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- Great Work on Real World Issues
- Interesting and easy read
- The rigorous brain of a Nobel Prize winning economist
- Unlike any of Schelling's other works..
- How to think
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Choice and Consequence
Thomas C. Schelling
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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The Strategy of Conflict
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Micromotives and Macrobehavior
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The Evolution of Cooperation
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Prisoner's Dilemma
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Armchair Economist: Economics & Everyday Life
ASIN: 0674127714 |
Book Description
Thomas Schelling is a political economist "conspicuous for wandering" an errant economist. In Choice and Consequence, he ventures into the area where rationality is ambiguous in order to look at the tricks people use to try to quit smoking or lose weight. He explores topics as awesome as nuclear terrorism, as sordid as blackmail, as ineffable as daydreaming, as intimidating as euthanasia. He examines ethical issues wrapped up in economics, unwrapping the economics to disclose ethical issues that are misplaced or misidentified.
With an ingenious, often startling approach Schelling brings new perspectives to problems ranging from drug abuse, abortion, and the value people put on their lives to organized crime, airplane hijacking, and automobile safety. One chapter is a clear and elegant exposition of game theory as a framework for analyzing social problems. Another plays with the hypothesis that our minds are not only our problem-solving equipment but also the organ in which much of our consumption takes place.
What binds together the different subjects is the author's belief in the possibility of simultaneously being humane and analytical, of dealing with both the momentous and the familiar. Choice and Consequence was written for the curious, the puzzled, the worried, and all those who appreciate intellectual adventure.
Customer Reviews:
Great Work on Real World Issues.......2006-04-29
This book consists of 15 chapters and Shelling intends to make use of his line of economic reasoning to throw light on a considerable variety of intriguing real world issues such as organised crime, circumstances of dying, policy ethics, vicarious problem-solving, self-command, and mind consumption.
To him, economists are used to tilt towards the efficacy of money. Compromising between the hard question of efficiency and equity, public policy is always concerned with the distribution of income and wealth to the unfortunate and the disadvantaged and it is used to involve the question of `how much'. The line of economic reasoning helps decision makers to compare identifiable or something better alternatives in order that distributional objectives can be accomplished in a least wasteful way. It also contributes to the clarification of issues that involve misplaced or misidentified ethics.
In discussing on how people think, behave, and act for themselves, Shelling suggests that people do not always adopt the individualist-utilitarian approach and they can have different goals and tastes at different times. It is not surprising that an individual can make a rational choice at a time but he finally does not act accordingly. For instance, an individual knows that smoking is detrimental to health but he cannot keep himself from smoking because an alternate self is in command. Moreover, people loves reasoning their way into a menu of beliefs and disbeliefs they know to be false. Human mind is something of an embarrassment to economists and other social scientists who have believed that people are used to act as rational consumers in making orderly successive comparisons of products. He suggests that the deprivation of `pareto superior' through physical constrains or coercive environment can minimise opportunity abuse and maximise prediction of human behaviour.
In dying, Individual life saving or reducing individual death is viewed by Shelling as a moral judgement instead of an economic consideration because economists cannot completely assign values to it. Children are different from livestock so that it is difficult to assess their costs and benefits as a result of death. Nor does the US have a national policy on human life so that the cost of human death cannot be substantially reflected. The employment of discounted lifetime earnings to estimate how much an individual should pay for death avoidance is not too relevant. Putting morality aside and using the consumer point of view as an analytical framework, Shelling likes the idea of being allowed to die provided that an individual can relieve others of the emotional burden and the expense.
In addressing the issue of organised crime, Shelling believes that organised crime involves huge social costs such as tax evasion and corruption but it is more preferable to disorganised crime because it internalises some of the costs that falls on the underworld itself if criminal activity is decentralised.It thrives because it provides goods and services the public demands. However, organised crime cannot survive when the market mechanism functions well in a highly competitive manner. To him, prohibition of goods and services in the markets can create organised crime.
In this book, Shelling also adopts game theory to identify a variety of alternatives for analysing arms bargaining and inflicting costs. In conclusion, each chapter is witty and erudite and this book provides readers with insightful and competing evaluation of different real world issues that are surrounded by rationality, sentiment, moral consideration, and economic impact.
Interesting and easy read.......2006-04-25
Quite fun book, collection of essays on all kinds of topics. Some repetition occurs, it's not written as one volume, but it's fine, and the repetition is usually pretty limited.
It's relatively easy to grasp what he's saying here, and it's also great fun from time to time, especially one of the essays regarding self-control.
All in all a nice and interesting book, always fun reading the musings of smart people.
The rigorous brain of a Nobel Prize winning economist.......2006-01-12
Thomas Schelling was awarded the 2005 Nobel prize for economics, and readers of this book will be able to tell you why. Choice and Consequence represents a collection of 15 essays written by Schelling between the late 60s and early 80s, covering a broad range of subjects such as governments' social policies, how to deal with death, how game theory applies to weapons treaties, and organized crime.
