom progressive and conservative interpretations of, 283–284 responsibility and, 286 Freud, Sigmund, 139 Friedenbach, Jennifer criticism of Safe Sleeping Sites, 242 homeless as victims and, 123–124, 125, 212, 260 impact on public policy, 260 on Newsom, 240 Proposition C and, 11, 31, 263 on shelters, 24, 27–29 see also Coalition on Homeless Fryer, Roland, 166, 168–169, 172, 197 Garcetti, Eric, 28 Garrow, Eve, 117–118 Ginsberg, Allen, 54–55 Glide Memorial Church, 19, 63, 69, 221, 227 Goffman, Erving, 106 Gong, Neil, 67–68, 113 Gowan, Teresa, 44, 134, 136, 149, 156, 159 Gramsci, Antonio, 214 Grateful Dead, 184 Haidt, Jonathan, 211, 216, 261–262, 284 Haney, Matt, 21, 81, 93, 111, 189, 242 Harm Reduction Coalition, 25, 46, 62, 64, 66, 78, 123, 212 influence on policies, 242–243 Harris, Kamala, 197, 246–247 Hart, Carl L., 70 Harvard Public Heath Review study, 169 Hawaii, 3, 201, 251 Herring, Chris, 21, 29, 31, 52, 61–62, 281 High Point, NC, 200 Hippocrates, 101 History of Sexuality (Foucault), 236 Hobbes, Thomas, 182 homeless population camping equipment given to, 18 cash payments to, 18–19 chronic increase in San Francisco’s, but decline in nation’s, 5–7, 10–11 conservatives ceding issue of homelessness to progressives, 248–250 costs to cities, 209–211, 250, 244, 245, 264 deaths rates and health issues of, 33–36 drawn to California for climate, housing, and drugs, 3–5, 8, 19–22 drug addiction and, 7–9, 12–14, 20–24, 35, 44, 76–77, 240 homelessness as choice, 131–135 homelessness blamed on poverty, trauma, and racism despite social networks and declines in all three, 123–131 “homelessness” discourse, but lack of treatment for, 135–139, 259–260 HUD definition of chronic homelessness, 6 increase in San Francisco’s, but decline nationally, 239 mental illness and, 8, 13, 33, 36, 89–90, 98–99, 109, 231–233, 240 ongoing attempts to provide housing for, 9–15 Persecutor-Victim-Rescuer “game” and, 144–150 progressive discourse about and degrading of civilized life, 229–235, 247 progressives and right to camp in public places, 17–18 progressives see as victims, 24–26 proposed Cal-Psych agency and, 270–271 shelters for, cost of alternatives to, 30–32 shelter for, need for responsible behavior at, 280–281 shelters for, opposition to, 27–32 supportive housing options for, 10–11, 13, 15, 23, 29–37, 77, 86, 241, 243, 247 unsheltered homeless in California, xv, 3–6, 8–11, 28–31, 37–38, 90, 135, 225 homeless population, failure of programs for COVID-19 and hotel housing without accountability, 240–241, 244 lack of leadership and, 244–245 liberal influences on policies, 242–244, 245 neoliberal model of outsourcing services, 243–244 Safe Sleeping Sites and, 241–242 transience of homeless, 243 Housing First cash payments to homeless and, 18–19 conservatives and, 249 dogmatism of, 30, 38 failure to address drug addiction or mental illness, 33–38, 80, 117, 144, 258, 281 housing without conditions and, 9–11, 58 influence on policies, 243, 245, 274 Newsom’s commitment to, 241 opposition to shelters, 28–32, 274, 281 progressives and, 229, 247 housing issues, in California costs, lack of availability, and opposition to building more (NIMBYism), 251–256 immigrants and citizens and move toward progressivism, 248 proposal to end tax credits for uneconomic farms and ranches, 279–280 voter support for enforcement of laws, 281–282 YIMBY movement and, 253–256, 279 How to Increase Homelessness (Roberts), 209 Hughes, Coleman, 285 Humphreys, Dr.

Rendezvous With Oblivion: Reports From a Sinking Society by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, call centre, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, edge city, fake news, Frank Gehry, high net worth, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, McMansion, military-industrial complex, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Nader, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Steve Bannon, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, too big to fail, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Works Progress Administration

But even if NAFTA is mostly reaffirmed in the end, Trump could use the negotiations to dissuade employers from offshoring jobs—or merely single out some random company and hit it with substantial fines for doing so. That, too, could change the wage equation. Again: it wouldn’t take much, given a business climate like the present, to have some effect. Of course, all of this assumes that Trump’s rhetoric in 2016 was sincere: that he really means to be the country’s “blue-collar billionaire” and to stop what he called, in his famous (if awkward) simile, an “American carnage” of “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.”

India's Long Road by Vijay Joshi

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, blue-collar work, book value, Bretton Woods, business climate, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, congestion charging, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Induced demand, inflation targeting, invisible hand, land reform, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, obamacare, Pareto efficiency, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, universal basic income, urban sprawl, vertical integration, working-age population

There have been both positive and negative opinions expressed by observers but movement is certainly pointed in the right direction.14 The Department of Industrial Policy is working closely with state governments to help identify constraints on business freedom. A ‘commercial courts bill’ is said to be in the works to set up judicial mechanisms for quicker resolution of commercial disputes. But no improvement has been reported on a major spoiler of the business climate, viz. the arbitrary and high-​handed behaviour of the tax authorities. The government has announced a phased reduction in the corporation tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent over the next few years, along with rationalization/​removal of unnecessary exemptions. This will be a step forward if and when it comes to pass.15 There has been significant liberalization in the limits and procedures for foreign direct investment (see below).

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This will be a step forward if and when it comes to pass.15 There has been significant liberalization in the limits and procedures for foreign direct investment (see below). This is all to the good but the government’s emphasis on ‘ease of doing business’ should not obscure an obvious point: improving the business climate will also depend on making a success of other aspects of the reform process, such as rectifying infrastructure deficits and making factor markets function more smoothly. A more immediate problem is that an investment revival is being hampered by the debt overhang in large parts of the corporate sector and the impaired financial position of the public sector banks (PSBs).

The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski

business climate, Charles Babbage, Douglas Hofstadter, Ford Model T, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Khartoum Gordon, Lewis Mumford, Menlo Park, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen

Nevertheless, the government agents and spies are constantly tracing their lineage and former careers, and insisting on their being turned into the streets to make room for the genuine proletariat. As the introduction of capitalism through profit sharing and piecework began to come under fire in the Russian press, there were also other indications that the business climate was changing. The difficulty of obtaining financing in a worsening world economy and the new attitudes of the Soviets toward foreign interests made it a good time to begin negotiating with the Russians for the sale of the factories to the government. Besides, complaints in the press about the large profits of the plants had forced Hammer to drop the prices of his pencils even further.

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Walter Thompson advertising agency explaining the “severance of our business relationship.” It was not the fault of either the agency or its representative, but rather was because Faber was “not in a position to do a sufficient amount of advertising to warrant your continuing to serve us.” In spite of the dark business climate, the company’s five-cent tipped yellow pencil floats proudly in a bright cloud on the letterhead, and the sales manager’s signature, which slants optimistically upward, is signed decisively in pencil, perhaps a Mongol. The Eberhard Faber Mongol in 1932, as it appeared on the company’s letterhead (photo credit 19.2) In 1931 Johann Faber, A.

Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism by Sharon Beder

American Legislative Exchange Council, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, business climate, centre right, clean water, corporate governance, Exxon Valdez, Gary Taubes, global village, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, laissez-faire capitalism, military-industrial complex, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, old-boy network, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, two and twenty, urban planning

Take, for example, the following Mobil ad: Business, generally, is a good neighbour, and most communities recognize this fact. . .From time to time, out of political motivations or for reasons of radical chic, individuals try to chill the business climate. On such occasions we try to set the record straight. . . And the American system, of which business is an integral part, usually adapts. . . So when it comes to the business climate, we’re glad that most people recognize there’s little need to tinker with the American system.70 Many other companies use advocacy ads, including Union Carbide, the Chase Manhattan Bank, W. R. Grace and Co. and Bethlehem Steel.

Brit-Myth: Who Do the British Think They Are? by Chris Rojek

Bob Geldof, British Empire, business climate, colonial rule, deindustrialization, demand response, full employment, Gordon Gekko, Isaac Newton, Khartoum Gordon, Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, post-industrial society, public intellectual, Red Clydeside, sceptred isle, Stephen Hawking, the market place, urban planning, Winter of Discontent

The ‘Third Way’ principles espoused and practised by New Labour sought to generate relevant policies to deal with the central dilemmas of globalization, the new individualism (the retreat of custom and precedent as arbiters of life choice), ecological risks, multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity. The Third Way relied on evidence-based research to identify problems requiring state intervention. The same mechanism was used to monitor the practice of regulation and provide transparency and accountability to the public. A positive business climate for corporations and individual enterprise was encouraged. New Labour’s revitalization of the market principles introduced 182 BRIT-MYTH into the public sector during the Thatcher/Major years symbolized the break with Old Labour policies of centralized management and high taxation. The concordat of 1945 promised a stable new Britain organized around the welfare state.

The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism by Noam Chomsky

anti-communist, business climate, colonial rule, death from overwork, declining real wages, deliberate practice, disinformation, European colonialism, friendly fire, Gini coefficient, guns versus butter model, income inequality, income per capita, land bank, land reform, land tenure, low interest rates, military-industrial complex, new economy, RAND corporation, Seymour Hersh, strikebreaker, systematic bias, union organizing

U.S. economic interests in the Third World have dictated a policy of containing revolution, preserving an open door for U.S. investment, and assuring favorable conditions of investment. Reformist efforts to improve the lot of the poor and oppressed, including the encouragement of independent trade unions, are not conducive to a favorable climate of investment. Democracy is clearly not conducive to a favorable business climate. As noted by Edward A. Jesser, Jr., chairman of the United Jersey Banks, in a speech to the American Bankers Association: “Quick and tough decisions can be made in a relatively short time in a country such as Brazil compared to the difficulty there is in reaching agreement on what actions to take in a democracy.”39 So much for democracy.

