Jane Austen, Game Theorist?

BOOK REVIEW

Jane Austen, Game Theorist, Author: Michael Suk-Young Chwe.

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Author: John von Neumann.

By Steve Denning – The Scientific American has even published a reply from Jane herself: “Game Theory? Sir, You Flatter Me.”

“It is with a mix of delight, embarrassment and confusion that I have watched people analyze and adapt my novels all these years…  So far, I have been content to simply observe all this from my perch in the firmament—to rest my pen, if not my tongue.”

Sadly this thinking of payoffs and manipulations is pervasive in organizations today. It is the foundation for ideas such as that organizations should be aiming at maximizing shareholder value, that organizations should treat employees and contractors as human resources to be exploited and that they should deal with customers as demand to be manipulated. The thinking is pervasive, even though it has devastated business. more> http://tinyurl.com/ctox9nu

Policy patience seen wearing thin as yen drops

By Vidya Ranganathan – The yen’s fall past 100 per dollar highlights growing concerns about ultra-loose monetary policy around the globe and raises the prospect that policymakers elsewhere may take action to protect their economies from a tide of hot money.

Fears that a global currency war is brewing were fueled when the Reserve Bank of Australia and Bank of Korea both cut interest rates this week, citing the strength of their currencies as one of the reasons to act.

New Zealand’s central bank confessed for only the second time since 1985 that it had intervened in currency markets. more> http://tinyurl.com/d2gqkoq

Related>

• Keep on, or enough already? Fed officials spar over QE3, Ann Saphir, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Spicer, Reuters
• Bitcoin Is a Junk Currency, But It Lays the Foundation For Better Money, Nathan Lewis, Forbes

Should Everyone Go To College?

By Stephanie Owen and Isabel V. Sawhill – For the past few decades, it has been widely argued that a college degree is a prerequisite to entering the middle class in the United States.

One way to estimate the value of education is to look at the increase in earnings associated with an additional year of schooling. However, correlation is not causation, and getting at the true causal effect of education on earnings is not so easy. The main problem is one of selection: if the smartest, most motivated people are both more likely to go to college and more likely to be financially successful, then the observed difference in earnings by years of education doesn’t measure the true effect of college. more> http://tinyurl.com/bus4sz8

Related>

• Infographic: Should Everyone Go to College? Isabel V. Sawhill and Stephanie Owen, Brookings Institution
• Federal Student Loan Programs Subsidize Waste And Redistribution To The Wealthy, Jay Schalin, Forbes

The Great American Hospital Pricing Scam Exposed

By Rick Ungar – For the very first time, the federal government is publicly releasing the “rate card” (the full charge before insurance company discounts) prices hospitals throughout the nation charge.

While hospitals have long been required to share this data with the CMS—raising questions as to why the federal government has been willing to participate in keeping this data secret for so long—hospital providers have traditionally guarded this information from the public as carefully as the launch codes required to start a nuclear holocaust.

Until today (May 08).

Take a look at this fascinating graphic provided by The Huffington Post showing the comparative pricing for treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the New York area – $99,690 (New Jersey), $7,044 (Bronx). more> http://tinyurl.com/c3p4q4l

Europe’s fight to save its bees

By Richard Schiffman – Last Monday (Apr 29), the European Union banned the most commonly used pesticide group in the world, the neonicotinoids – neonics for short. The ban is set for two years and may be extended.

The EU members took this radical step because their bees are dying – and neonics have been implicated as one contributing cause. The agro-chemical industry warned that the ban will cause huge losses to agriculture, and encouraged farmers to use even more-dangerous insect poisons, which were in vogue before the neonics were introduced in the 1990s.

Europe is invoking the precautionary principle better safe than sorry. Will the United States – which has an even higher economic stake in the health of its pollinators – follow Europe’s lead? more> http://tinyurl.com/c3ka32d