…

Grant finds U.S. support for the bloodier dictators “puzzling,” though she notes that “North American, British, and Dutch Oil Companies, vying for prerogatives in Latin America, found dictatorships highly amenable to their courtships.” There is nothing “puzzling” in the support of Nazi-style dictatorships by the country that has taken upon itself the international role of maintaining a favorable climate for oil companies and other corporations. The business climate of Paraguay has not been ideal, with corruption and terror of almost suffocating levels, but on such details the United States is tolerant—especially since, as Arens was informed by his hosts in Paraguay, Stroessner’s is a very anti-Communist regime which “tolerated no iron-curtain embassies or missions and was a haven for U.S. investment, which was not subject to the fluctuations of less carefully regulated markets like North America.”66 Well-taken points.

Road to ruin: an introduction to sprawl and how to cure it by Dom Nozzi

Boeing 747, business climate, car-free, congestion pricing, Donald Shoup, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, New Urbanism, Parkinson's law, place-making, Ray Oldenburg, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, skinny streets, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, transit-oriented development, urban decay, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, zero-sum game

Most of us are, after all, using our car travel to isolate and wall off ourselves in suburbia from the in-town threat of “strangers,” and sidewalks potentially attract unknown characters to our street. Notwithstanding nationwide examples of how traffic-taming practices (such as narrowing roads) result in overnight improvements to the business climate of a street, businessperson after businessperson vociferously opposes local government effort to create a more livable street. Conservative and liberal alike, we join hands to support road widening and oppose road narrowing—to “ease congestion.” (Ironically, in the face of efforts to restrain excessive, reckless car travel, which are actually in the best interests of the motoring public, our knee-jerk, “commonsense” conclusion is that such restraint is detrimental.

The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News,in Politics, and inLife by Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot

Atul Gawande, business climate, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, happiness index / gross national happiness, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), moral panic, pension reform, pensions crisis, randomized controlled trial, school choice, very high income

It was judged incorrect in temperate countries, correct in very cold countries (where putting in “more windows” was assumed to mean more layers of glazing—triple-glazing is common), and a stupid question in very hot countries (why would you want to stop heat from escaping from a building?). International rankings are proliferating. We can now read how the United States compares with other countries on quality of governance, business climate, health, education, transport, and innovation, to name a few, as well as more frivolous surveys like an international happiness index—”the world grump league,” as one tabloid reported it. “Welcome,” says Christopher Hood from Oxford University, who leads a research project into international comparisons, “to Ranking World.”

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market by John Allen Paulos

Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Brownian motion, business climate, business cycle, butter production in bangladesh, butterfly effect, capital asset pricing model, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversified portfolio, dogs of the Dow, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elliott wave, endowment effect, equity risk premium, Erdős number, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, four colour theorem, George Gilder, global village, greed is good, index fund, intangible asset, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, Larry Ellison, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, mental accounting, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, passive investing, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Robert Shiller, short selling, six sigma, Stephen Hawking, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, transaction costs, two and twenty, ultimatum game, UUNET, Vanguard fund, Yogi Berra

Whatever the validity of these beliefs and of technical analysis in general (and I’ll get to this shortly), I must admit to an a priori distaste for the herdish behavior it often seems to counsel: Figure out where the pack is going and follow it. It was this distaste, perhaps, that prevented me from selling WCOM and that caused me to sputter continually to myself that the company was the victim of bad public relations, investor misunderstanding, media bashing, anger at the CEO, a poisonous business climate, unfortunate timing, or panic selling. In short, I thought the crowd was wrong and hated the idea that it must be obeyed. As I slowly learned, however, disdaining the crowd is sometimes simply hubris. Technical Analysis: Following the Followers My own prejudices aside, the justification for technical analysis is murky at best.

Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win by Chris Kuenne, John Danner

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset light, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bob Noyce, business climate, business logic, call centre, cloud computing, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gordon Gekko, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, pattern recognition, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, sugar pill, super pumped, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, work culture , zero-sum game

As Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, this young woman from New Jersey could intuitively sense the market opportunity. Companies that were emerging from the desolation of the Soviet-style command economy toward a market-driven one needed advice and guidance on capital sourcing and restructuring. This market-sensing and gutsy woman launched her business in an industry—and business climate—dominated by men. As described earlier, Spengler has all the dynamism, confidence, and tenacity of the Driver. But she has considerably more. She has emerged as a master builder, taking on the mission awareness of the Crusader and the advanced leadership skills of a Captain. In many respects, Spengler’s motivation was that of a Crusader: “I wanted to contribute to a world that is not bifurcated between commercial results and philanthropy,” she says, “but rather to advance business models and enable people to see that the world can be a blend of the best of both.”

Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future by Johan Norberg

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, availability heuristic, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, carbon tax, classic study, clean water, continuation of politics by other means, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, demographic transition, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, Flynn Effect, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Island, Hans Rosling, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, Kibera, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, more computing power than Apollo, moveable type in China, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, open economy, place-making, Rosa Parks, sexual politics, special economic zone, Steven Pinker, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transatlantic slave trade, very high income, working poor, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

In the 1980s they suffered a debt crisis, and it has taken the region a long time to recover. Between 1981 and 2000, while the East Asian economy doubled in size, the African economy did not grow at all. However, many African countries brought spending and inflation under control and began to improve the business climate. Many armed conflicts ended. Since then, growth has picked up strongly. A continent once synonymous with stagnation has grown by around five per cent annually since 2000. It is often assumed that this was just a commodity boom, but natural resources generated just a third of the growth, with the rest coming from sectors such as manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation and retail.

Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era? by David de Cremer

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bitcoin, blockchain, business climate, business process, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, future of work, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, race to the bottom, robotic process automation, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, Turing test, work culture , workplace surveillance , zero-sum game

The reality of running an organization in the future will be that the more algorithms take over management, the more we will need leadership to bring in human judgment to help set priorities. If this is the case, then we see a similar story emerge, as we did in the past, where we emphasized that the running of an organization requires managers and leaders to work together to create both innovative and sustainable ways of doing business. In today’s business climate, we again see this pattern emerge through algorithms taking care of management and humans accounting for the leadership responsibilities. This idea indicates that the way to run organizations in the future will be to follow a collaboration model, where algorithms and humans jointly create value.

Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself From Harmful People by Joe Navarro, Toni Sciarra Poynter

Bernie Madoff, business climate, call centre, Columbine, delayed gratification, impulse control, Louis Pasteur, Norman Mailer, Peoples Temple, Ponzi scheme, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh

The “BTK killer” Dennis Rader was a church leader and a reliable city employee who used his knowledge of the city and the mobility his job afforded him to target his victims. Then there are the corporate predators, who can be found in large institutions as well as in two-person operations. Some say that today’s business climate, particularly the high-stakes, cutthroat world of finance, attracts and rewards predatory behavior. These individuals may be charismatic and interesting, but they can also place a company at risk through their impulsive, aggressive behavior. That’s exactly what Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are famous for having done at Enron.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport

8-hour work day, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business climate, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, David Brooks, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, digital divide, disruptive innovation, do what you love, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, Hacker News, Higgs boson, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jaron Lanier, knowledge worker, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Merlin Mann, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Nicholas Carr, popular electronics, power law, remote working, Richard Feynman, Ruby on Rails, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, statistical model, the medium is the message, Tyler Cowen, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , zero-sum game

In such a culture, we should not be surprised that deep work struggles to compete against the shiny thrum of tweets, likes, tagged photos, walls, posts, and all the other behaviors that we’re now taught are necessary for no other reason than that they exist. Bad for Business. Good for You. Deep work should be a priority in today’s business climate. But it’s not. I’ve just summarized various explanations for this paradox. Among them are the realities that deep work is hard and shallow work is easier, that in the absence of clear goals for your job, the visible busyness that surrounds shallow work becomes self-preserving, and that our culture has developed a belief that if a behavior relates to “the Internet,” then it’s good—regardless of its impact on our ability to produce valuable things.

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida

Abraham Maslow, active measures, assortative mating, back-to-the-city movement, barriers to entry, big-box store, blue-collar work, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, Celebration, Florida, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, dark matter, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic transition, edge city, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, extreme commuting, financial engineering, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, invention of the telegraph, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, megacity, new economy, New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, post-work, power law, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, urban planning, World Values Survey, young professional

The status quo orientation and don’t-rock-the-boat values of those regions may damp down creativity and innovation in those regions as well as encourage an out migration of the open types who tend to be the source of new creative energy and innovation. Thus the longer-run issues facing these regions may have as much to do with their psychological makeup, or what Rentfrow calls their “psychosocial environment,” as their business climate and economic structure. There are several other reasons why personalities might cluster. The first of these, as Rentfrow and Gosling explain, has to do with the physical environment. It is widely acknowledged that physical environments shape cultures and societies. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond points out the physical attributes that shaped the propulsive growth of northern Europe.

Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes by Mark Skousen

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, delayed gratification, experimental economics, financial independence, Financial Instability Hypothesis, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, liberation theology, liquidity trap, low interest rates, means of production, Meghnad Desai, microcredit, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, pushing on a string, rent control, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, Tragedy of the Commons, unorthodox policies, Vilfredo Pareto, zero-sum game

Keynes Offers a Drastic Measure to Stabilize Capitalism The Cambridge leader was not satisfied with temporary measures such as public works and deficit spending to reestablish full employment. Once maximum output was reached, he reasoned, there is no reason to believe it will stay there. Investment is unpredictable and ephemeral, Keynes said. Long-term expectations, a stable business climate, and savings equal to investment could never be guaranteed as long as irrational "animal spirits" operated in a laissez-faire financial marketplace. What was Keynes's solution? He favored a gradual but comprehensive "socialisation of investment" as the "only means of securing an approximation to full employment" (1973a, 378).

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor

Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, Community Supported Agriculture, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, deskilling, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, Gini coefficient, global village, Herman Kahn, IKEA effect, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jevons paradox, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, life extension, McMansion, new economy, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, peak oil, pink-collar, post-industrial society, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, smart grid, systematic bias, systems thinking, The Chicago School, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Environmental protection has been pitted against growth, incomes, jobs, and well-being. The thinking has been short-term, and the basic assumption is that interventions do not shift the frontier out but either move us along it or, even worse, push us inside by skewing incentives and undermining the business climate. Is the assumption that we’re on the curve with respect to ecological limits the right one? Since the downturn began, the answer has obviously been no. In a recession, workers are idle, businesses are running below capacity, and we’re operating inside the frontier. That’s why there were fewer economists than usual opposing stimulus dollars for green-jobs proposals.

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital by Kimberly Clausing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, climate change refugee, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, fake news, floating exchange rates, full employment, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, investor state dispute settlement, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, uber lyft, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, zero-sum game

A healthy business community generates good job opportunities, a steady stream of innovation, and a dizzying array of affordable consumer options. A healthy, prosperous society helps business, providing thriving customer markets, a well-educated labor force, and the stable, inclusive institutions and policies that make for a good business climate. Is New Zealand the Best Place to do Business? According to the World Bank, New Zealand is the best place to start a business, and the easiest place to run one.1 But if you are unprepared to move across the world, don’t despair: the United States does well by many measures. The United States ranked sixth for ease of doing business, and the World Economic Forum determined that the United States is the world’s second most competitive economy.2 The US rank is buttressed by highly sophisticated businesses, a huge market, innovation, and strong institutions of higher education, overcoming the negative effects of relatively poor infrastructure and primary education. ________________________ 1.  

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, business climate, business cycle, circulation of elites, classic study, clean water, David Graeber, declining real wages, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, East Village, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, Google Glasses, Hyman Minsky, Hyperloop, income inequality, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, security theater, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, working-age population, World Values Survey

As early as mid-September 2015, the total value of large (over $10 billion) transactions reached $1.19 trillion, breaking the previous record from the dot-com bubble of 1999. So the cash piles of corporations are going somewhere, just not always into creating new ideas. Companies would rather buy up other, already established companies than try to succeed with new ideas or their own new product lines. That is another sign of how our contemporary business climate, like our broader society, is more about stability than most media stories let on.14 FEWER AMERICANS DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN INNOVATION Another way of thinking about corporate innovation is to look at how much companies spend explicitly toward that goal, namely research and development expenditures.

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bernie Sanders, Biosphere 2, Black Lives Matter, business climate, Cambridge Analytica, Carl Icahn, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, coherent worldview, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate raider, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data science, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, hype cycle, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Jim Simons, junk bonds, liberation theology, low skilled workers, machine translation, Michael Milken, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, obamacare, open immigration, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, quantitative hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, urban planning, vertical integration

He presides over the corruption and lack of progress that is Albany. While there is plenty of good news here for Cuomo, there is little guarantee that he will escape the misfortunes of 2014 that may be visited on Democrats (thanks to Obamacare), and his own man-made problems plaguing New York (including high taxes and a poor business climate, and a “lack of frack”). Rather than kill off the idea of Trump running for governor, Conway’s memo had the opposite effect. “She thought that it was possible for him to win New York,” said Caputo. Stone called Conway’s analysis “an enormous crock of shit,” and Bossie a “major douchebag devoid of any political talent—and that’s on the record.”

Au Contraire: Figuring Out the French by Gilles Asselin, Ruth Mastron

affirmative action, business climate, feminist movement, haute cuisine, old-boy network, rolodex, Rosa Parks

They need to show you they are made of stern intellectual stuff, and they usually do this in a combative, in-your-face way. Paradoxically, they can also be charming while they’re doing it. The French usually begin a business negotiation by “setting the stage” with a series of general considerations and statements before getting down to the details. For example, they want to discuss the general business climate, economic trends, market conditions, competing companies, and industry sales figures before discussing the financial details of the proposal. The inclusion of considerable background information is important to the French because they like to know exactly where they stand at all times, and where they are going.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton

Asperger Syndrome, Bernie Madoff, business climate, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, dark triade / dark tetrad, delayed gratification, epigenetics, Fellow of the Royal Society, G4S, impulse control, iterative process, John Nash: game theory, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, no-fly zone, Norman Mailer, Philippa Foot, place-making, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, trolley problem, ultimatum game

Investment scams, conflicts of interest, lapses of judgment, and those evergreen entrepreneurial party tricks of good old fraud and embezzlement are now utterly unprecedented. Both in scope and in fiscal magnitude. Corporate-governance analysts cite a confluence of reasons for today’s sullied business climate. Avarice, of course—the backbone of Gordon Gekkoism—is one of them. But also in the mix is so-called guerrilla accounting. As Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange expected continued gains and the speed and complexity of business increased exponentially, rule-bending and obfuscation suddenly became de rigueur.

The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality by Bhaskar Sunkara

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Bernie Sanders, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Donald Trump, equal pay for equal work, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, inventory management, Jeremy Corbyn, labor-force participation, land reform, land value tax, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Occupy movement, postindustrial economy, precariat, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, single-payer health, Steve Bannon, telemarketer, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, urban renewal, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%

“You can be a manager of capitalist society or a founder of a socialist society,” Mitterrand could say. “As far as we’re concerned, we want to be the second.”27 By the time Mitterrand took power with Communist support in 1981, France already faced growing unemployment, economic stagnation, and an unfavorable international business climate. Despite his rhetoric, Mitterrand’s immediate program was a radical Keynesian one. His “110 Propositions for France” proposed a public works program and the construction of social housing, nurseries, and clinics. The government’s early legislative victories expanded shop-floor union rights, along with codetermination measures.

Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity Into Prosperity by Bernard Lietaer, Jacqui Dunne

3D printing, 90 percent rule, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, clockwork universe, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, conceptual framework, credit crunch, different worldview, discounted cash flows, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, liberation theology, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, Occupy movement, price stability, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban decay, War on Poverty, working poor

At the moment we were ready to take off, there was a change in government,” recalls Van Arkel. Currently, what is operational in Uruguay and El Salvador is a subset version of the full-blown C3 program. Koen de Beer, project manager for STRO in El Salvador, makes an interesting observation about the business climate in South America in comparison with the United States or Europe. “Something that has fascinated me is there are so many businesses and entrepreneurial activities here. When I was living in Europe, you think about setting up a business, and after 10 minutes you decide not to do it because there are so many rules, regulations, and laws.

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath by Nicco Mele

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Carvin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, bread and circuses, business climate, call centre, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative editing, commoditize, Computer Lib, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, death of newspapers, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, global supply chain, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Hacker Ethic, Ian Bogost, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lolcat, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Mohammed Bouazizi, Mother of all demos, Narrative Science, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peer-to-peer, period drama, Peter Thiel, pirate software, public intellectual, publication bias, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, satellite internet, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, social web, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Ted Nelson, Ted Sorensen, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Zipcar

They didn’t understand the Internet’s power; it had no place in their landscape of power, and no familiar analogue existed that would make it easy to grasp. Mitch Kapor noted in an April 2012 interview, “Nobody in Washington DC took [the Internet] seriously, so it was allowed to happen. By the time anybody noticed, it had already won.”23 In effect, the Internet was released into the wild in a strong pro-business climate pushed by conservatives who wanted one big institution—government—to get out of free markets. The following year, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated the radio spectrum, allowing, among other things, the rise of huge media conglomerates like Clear Channel (paradoxical, I know).

The Zero-Waste Lifestyle: Live Well by Throwing Away Less by Amy Korst

airport security, Boeing 747, business climate, carbon footprint, delayed gratification, if you build it, they will come, Mason jar, messenger bag, microplastics / micro fibres, Parkinson's law

Customers can eat their meals with the real deal, then return used utensils to a station staffed by volunteers. The FSSM group has contracted with a food vendor that provides weekly washing in a commercial kitchen. So far, the utensils program has been a great success. The zero-waste movement is all about taking responsibility for one’s own trash, and this is a remarkable thing. In today’s business climate, in which profit reigns supreme, it is admirable for these many companies to stand up and collectively say they will work to clean up their own mess. Ultimately there are many benefits to adopting zero waste. After an initial transition period, zero-waste companies tend to operate with fewer expenses.

Birth of the Euro by Otmar Issing

accounting loophole / creative accounting, behavioural economics, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, currency peg, currency risk, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, full employment, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, money market fund, moral hazard, oil shock, open economy, price anchoring, price stability, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Robert Solow, Y2K, yield curve

In the short to medium term, prices are determined by non-monetary factors such as wages (unit labour costs), the exchange rate, energy and import prices, indirect taxes, etc. Indicators of developments in the real economy include data on employment and unemployment, data from surveys (such as the Ifo Business Climate Index), incoming orders, and so on. This economic analysis also encompasses financial sector data such as the yield curve, stock prices and real estate prices. Asset price trends can yield information, for example, on how the wealth effect is expected to influence the growth of demand of private households.

The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

assortative mating, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, business climate, call centre, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, corporate raider, creative destruction, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial innovation, gentrification, global village, hiring and firing, income inequality, industrial cluster, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, medical residency, Menlo Park, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Productivity paradox, Recombinant DNA, Richard Florida, Sand Hill Road, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Skype, Solyndra, special economic zone, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech worker, thinkpad, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Wall-E, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Path dependency and strong forces of agglomeration present serious challenges for communities without a well-educated labor force and an established innovation sector. Local governments can certainly lay a foundation for economic development and create all the necessary conditions for a city’s rebirth, including a business climate friendly to job creation, but there is no magic formula for redevelopment. Like politics, all innovation is local: each community has its own comparative advantage. Local governments must build on their existing capabilities by leveraging local strengths and expertise. The use of public funds to create jobs must be reserved for cases where there are important market failures and a community has a credible chance of building a self-sustaining cluster.

Au Contraire!: Figuring Out the French by Gilles Asselin, Ruth Mastron

affirmative action, business climate, feminist movement, haute cuisine, old-boy network, rolodex, Rosa Parks

They need to show you they are made of stern intellectual stuff, and they usually do this in a combative, in-your-face way. Paradoxically, they can also be charming while they’re doing it. The French usually begin a business negotiation by “setting the stage” with a series of general considerations and statements before getting down to the details. For example, they want to discuss the general business climate, economic trends, market conditions, competing companies, and industry sales figures before discussing the financial details of the proposal. The inclusion of considerable background information is important to the French because they like to know exactly where they stand at all times, and where they are going.

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

Most ingenious was the Swedish entrepreneur who managed to collect as many as thirty-eight different grants between 1997 and 2013.23 Imagine how much such inventive people could have contributed to the national economy if they had had incentives to seek markets instead of grants and were paid for innovations instead of capital destruction. All this turns industrial policy into a boulevard of broken dreams. What is so sad is that there are a number of initiatives that could create a much better business climate: legal security, efficient bureaucracies, good infrastructure, the freedom to build, good education systems and liberal labour immigration. Instead of investing energy and political capital in creating these conditions, politicians run off to pick specific business models to support. As Josh Lerner points out, it’s kind of like serving the main course without first setting the table – it allows you to focus on the most fun activity, but you ruin the whole dinner.

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, cognitive dissonance, continuous integration, Corn Laws, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, disinformation, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, gentrification, global reserve currency, guns versus butter model, Howard Zinn, junk bonds, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, liberation theology, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage tax deduction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Paul Samuelson, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Strategic Defense Initiative, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, systems thinking, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, wage slave, women in the workforce

It depends where you’re looking. You don’t win what you’d like to win, but you could have lost a lot more. For example, take El Salvador in the 1980s. The purpose of U.S. policies there was to wipe out the popular organizations and support a traditional Latin American-style regime that would ensure the kind of business climate we expect in the region. So the independent press was destroyed, the political opposition was murdered, priests and labor organizers were murdered, and so on and so forth—and U.S. planners figured they had the problem licked. Well, today it’s right back, it’s right back where it was. New people came up, the organizations are forming again.

…

So if you read the small left-wing press in the United States back in 1937, they were reporting this all the time, but the big American newspapers just have never had the resources to find out about things like this, so they never said a word. 63 I mean, years later people writing diplomatic history sort of mention these facts in the margins—but at the time there was nothing in the mainstream. 64 And that’s exactly what we just saw in Haiti: the American press would not tell people that the U.S. was actively undermining the sanctions, that there never were any sanctions, and that the U.S. was simply trying to get back the old pre-Aristide business climate once again—which was pretty much achieved. Averting Democracy in Italy MAN: Noam, since you mentioned the U.S. opposing popular democracy and supporting fascist-type structures in Spain and Haiti—I just want to point out that that also happened in Italy, France, Greece, and other allied Western countries after World War II.

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It by Richard Florida

affirmative action, Airbnb, back-to-the-city movement, basic income, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, blue-collar work, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, Columbine, congestion charging, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, East Village, edge city, Edward Glaeser, failed state, Ferguson, Missouri, gentrification, Gini coefficient, Google bus, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land value tax, low skilled workers, Lyft, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, mortgage tax deduction, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, occupational segregation, off-the-grid, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Graham, plutocrats, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, sovereign wealth fund, streetcar suburb, superstar cities, tech worker, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white flight, young professional

Instead, I told them, enduring success in the new people-driven, place-based economy turned on doing the smaller things that made cities great places to live and work—things like making sure there were walkable, pedestrian-friendly streets, bike lanes, parks, exciting art and music scenes, and vibrant areas where people could gather in cafés and restaurants. Cities needed more than a competitive business climate; they also needed a great people climate that appealed to individuals and families of all types—single, married, with children or without, straight or gay. In time, my work generated a considerable following among mayors, arts and cultural leaders, urbanists, and even some enlightened real estate developers who were looking for a better way to spur urban development in their communities.

Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets by John Plender

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computer age, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, diversification, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Golden arches theory, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, industrial research laboratory, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labour market flexibility, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, money market fund, moral hazard, moveable type in China, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit motive, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, too big to fail, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Veblen good, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

To the extent that systemic choices are available, they lie on a spectrum that runs from the market-driven model of capitalism in the US, via the social democratic models of Europe, to the heavily statist, authoritarian form of capitalism that prevails in China and much of the rest of the developing world – a model nonetheless characterised by extensive exposure to the global trading system. Does this mean that the general discontent with capitalism will ensure a permanent anti-business climate and policy that is inimical to economic growth? I sincerely hope not. Having pondered these questions over a 45-year career in journalism and in business, I am, with caveats, pro-business and pro-capitalism. For, in the end, it is the efforts of business people working within a market system that have lifted millions from poverty all across the world over the past two and a half centuries.

Frugal Innovation: How to Do Better With Less by Jaideep Prabhu Navi Radjou

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Computer Numeric Control, connected car, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, financial exclusion, financial innovation, gamification, global supply chain, IKEA effect, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, low cost airline, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, megacity, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, reshoring, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, software as a service, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, value engineering, vertical integration, women in the workforce, work culture , X Prize, yield management, Zipcar

In 2013, Caterpillar announced the expansion of its US operations with the construction of a 600,000 square foot hydraulic excavator manufacturing facility in Victoria, Texas. Once operational, the plant will employ more than 500 people and triple its US-based excavator capacity. Gary Stampanato, a vice-president at Caterpillar, says:6 Victoria’s proximity to our supply base, access to ports and other transportation, as well as the positive business climate in Texas, made this the ideal site for this project. In late 2009, NCR, a US electronics company, announced it was bringing its ATM (automated teller machine) production back to Columbus, Georgia, to decrease time to market, increase internal collaboration and lower operating costs. Even low-value toy manufacturers are going this way.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, business climate, Columbine, declining real wages, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, financial independence, labor-force participation, late fees, low interest rates, McMansion, mortgage debt, new economy, New Journalism, payday loans, restrictive zoning, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, school vouchers, telemarketer, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

Hospitals began discharging patients “quicker and sicker,” expecting the family to pick up the task of nursing them back to health. With Mom in the workforce, parents were faced with a painful choice between paying for expensive care and taking time off work. At the same time, the divorce rate continued its upward climb. This situation was compounded by a leaner-and-meaner business climate that closed plants and laid off workers with alarming frequency. In this tougher world, millions of two-income families learned the price of living without a safety net. Inevitably, the Two-Income Trap affected the one-income family too. When millions of mothers entered the workforce, they ratcheted up the price of a middle-class life for everyone, including families that wanted to keep Mom at home.

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism by Robin Chase

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business climate, call centre, car-free, carbon tax, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion charging, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, decarbonisation, different worldview, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Shoup, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, Gini coefficient, GPS: selective availability, high-speed rail, hive mind, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, language acquisition, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, Post-Keynesian economics, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, vertical integration, Zipcar

For the ninth year, Forbes magazine ranked 146 nations on eleven different factors to produce a list of the “Best Countries for Business.” For the fourth time (2008, 2009, 2010, 2014) Denmark came up in first place. According to John Weis, an economist at Moody’s Analytics with an expertise on the Danish economy, Denmark’s pro-business climate stems in large part due to its long-standing policy of “Flexicurity,” a multi-pronged approach supported by the European Commission. Flexicurity combines flexible and reliable contractual arrangements with lifelong learning strategies and adequate social benefits, supporting the needs of both employers and employees.

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs by Tim Draper

3D printing, Airbnb, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, business climate, carried interest, connected car, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Deng Xiaoping, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, family office, fiat currency, frictionless, frictionless market, growth hacking, high net worth, hiring and firing, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, low earth orbit, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Metcalfe's law, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minecraft, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pez dispenser, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, school choice, school vouchers, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Tesla Model S, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

He said, “Just by instituting digital signatures, we saved 2% of our GDP,” and “by digitizing our voting, all the young people started voting.” Apparently, young people would rather check boxes on their mobile phones than go into some antiquated creepy booth. He went on to discuss Estonia’s digital identity program, which lowered the crime rate and improved the business climate in his country. He bestowed on me the third virtual residency of Estonia. Now, without even setting foot in Estonia, I can open a European bank account in less than 24 hours (I did this), buy European real estate, and do business digitally anywhere in Europe. I recently completed a financing with Kaidi Ruusalep of Funderbeam, a company that provides liquidity to private companies in Estonia.

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil by Hamish McKenzie

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Ben Horowitz, business climate, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, connected car, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, gigafactory, Google Glasses, Hyperloop, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, megacity, Menlo Park, Nikolai Kondratiev, oil shale / tar sands, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, short selling, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Solyndra, South China Sea, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, Zenefits, Zipcar

China, with unique challenges from governmental and cultural quarters, is a difficult place for American tech companies to do business. Many have come and failed, including Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Groupon, and Uber, to name a few of the most prominent. Such companies have been brought low through a combination of hubris, lack of familiarity with the business climate, and misjudging local tastes. In some cases—Google’s, especially—they haven’t worked well with the Chinese government (the guanxi weren’t adequately lubricated). There were some early signs that Tesla was making some of the same mistakes. For example, it initially overlooked wealthy Chinese consumers’ unique tastes.

I Love Capitalism!: An American Story by Ken Langone

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, business climate, corporate governance, East Village, fixed income, glass ceiling, income inequality, Paul Samuelson, Ronald Reagan, short selling, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, six sigma, VA Linux, Y2K, zero-sum game

All Bernie and Arthur needed, I figured, was a year: a year to study America and figure out where the first stores should be opened and how close to the ideal the stores could come. I calculated that the initial stage would take a couple million dollars in venture capital—to pay Bernie and Arthur’s salaries and fringe benefits and enable them to come up with a detailed business plan. The problem, in May 1978, was that the business climate was lousy. Jimmy Carter was president, and national confidence was sagging. Interest rates were climbing; energy prices and inflation were out of control. Not the best moment to drum up confidence in a daring new venture. I needed a contrarian with a couple million dollars lying around. Who else but Ross Perot?

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer

autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global supply chain, Google Earth, housing crisis, hype cycle, Hyperloop, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kickstarter, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, OpenAI, Paul Graham, peak oil, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, short selling, short squeeze, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, tail risk, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork, work culture , Zipcar

“This sounds impossible—both the idea of building cars in the first place, and further, the idea of building a high performance electric car.” But, argued Eberhard, two recent developments now made the impossible possible: new battery technology made electric cars “very attractive,” and “the international business climate makes it now possible to build a ‘fab-less’ car company—a car company without a factory.” By avoiding the staggering fixed costs associated with building and tooling a car factory, Tesla could turn the economics of the car business upside down. This belief was rooted in a real auto industry trend that been developing for some time.

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Matthew C. Klein

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of the telegraph, joint-stock company, land reform, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, passive income, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Wolfgang Streeck

It also developed using elements of the high-wage model. While they became increasingly underpaid relative to the value of what they produced during the Industrial Revolution, British workers nevertheless continued to command higher pay than workers in much of the rest of Europe. Their high productivity and the favorable business climate pulled in capital from abroad, which allowed investment spending to consistently exceed national saving until after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The difference was covered by the Dutch, who are estimated to have paid for about a third of Britain’s total investment in the eighteenth century.

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley by Atsuo Inoue

Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, Apple II, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, business climate, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, fixed income, game design, George Floyd, hive mind, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Masayoshi Son, off grid, popular electronics, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TikTok, Vision Fund, WeWork

Up until now, Son had only explained his plan for the company in general terms; Hong’s first task would be drawing up a three-year plan for the company. The request blindsided him, but he was prepared to give it everything he had and promptly put all of his effort into coming up with the plan. The business climate would be impossible to predict. And the exact features of the translation device had yet to be determined as well. Hong flashes a wry smile as he reflects back on the task. ‘I’d been racking my brains over the three-year plan. It was my job, after all. However, I had completely forgotten to take those sorts of things into consideration.’

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

And no society, no matter how well financed or managed, can truly adapt to massive natural disasters when one comes fast and furious on the heels of the last. II. In early 2011, Joe Read, a newly elected representative to the Montana state legislature, made history by introducing the first bill to officially declare climate change a good thing. “Global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana,” the bill stated. Read explained, “Even if it does get warmer, we’re going to have a longer growing season. It could be very beneficial to the state of Montana. Why are we going to stop this progress?” The bill did not pass. III. In a telling development, the American Freedom Alliance hosted its own conference challenging the reality of climate change in Los Angeles in June 2011.

…

Lauren also did dynamite research for the billionaires chapter. Dave Oswald Mitchell contributed wise and comprehensive research on the growth imperative, and Mara Kardas-Nelson did the same on local power movements in Germany and Boulder. Rajiv and I are also deeply grateful to the team of very busy climate scientists who agreed to read sections of the book relating to climate change impacts and projections. Our readers ended up being an all-star cast of scientific experts including: Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research), Alice Bows-Larkin (Tyndall Centre), James Hansen (Columbia University), Peter Gleick (Pacific Institute), and Sivan Kartha (Stockholm Environment Institute), all of whom vetted large sections of the book for accuracy.

The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa by Calestous Juma

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, bioinformatics, business climate, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, double helix, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, export processing zone, global value chain, high-speed rail, impact investing, income per capita, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, land tenure, M-Pesa, microcredit, mobile money, non-tariff barriers, off grid, out of africa, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, Recombinant DNA, rolling blackouts, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, total factor productivity, undersea cable

Finally, a more vibrant agricultural sector can help to expand the markets for inputs and services for the nonagricultural sectors.55 It is clear why the African Union is prioritizing agriculture, taking a holistic approach and focusing on improving food security and nutrition, promoting agro-­ processing and the business climate, introducing aquaculture and livestock programs, and improving mechanization.56 Advancements in science have demonstrated the important role that niche crops can play in improving human health in sub-Saharan Africa specifically. Achieving food security depends not only on increasing production but also on improving nutrition.

Rocket Billionaires: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the New Space Race by Tim Fernholz

Amazon Web Services, Apollo 13, autonomous vehicles, business climate, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deep learning, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fail fast, fulfillment center, Gene Kranz, high net worth, high-speed rail, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kwajalein Atoll, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, Masayoshi Son, megaproject, military-industrial complex, minimum viable product, multiplanetary species, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, new economy, no-fly zone, nuclear paranoia, paypal mafia, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pets.com, planetary scale, private spaceflight, profit maximization, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, Scaled Composites, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, trade route, undersea cable, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, VTOL, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize, Y2K

The government’s whole plan had relied on being a secondary user of the new rockets, with a robust commercial space industry paying down the costs of development. But that market had simply not materialized. The biggest, most attractive satellite plays—Iridium, Globalstar, Inmarsat, and Teledesic—had all gone bankrupt at the turn of the century as the dot-com bubble popped and Wall Street balked at capital-intensive technology plays. The business climate for satellite communications was still going from bad to worse. Growing cell phone penetration presented a cheaper, more effective alternative to the bulky and often balky satellite phone. Undersea fiber-optic cables ate into the business of providing international communications links from space.

Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney by Bill Hare

business climate, fake news, glass ceiling, haute couture, haute cuisine, McMansion, pneumatic tube, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, vertical integration, walking around money, warehouse automation, women in the workforce

Celebration of Fools is an insider's look at JCPenney's remarkable rise and fall, charting the people and events that have been the history of this American institution. Packed with captivating stories and compelling characters--including the company's highest ranking woman--Celebration of Fools offers valuable lessons applicable in today's business climate. With an engaging, narrative style, former Penney executive speechwriter Bill Hare tells a compelling cautionary tale with universal implications for all of corporate America. Casting new light and astonishing revelations on this American icon and the people who nearly destroyed it, Celebration of Fools will keep readers captivated from first page till last.

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

business climate, butterfly effect, complexity theory, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, impulse control, Lao Tzu, loose coupling, Louis Pasteur, Neil Armstrong, power law, systems thinking

They are coldly rational about using the world, obtaining what they need, doing what they have to do. 12. Never give up (let nothing break your spirit). There is always one more thing that you can do. Survivors are not easily frustrated. They are not discouraged by setbacks. They accept that the environment (or the business climate or their health) is constantly changing. They pick themselves up and start the entire process over again, breaking it down into manageable bits. Survivors always have a clear reason for going on. They keep their spirits up by developing an alternate world made up of rich memories to which they can escape.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andy Kessler, Benchmark Capital, business climate, classic study, creative destruction, data acquisition, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, high net worth, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, PalmPilot, pre–internet, risk tolerance, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, tech worker, the new new thing, Thorstein Veblen, wealth creators, Y2K

Instead, Mike Long had sat down with a handful of large institutional investors that the Morgan Stanley bankers felt would lead public opinion about the company. Long had decided in his mind that he deserved some of the blame for the failure of the IPO the first time around. ''The story in the fall was too complex," he said. He had learned that, in a business climate that changed as rapidly as this one did, no one on the outside had time to "study the details" of the business. That was a polite way of saying that a lot of potential investors had no idea what Healtheon actually did. Healtheon, like a lot of Internet companies, was an ever-shifting abstraction.

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth by Michael Jacobs, Mariana Mazzucato

Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, collaborative economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Detroit bankruptcy, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, facts on the ground, fiat currency, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systems thinking, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, vertical integration, very high income

Mcgilvray, Natural Resource and Environmental Economics, London, Pearson Education, 2011. 13 See for example Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, Better Growth, Better Climate, and the conclusions of the Business and Climate Summit, May 2015, http://www.businessclimatesummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Business-Climate-Summit-Press-release.pdf (accessed 14 April 2016). 14 See P. M. Romer, ‘The origins of endogenous growth’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 8, no. 1, 1994, pp. 3–22, doi:10.1257/jep.8.1.3. JSTOR 2138148. See also D. Acemoglu, Endogenous Technological Change. Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. pp. 411–533.

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Gobal Crisis by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dr. Strangelove, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, full employment, game design, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, high net worth, income inequality, interest rate derivative, it's over 9,000, John Meriwether, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Myron Scholes, Network effects, New Journalism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, one-China policy, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, power law, price mechanism, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, short squeeze, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, time value of money, too big to fail, value at risk, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

China would have to make all of the adjustments, with regard to their currency, their social safety net and twenty-five hundred years of Confucian culture, while the United States would do nothing and reap the benefits of increased net exports to a fast-growing internal Chinese market. This was a particularly soft option for the United States. It required no tangible effort by the United States to improve its business climate by reducing corporate taxes and regulation, providing for sound money or promoting savings and investment. Some of what the United States wanted may have been in China’s best interests, but China could not be blamed for believing it was being bullied on behalf of a U.S. plan that above all suited the United States.

An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies by Tyler Cowen

agricultural Revolution, behavioural economics, big-box store, business climate, carbon footprint, carbon tax, cognitive bias, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, food miles, gentrification, guest worker program, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, informal economy, iterative process, mass immigration, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, price discrimination, refrigerator car, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Upton Sinclair, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

Very often it is businessmen and financiers who sustain expensive restaurants. Today the financial capital of Germany is Frankfurt, not Berlin. Berlin also does not have wealthy multilateral institutions to sustain its fine dining scene, as do Geneva and Brussels and Washington, D.C. What Berlin does have is remarkably cheap rents. Because of the weak business climate in the city, there are not so many jobs. A disproportionate share of the population either works for the government or receives subsidy income from the government; or young people live there while they try their hand at art, design, music, and so on. That supports cultural riches, but the city itself is not economically vital.

Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age by Alex Wright

1960s counterculture, Ada Lovelace, barriers to entry, British Empire, business climate, business intelligence, Cape to Cairo, card file, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Babbage, Computer Lib, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, Deng Xiaoping, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, folksonomy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, information retrieval, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, linked data, Livingstone, I presume, lone genius, machine readable, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, Norman Mailer, out of africa, packet switching, pneumatic tube, profit motive, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, semantic web, Silicon Valley, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, Ted Nelson, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog

Between 1840 and 1880 the railway network would expand by a factor of ten, faster even than the British railways.2 Meanwhile, new industrial mining techniques allowed Belgian firms to tap the country’s mineral resources, which found ready markets in the expanding industrial economies of France and Germany. The booming Belgian business climate of the mid-nineteenth century spurred a generation of ambitious young men to seek out new opportunities. Among their ranks was Édouard Otlet, a businessman’s son who grew up in the aftermath of Belgian independence. His son Paul later described him this way: “My father was part of the generation that came of age immediately after the 1830 revolution,” he wrote.

Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, book value, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kickstarter, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, McMansion, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Plato's cave, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, tail risk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, value at risk, yield curve

You have to think about communication,” Black later observed with a wry, knowing smile. “At the beginning, we were just too polite to each other. But then we learnt to communicate better, as we went along. We just talked, talked, and talked.” The task facing them was daunting. On paper, the wider business climate in 2004 should have been playing to all of J.P. Morgan’s strengths. The new decade was shaping up to be the Era of Credit, and credit was supposed to be J.P. Morgan’s strength. By late 2004, the bank could still claim a leading position in the trading of interest-rate derivatives, foreign exchange, and corporate loans, and a respectable operation in the arena of corporate bonds, too.

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire by Rebecca Henderson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, asset allocation, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, dark matter, decarbonisation, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, fixed income, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, growth hacking, Hans Rosling, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, means of production, meta-analysis, microcredit, middle-income trap, Minsky moment, mittelstand, Mont Pelerin Society, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, plant based meat, profit maximization, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, Toyota Production System, uber lyft, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WeWork, working-age population, Zipcar

Exports, as a Percentage of GDP,” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/258779/us-exports-as-a-percentage-of-gdp/. 70. Klaus Schwab, “The Global Competitiveness Report 2018,” World Economic Forum, 2018. 71. “Infrastructure,” Germany Trade and Invest GmbH (GTAI), www.gtai.de/GTAI/Navigation/EN/Invest/Business-location-germany/Business-climate/infrastructure.html. 72. Hermann Simon, “Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs,” Harvard Business Review (July 13, 2017), https://hbr.org/2017/05/why-germany-still-has-so-many-middle-class-manufacturing-jobs?referral=03759&cm_vc=rr_item_page.bottom. 73. Tamar Jacoby, “Why Germany Is So Much Better at Training Its Workers,” Atlantic, Oct. 20, 2014, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/. 74.

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, animal electricity, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, book value, British Empire, business climate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, Ford Model T, General Motors Futurama, industrial research laboratory, invention of radio, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, margin call, Menlo Park, price stability, railway mania, Right to Buy, the scientific method, trade route, transcontinental railway, working poor

Both Edison and Westinghouse found themselves squeezed not only by the bitter competition in the industry but also by a deteriorating financial climate that shifted their attention from safety to the more basic problem of survival. The failure in November 1890 of the prestigious London banking firm Baring Brothers sent financial markets into turmoil and led to a sell-off of American securities by British holders. As gold flowed out of the United States, credit grew tighter and an already slow business climate grew gloomier. In this darkening atmosphere the fierce competition among the three leading electrical firms could not help but bruise them even more severely.67 CHAPTER 14 MONEY, MERGERS, AND MOTORS With the advent of the dynamo electricity has taken a new and very much larger place in the commercial activities of the world.

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A large portion of its assets consisted of the securities taken from utilities by both Thomson-Houston and Edison General Electric in exchange for equipment. Their value dropped steadily in a declining market, and few customers were prompt in making cash payments on their equipment in a deteriorating business climate. This left GE with a treasury full of securities on which it could not realize any cash. As its floating debt mounted, Wall Street buzzed with rumors of financial weakness. During the winter of 1893, even before the depression hit in earnest, bears began to hammer GE stock, claiming that its “policy of crushing out opposition is leading to complications which must eventually do the company more harm than good, because of animosities and hostile legislation which it is arousing.”27 That April, in the company’s first annual report, Charles Coffin tried to put the best possible spin on the financial situation.

Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq by Francis Fukuyama

Berlin Wall, business climate, colonial rule, conceptual framework, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Future Shock, Gunnar Myrdal, informal economy, land reform, managed futures, microcredit, open economy, operational security, rolling blackouts, Seymour Hersh, unemployed young men

The United States and other Western countries tend to put a high premium on holding elections to provide greater legitimacy for those in authority. Under the best of circumstances, elections can be a means of coalition-building and reconciliation. Great significance is also given to agreement on a constitution that parcels out powers and enshrines rights. Laws that create a marketfriendly business climate and protect investors usually get high marks. But many of these measures can, in fact, convey a false picture of progress and even set back the recovery process. Elections that are poorly planned or rushed can be discredited and prove to be destabilizing. By their nature, contentious elections can create stresses that the political system may not be prepared to handle.

The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy by Bruce Katz, Jennifer Bradley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, benefit corporation, British Empire, business climate, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, congestion pricing, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, desegregation, Donald Shoup, double entry bookkeeping, edge city, Edward Glaeser, financial engineering, global supply chain, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, intermodal, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Masdar, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, place-making, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, The Spirit Level, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, transit-oriented development, urban planning, white flight, Yochai Benkler

As federal and state resources diminished, private and civic investment would increase, unlocking not only capital but expertise. Imagine, finally, if metros aggregated their political power to bend state and federal policies and investments to their pragmatic, distinctive visions of advanced industries, global trade, transformative infrastructure, and skilled workers. States would compete not just over their tax or business climate but also over the extent to which they were fully supportive of their metropolitan engines. Metro Deals would proliferate throughout the country, substituting imaginative and productive solutions for legislative obstructionism and inaction. Representative democracy in the service of place and people rather than party or ideology would triumph.

Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values by Sharon Beder

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, battle of ideas, business climate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, invisible hand, junk bonds, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, old-boy network, popular capitalism, Powell Memorandum, price mechanism, profit motive, Ralph Nader, rent control, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, shareholder value, spread of share-ownership, structural adjustment programs, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Torches of Freedom, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, young professional

Friedman was credited with being the leader of the Chicago School economists and was taken up and promoted by Hayek-inspired networks: ‘more than anyone else, he was responsible for reviving’ and popularizing free market ideas.16 For many years these free market economic ideas were considered marginal and obsolete in other universities. But they gradually moved from the margins of economic thought towards the centre of orthodoxy because these ideas became useful to business interests seeking to minimize government interference in their activities; achieve a better low-tax business climate; and expand markets into realms PRO-BUSINESS POLICIES AS IDEOLOGY 97 of government business. Both Hayek and Friedman received Nobel prizes in the 1970s. Friedman went on to be an adviser to several government leaders, including US Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and, most controversially, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had overthrown the democratically elected Allende government (see Chapter 10).17 MONETARISM AND THE NATURAL RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT Friedman was most closely identified with monetarism, a theory that had been discredited following the Great Depression.18 Its renewed appeal in the 1970s came because it claimed to explain the stagflation that many countries were experiencing.

Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World by Adam Lebor

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, foreign exchange controls, forensic accounting, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, haute cuisine, IBM and the Holocaust, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, special drawing rights

The BIS is a unique institution: an international organization, an extremely profitable bank and a research institute founded, and protected, by international treaties.14 The BIS is accountable to its customers and shareholders—the central banks—but also guides their operations. The main tasks of a central bank, the BIS argues, are to control the flow of credit and the volume of currency in circulation, which will ensure a stable business climate, and to keep exchange rates within manageable bands to ensure the value of a currency and so smooth international trade and capital movements. This is crucial, especially in a globalized economy, where markets react in microseconds and perceptions of economic stability and value are almost as important as reality itself.

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, diversification, Edward Glaeser, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, implied volatility, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine readable, market bubble, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, microcredit, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, Real Time Gross Settlement, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, seminal paper, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

If the central bank had a policy of inducing high inflation, producers would rationally expect that all prices would go up and would not exert more effort when they saw the prices of their own products go up. Rather, they would understand that the additional dollar they earned was actually worth less in terms of its ability to purchase goods and services. The long-run level of employment of the economy would be determined by factors like the business climate, incentives to innovate, and the ability of firms to hire or lay off workers easily, not by inflation. This view eliminated the incompatibility in the long run between the economic goals of low inflation and maximum sustainable employment. According to the new orthodoxy, by keeping inflation low and thus eliminating all the uncertainty and distortions associated with high and variable inflation, central bankers would give the economy its best chance of achieving its potential growth rate and thus maximum sustainable employment.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace

Albert Einstein, business climate, buy low sell high, complexity theory, fail fast, fear of failure, Golden Gate Park, iterative process, Ivan Sutherland, Johannes Kepler, Menlo Park, reality distortion field, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Jobs, Wall-E

And of course they knew that there were limits—they just couldn’t see them. This was a failure on management’s part; the truth is, we have consistently struggled with how we set useful limits and also how we make them visible. Many of our limits are imposed not by our internal processes but by external realities—finite resources, deadlines, a shifting economy or business climate. Those things, we can’t control. But the limits we impose internally, if deployed correctly, can be a tool to force people to amend the way they are working and, sometimes, to invent another way. The very concept of a limit implies that you can’t do everything you want—so we must think of smarter ways to work.

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William R. Easterly

Andrei Shleifer, business climate, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, clean water, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, endogenous growth, financial repression, foreign exchange controls, Gini coefficient, government statistician, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Money creation, Network effects, New Urbanism, open economy, PalmPilot, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War

For example, Brazil moved more slowly into the computer revolution than necessary because of a government ban on PC imports, a misguidedattempttopromotethedomestic PC industry,a classic attempt by vested interests to hijack technological progress. In general, imitation responds to the same kind of incentives that innovationdoes. The governmentshouldsubsidize technological imitation because it brings benefits to other firms in the economy besides the imitator.And of course, the business climate has to favor foreign direct investment and imports of machines, not to mention entrepreneurs in general. Bangalore Bangalore, India, is the capitalof Karnataka state in the southIndia. It’s an inland plateaucity, long famous for its refreshing climate and manygardens. It wasasleepy place wherehoneymooners and retirees went to get away.36 But gardening is not whatBangalore is famous for today.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", A Pattern Language, Alvin Toffler, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, business climate, citizen journalism, computer vision, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Dennis Ritchie, digital divide, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, experimental economics, experimental subject, Extropian, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, Hacker Ethic, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Herman Kahn, history of Unix, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, invention of the telephone, inventory management, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Lewis Mumford, Metcalfe's law, Metcalfe’s law, more computing power than Apollo, move 37, Multics, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, pez dispenser, planetary scale, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, RFID, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, SETI@home, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, slashdot, social intelligence, spectrum auction, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, urban planning, web of trust, Whole Earth Review, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Hams were the first to show the value and utility of wireless community networking.”56 Hendricks pointed out in our recent communications that ham radio operators have had a little-publicized global wireless data communication network running for some time—which came into play after the terrorist events of September 11 to support emergency communications in lower Manhattan. In 1996, the U.S. State Department and the National Science Foundation, seeking to promote democracy and a good business climate in Mongolia as it emerged from communist rule, heard about Hughes’s experiments with wireless Internet access in rural Colorado and asked him to bring wireless broadband to Ulan Bator. Hughes knew just who to contact—Dewayne Hendricks, who went to Mongolia and networked seven institutions, up to ten kilometers away from the country’s sole Internet feed, in ten days.

Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman by Ken Auletta

Bear Stearns, book value, business climate, classic study, corporate governance, financial independence, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Herman Kahn, interest rate swap, junk bonds, New Journalism, profit motive, proprietary trading, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, traveling salesman, zero-coupon bond

He moved into Peterson’s suite of offices, claiming the corner office with its panoramic view of New York Harbor. Up on the walls and bookshelves went the bright red fire chief’s hat, the pictures of clipper ships and fish, the tool catalogues, the books on maritime warfare and marine life. Yet Lew Glucksman felt no joy. He was worried about the weakened business climate, about liquidity, his partners’ unhappiness with how he was managing the firm, the personal insecurity of partners, their desire to participate in a single transaction that would net each a handsome premium. All of these factors came together at the same time that he realized his life’s dream of becoming chairman of Lehman Brothers.

The Fiume Crisis by Dominique Kirchner Reill

1960s counterculture, anti-communist, British Empire, business climate, COVID-19, financial independence, full employment, sexual politics

Even Minister Bellasich, so outraged about the Hungarian-­language supply order, built his c­ areer (both before and a­ fter 1920) on his fluency in Italian and Hungarian, a fact noted by the 1970s Italian encyclopedia entry emphasizing that “during World War Two he held positions of trust for the Italian government in relation to Hungary, thanks to his economic and linguistic background.”23 Multilingualism helped push through paperwork, negotiate trade contracts, and neutralize disputes among a diverse body politic. The head of the tobacco factory refused to punish Szécsey for one of the skills most valued in the Fiume business climate, and leniency again proved the rule of the Fiume language politics game, even when Italian nationalist fervor was official policy. A Sense of Self 183 On the most basic level, Szécsey’s relatively tolerated language misstep reminds us once more that even as Gabriele D’Annunzio was insisting that Fiume was “the most Italian of cities,” t­here was a much wider assortment of Fiumians than the Italian nationalist fanfare admitted.

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

“Boulware believed that it was not enough to win over company employees on narrow labor issues,” writes Thomas Evans in his history of Reagan’s GE years. “They must not only accept the offer but pass on GE’s essentially conservative message to others, helping the company to win voters at the grassroots who would elect officials and pass legislation establishing a better business climate.”5 Ronnie practiced the Speech and learned about the free-market thinkers and the true evils of communism. In 1962, with Boulware retired, he went freelance, voicing campaigns against gun regulation and socialized medicine. By the mid-1960s, Reagan had put a decade of practice into the role of conservative spokesman, and he was among the movement’s best.

…

Recall the origins of the railroad crisis in the 1870s: too many roads to too few locations. Like the web, the tracks weren’t built for price competition; they were monopolistic plans, and that made them brittle. “You’re either a zero or a one. Alive or dead,” repeats the Tim Robbins version of Bill Gates in Antitrust, describing both the Valley’s business climate and its spree-killer competitive ethos. For investors, that meant they priced firms not based on expected returns per se but on the odds that they would become ones rather than zeros. Venture capitalists always played that way, with a few big winners picking up the slack (and then some) for a bunch of losers.

The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World by Steven Radelet

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Boeing 747, Branko Milanovic, business climate, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, clean water, colonial rule, creative destruction, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, export processing zone, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, land reform, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, megacity, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, off grid, oil shock, out of africa, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sheryl Sandberg, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, Steven Pinker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, women in the workforce, working poor

The real illusion is the idea that there is anyone that claims that aid—by itself—can eliminate global poverty or that the total elimination of global poverty is the appropriate standard against which the effectiveness of aid should be judged. There is no silver bullet for development and no single approach that can solve global poverty—not trade, foreign investment, a better business climate, improved health, better education, democracy, better governance, or lower population growth. The test of whether aid can solve poverty all by itself is an impossible standard. Although some aid proponents make strong statements about its potential benefits (especially charities trying to raise money), no one in donor organizations or in the academic community claims that aid—by itself—can eliminate global poverty.

Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market by B. Mark Smith

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, book value, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, compound rate of return, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, joint-stock company, junk bonds, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Paul Samuelson, price stability, prudent man rule, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, short selling, stocks for the long run, the market place, transaction costs

Now Smith wanted Merrill back, to provide Pierce & Company with a desperately needed infusion of new capital and management talent. Merrill was not certain he wanted to take on the responsibility; after all, he had plenty of money and had just been married for the third time, to a woman who expected him to lead a life of leisurely semiretirement. It was not an easy decision. Merrill was fully aware that the business climate was grim. His firm quietly commissioned a poll to measure the true depth of the public’s antipathy toward Wall Street. The survey found that the public greatly distrusted brokers, believing that they deliberately tried to lure investors into speculative stocks because commissions were higher on those shares.

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians by Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman

3D printing, access to a mobile phone, addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Celtic Tiger, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, Dean Kamen, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, failed state, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open borders, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, stem cell, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, young professional

In chapter 9, “Eliminate Global Poverty,” Michael Strong cowrites a subsection called “Women’s Empowerment Zones,” with Mark Frazier of OpenWorld, which helps free zones become self-funding. They eliminate rhetoric from their argument and allow the mind-expanding facts to speak for themselves. Throughout the developing world, after a piece of land has been designated as a free zone with Singapore- or Hong Kong-class business climate improvements, the value of the land climbs by 500% to 3,000% or more . . . In the San Isidro free zone in the Dominican Republic, land values rose 2,000% after the land was freed of taxes, customs duties, and telecommunications monopolies. In Dubai and Freeport Bahamas, property value increases have been on the order of 8,000% over the initial 12-year period following introduction of free zone incentives. . . .

Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens by Nicholas Shaxson

Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, high net worth, income inequality, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, New Journalism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old-boy network, out of africa, passive income, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transfer pricing, vertical integration, Washington Consensus

Rahn’s seed corn contention contains a kernel of truth: Capital certainly can and does promote investment and economic growth. Helping it flow efficiently, at first glance, seems like a good idea. But here is where the arguments fall apart. First, financial capital isn’t the only kind of capital. Social capital—an educated and experienced workforce, a trustworthy business climate, and so on—matters more. Having seed corn is just one factor in achieving a good harvest, along with rain, good soils, fertilizer, and the human capital, knowledge, and confidence to put it all together. “Access to capital is not, in fact, the decisive constraint on economic growth,” wrote the economist Martin Wolf.

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

This does not mean the state is powerless, but rather that its power is more contingent on that of finance capital and the bondholders. State powers and practices have been more and more directed to satisfying the demands of corporations and bondholders, often at the expense of citizens. This entails strong state support for the creation of a good business climate favourable to capital. The result in many instances is that states can be doing very well while their populations fare poorly. This even applies, somewhat surprisingly, to countries like Germany, where wage repression contains working-class consumption at the same time as German-based capital and the country’s financial state look to be in very good shape.

How the World Works by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, capital controls, clean water, corporate governance, deindustrialization, disinformation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, glass ceiling, heat death of the universe, Howard Zinn, income inequality, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, land reform, liberation theology, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, single-payer health, strikebreaker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, transfer pricing, union organizing, War on Poverty, working poor

When you read their literature, it’s all full of the danger of the masses and their rising power and how we have to defeat them. It’s kind of vulgar, inverted Marxism. The other group is the high planning sectors of the government. They talk the same way—how we have to worry about the rising aspirations of the common man and the impoverished masses who are seeking to improve standards and harming the business climate. So they can be class-conscious. They have a job to do. But it’s extremely important to make other people, the rest of the population, believe that there is no such thing as class. We’re all just equal, we’re all Americans, we live in harmony, we all work together, everything is great. Take, for example, the book Mandate for Change, put out by the Progressive Policy Institute, the Clinton think tank.

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens

4chan, Aaron Swartz, airport security, AltaVista, anti-communist, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, bread and circuses, business climate, business intelligence, business process, Chelsea Manning, clean water, commoditize, congestion charging, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, Debian, decentralized internet, disinformation, Edward Snowden, failed state, financial independence, Firefox, full text search, gamification, German hyperinflation, global village, GnuPG, Google Chrome, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, independent contractor, informal economy, intangible asset, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, M-Pesa, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, no silver bullet, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, packet switching, patent troll, peak oil, power law, pre–internet, private military company, race to the bottom, real-name policy, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, selection bias, Skype, slashdot, software patent, spectrum auction, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, transaction costs, twin studies, union organizing, wealth creators, web application, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, Zipf's Law

Drug money of course didn't stop flowing in the 1990's, and it doesn't take a genius to see how to get around the AML controls. Say a street dealer sell drugs -- sugar-coated croissants, perhaps -- in Paris for EUR 1 million in undeclared cash. He drives with this dirty cash in a bag to Vienna, then hops across the border to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, famous for its investor-friendly business climate. There he starts a new small high-cash business on paper, say a fashion shop or nightclub. He rings up lots of transactions and creates EUR 1.00 million in new profit. He pays taxes on that, at the flat rate of 19%, after a deductible of EUR 500,000 investment bonus (which cost him only EUR 2,500 in a large envelope).

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher

book value, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, data science, El Camino Real, estate planning, fixed income, index fund, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, profit motive, RAND corporation, Salesforce, the market place, transaction costs, vertical integration

Yet the forecasting record of seers predicting changes in the business cycle has generally been abysmal. They can seriously misjudge if and when recessions may occur, and are worse in predicting their severity and duration. Furthermore, neither the stock market as a whole nor the course of any particular stock tends to move in close parallel with the business climate. Changes in mass psychology and in how the financial community as a whole decided to appraise the outlook either for business in general or for a particular stock can have overriding importance and can vary almost unpredictably. For these reasons, I believe that it is hard to be correct in forecasting the short-term movement of stocks more than 60 percent of the time no matter how diligently the skill is cultivated.

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, British Empire, business climate, Cape to Cairo, financial independence, Francisco Pizarro, Great Leap Forward, Isaac Newton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, Neil Kinnock, profit motive, surplus humans, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, women in the workforce

Major Lewis Ginter, patrician manager of Allen and Ginter, took the battle to Duke by offering to buy his company. But Duke, corporate rottweiler par excellence, was better placed to triumph in the ensuing dog-fight. He had the lowest production costs, the least principled sales team, and his morality was considered shocking, even in a business climate that valued cunning above integrity. In April 1889, Duke threatened to raise his advertising expenditure even further, which forced the hands of the other major producers. They met in New York in the same month and agreed to form the ‘American Tobacco Company’, a trust dedicated to becoming the sole supplier of tobacco products in the United States of America.

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Bullingdon Club, business climate, call centre, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, double helix, energy security, estate planning, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, job automation, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberation theology, light touch regulation, linear programming, London Whale, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, NetJets, new economy, Occupy movement, open economy, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, the long tail, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

“Europe—and London in particular—is already ahead of the U.S. and New York in OTC [over the counter—which is to say difficult for regulators to monitor] derivatives, which drive broader trading flows and help foster the kind of continuous innovation that contributes heavily to financial services leadership,” the McKinsey report cautioned. “‘The U.S. is running the risk of being marginalized’ in derivatives, to quote one business leader, because of its business climate, not its location. The more amenable and collaborative regulatory environment in London in particular makes businesses more comfortable about creating new derivative products and structures there than in the U.S.” Moreover, the report sounded an alarm about the future. America’s overly zealous regulators were on the verge of another colossal mistake: they were planning to raise capital requirements for U.S. banks, a measure McKinsey warned was unnecessary and would weaken the country’s financial champions in the fierce global competition for business.

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns

Berlin Wall, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, disinformation, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, technology bubble, transfer pricing, unemployed young men, working-age population, éminence grise

Several banks were set up to manage the cash flows to and from these various projects, and shares in the front companies were reserved for parliamentarians and ministers in both governments.18 The management of Mugabe’s corporation OSLEG included the commander of the Zimbabwean Defense Forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, as well as the minister of defense, along with top officials in the state mining company and minerals marketing board.19 This kind of business climate favored enterprising, rough-mannered, and unscrupulous businessmen. Billy Rautenbach fit this mold. A former race car driver and the son of a wealthy Zimbabwean trucking magnate, Rautenbach took over the family business when his older brother died in an accident, and he set up lucrative car dealerships throughout southern Africa.

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age by James Crabtree

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, business climate, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, informal economy, Joseph Schumpeter, land bank, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, McMansion, megacity, Meghnad Desai, middle-income trap, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open economy, Parag Khanna, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Rubik’s Cube, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, special economic zone, spectrum auction, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism, young professional

“A lot of economic activity came to a standstill,” he said. “The demand-supply gap vanished. All of us as entrepreneurs, we took pains to set up all of these projects, looking at this growth potential, which never happened.” Suddenly, the same tycoons who for years seemed uniquely equipped to prosper within India’s complex business climate found that even they were undone by it. Problems affected industrialists all across India, although the once-mighty infrastructure giants of Andhra Pradesh were especially badly hit. And few represented their plight more clearly than Rajagopal himself, the man who won infamy with a can of pepper spray, as he spent his days trundling around New Delhi, trying to fix investment projects that had gone sour and figure out how to repay the giant sums that his struggling company now owed.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester

Albert Einstein, ASML, British Empire, business climate, cotton gin, Dava Sobel, discovery of the americas, Easter island, Etonian, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, GPS: selective availability, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, John Harrison: Longitude, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, means of production, military-industrial complex, planetary scale, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, trade route, vertical integration, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

The social and legislative changes that were sweeping the country in the late eighteenth century were having the undesirable effect of dividing society quite brutally: while the landed aristocracy had for centuries protected itself in grand houses behind walls and parks and ha-has, and with resident staff to keep mischief at bay, the enriched beneficiaries of the new business climate were much more accessible to the persistent poor. They and their possessions were generally both visible and, especially in the fast-growing cities, nearby; they tended to live in houses and on streets within earshot and slingshot of the vast armies of the impoverished. Envy was abroad. Robbery was frequent.

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse by Adrian Wooldridge

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Black Swan, blood diamond, borderless world, business climate, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, George Gilder, global supply chain, Golden arches theory, hobby farmer, industrial cluster, intangible asset, It's morning again in America, job satisfaction, job-hopping, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meritocracy, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Macrae, open immigration, patent troll, Ponzi scheme, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, vertical integration, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional, Zipcar

Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus) is a jack-of-all-trades (including theater director, lecturer, and consultant) who happens to have a lot of clever ideas about the new media. Thriving on Anxiety The management theory industry is clearly a formidable business, broad enough to draw on the brainpower of everybody from professors to CEOs and flexible enough to respond to sudden changes in the business climate. But that does not entirely explain why it is so successful. Why are so many people so eager to throw themselves under its wheels? Why do so many business people who are already working themselves into an early grave pick up yet another book on organizational transformation? And why do so many companies that have sworn never to have any more truck with consultancies decide to give them just one more go?

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry by William K. Black

accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, business climate, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, corporate raider, Donald Trump, fear of failure, financial deregulation, friendly fire, George Akerlof, hiring and firing, junk bonds, margin call, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, The Market for Lemons, transaction costs

Control frauds are human; they enjoy the psychological rewards of running one of the most “profitable” firms. The press, local business elites, politicians, employees, and the charities that receive (typically large) contributions from the company invariably label the CEO a genius. In fact, they are pathetic businessmen. If they had been able to run a profitable, honest company in a tough business climate, they would have done so. Control frauds who take money from the company through normal mechanisms (with the blessing of auditors) and receive the adulation of elite opinion makers are extremely difficult to prosecute. The control frauds we convicted became too greedy and began to take funds through “straw” borrowers.3 A prosecutor who detects the straw can win a conviction.

Stacy Mitchell by Big-Box Swindle The True Cost of Mega-Retailers, the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (2006)

accelerated depreciation, big-box store, business climate, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, drop ship, European colonialism, Haight Ashbury, income inequality, independent contractor, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, low skilled workers, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, new economy, New Urbanism, price discrimination, race to the bottom, Ray Oldenburg, RFID, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Great Good Place, the long tail, union organizing, urban planning, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The building I’m in now was rundown and all the others nearby were boarded up,” she said. “It was dangerous too.” Today the buildings have been restored, half a dozen new businesses have opened since 2003, and long-standing stores, like the onehundred-year-old Clarke Hardware, are reporting a much improved business climate.1 The changes seem to have occurred virtually overnight. But they are in fact the culmination of many small improvements that began in 1998 with the formation of Culpeper Renaissance, a community organization dedicated to resurrecting the downtown. One of their first initiatives, said Diane Logan, executive director of the group, was organizing a neighborhood watch to clean up the drug dealing and vandalism that had taken over certain blocks.

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, book value, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commodity super cycle, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Ford Model T, foreign exchange controls, Great Grain Robbery, invisible hand, John Deuss, junk bonds, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Oscar Wyatt, price anchoring, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stakhanovite, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, éminence grise

And that means they can’t buy just any cocoa beans or cobalt. They must know exactly where the raw materials have come from. The result is a more fragmented market, in which the commodity traders are less able to buy from anywhere and sell to anyone. A third challenge for the traders strikes at the core of their business: climate change. Much of the industry’s profits come from trading fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal. If Big Oil and Big Coal are responsible for polluting the planet, the traders are their enablers, shipping their production to global markets. As the world increasingly turns against oil and coal consumption, the traders’ business will suffer.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The problems began, however, when companies went beyond looking for the good stuff that benefits everyone in a locality, such as strong infrastructure or a healthy and educated workforce, and into searching for wealth-extracting free rides such as special tax treatment, exemptions from pro-union laws, lax environmental standards or outright financial inducements from local taxpayers. By the time Oates popularised Tiebout’s paper in the late 1960s, the relocation industry was already maturing, with secretive consultants playing local areas off against each other and constantly pushing states to get the ‘business climate’ right – which meant extracting maximum subsidies from local taxpayers. In the words of Greg LeRoy of the US nonprofit group Good Jobs First, a veteran observer of these change, these consultants are now: the rock stars in expensive suits at economic development conferences: the speaker-bait that brings in hundreds of public officials who hang on their every word.

Capitalism in America: A History by Adrian Wooldridge, Alan Greenspan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Blitzscaling, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land bank, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, price stability, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, savings glut, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transcontinental railway, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, War on Poverty, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, white flight, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Indeed, Jackson was such a foe of paper money (and, famously, of the Second Bank of the United States) that he required all purchases of government land to be paid for in specie. Trump’s populism knows no such discipline. Since Trump’s election, the economy has begun to recover from a near decade of stagnation. The stock market reached new heights, rising sharply straight after his election, with investors anticipating a more pro-business climate. Unemployment continued to decline. Blue-collar wage growth outstripped the rest of the economy. The wealth effect kicked in: the continued rise in house prices coupled with the sharp rise in stock prices and business asset prices added significant support to GDP. Trump addressed some of business’s most pressing concerns.

Endless Money: The Moral Hazards of Socialism by William Baker, Addison Wiggin

Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, asset allocation, backtesting, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , book value, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, break the buck, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon tax, commoditize, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, debt deflation, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, fiat currency, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, lost cosmonauts, low interest rates, McMansion, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, naked short selling, negative equity, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent control, rent stabilization, reserve currency, risk free rate, riskless arbitrage, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, seigniorage, short selling, Silicon Valley, six sigma, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, time value of money, too big to fail, Two Sigma, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, Yogi Berra, young professional