Schelling is an academic, and it shows in his writing: his ideas are brilliant, his thinking is extremely logical and rigorous, but his prose is sometimes obtuse. It is not the easiest read, but what is lacks in readability it more than makes up for in intellectual interest. I have rarely, if ever, come across a book whose ideas are more clearly articulated, all while being applicable to situations that readers can understand and in many cases identify with.
This is definitely not a book for everyone; if you are looking for an easier book that discusses everyday situations with economic thinking, read Freakonomics. However, if you are looking for something a little more intellectual, this is your book. It will be extremely useful to anyone who wishes to improve their rational thinking.
Unlike any of Schelling's other works.........2003-04-09
Most people reading this review will know Schelling as a renowned game-theorist/economist, and perhaps as a nobel-prize winner. This is bound to lead to an impression that his books must most likely be economic discourses full of the metrics and highfalutin theoretical abstractions that usually pervade the field in academic circles.
I'll dispel that myth and have you know that Schelling's books -- notably this one and his seminal "Strategy of Conflict" (SOC) -- are as close as you'll come to a readable yet gripping compendium of his fascinating economic thinking. His writing is purposefully simple, and his sharp arguments evoke thoughts about matters that can and will appeal to just about any Joe Bloggs.
But this book is different from any of Schelling's other published works.
SOC for instance was a compilation of roughly a dozen essays discussing negotiation, conflict and strategy...the applications of which were international -- diplomacy, deterrence, arms control, foreign aid, environmental policy, nuclear proliferation, organized crime, racial segregation and integration, tobacco and drugs policy, and ethical issues in policy and business.
While most of Schelling's work including SOC has been of a macro-economic bent, the essays in this book extend his theories to a more personal, social level -- things such as how people maneuver in traffic jams, how parents negotiate with their kids (toughest customers in my book), how they behave when confronted with ransom demands, or file suits, or devise agendas for a meeting or their daily lives. I would draw your attention in particular to chapter 6, "Strategic Relationships in Dying" which touches upon some very interesting subjects such as the relationship between a patient and his doctor, especially a terminally ill patient -- where significant human "choices" need to be made to withhold information, to authenticate assertions, and the conflict of interest that arises within small groups. This article truly underscores that apart from being a leading political economist, a métier Schelling has clearly excelled at, he is also at heart a fabulous thinker and writer.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in strategy, or economics, or negotiation, or even a basic thought-provoking intelligent read.
Shashank Tripathi
How to think.......1998-10-14
This book taught me nothing less than how to think correctly about social and political issues - not through instruction, but by example. I was lucky enough to have it assigned to me, and in introduction the professor said, "Schelling is my guru." Count one more acolyte.
Amazon.com
Southern California psychiatrist William Glasser, the author of Reality Therapy, believes that almost all human misery is caused by people trying to control others. In fact, he says, the only behavior we can control is our own; by the same token, no one can make us do anything we don't want to. It's only when we give up spending our energy trying to force others to conform to our ideas or to keep them from doing the same to us that we are able to live the way we want to. Glasser makes this somewhat difficult material easier to understand with examples and case studies from his own practice. For instance, he tells a man whose wife has left him that his only choices are to change what he wants her to do or to change the way he is dealing with her. While doing these things will not necessarily bring his wife back, Glasser says, it will certainly make him feel better. "When we actually begin to realize that we can control only our own behavior, we immediately start to redefine our personal freedom and find, in many instances, that we have much more freedom than we realize," Glasser writes.
Book Description
Dr. William Glasser offers a new psychology that, if practiced, could reverse our widespread inability to get along with one another, an inability that is the source of almost all unhappiness.
For progress in human relationships, he explains that we must give up the punishing, relationship–destroying external control psychology. For example, if you are in an unhappy relationship right now, he proposes that one or both of you could be using external control psychology on the other. He goes further. And suggests that misery is always related to a current unsatisfying relationship. Contrary to what you may believe, your troubles are always now, never in the past. No one can change what happened yesterday.
Customer Reviews:
Mixed Feelings.......2007-09-13
How do you evaluate the statement: "No successful life exists without a satisfying relationship"? How do you evaluate the statement: "Rheumatoid arthritis is caused by your choosing it"? These are two of many broad and overbroad ideas (or half-truths) William Glasser offers in his very long book. Some ideas made me quite uncomfortable, as when watching a health commercial on tv that is full of gimmickry, particularly when the author offers not one iota of scientific study to back up some of his extraordinary claims. Is choice theory a secular version of Christian Science?
The book does have its positive influences, however. It allowed me to think about myself solely in terms of my Total Behavior and to think well about the assertion: "All I am about is behaving." It also allowed me to consider whether my behavior allows me to be closer to someone I want in my life or whether my behavior is destructive to my desire of being closer to someone. William Glasser's advocacy of a non-coercive, non-manipulative approach to relationships is totally refreshing, and is clear and sensible.
The book itself, despite the ordinary and simple words used, is nonetheless difficult to read from cover to cover. I failed to be interested in all the personal or interpersonal narratives (or case studies) that he presented so as to arrive at the essential strands which comprise choice theory for any given individual. I failed to be interested in how choice theory works in schools, in disputes over Workers' Compensation, in the workplace, and in the community, all of which comprise several long chapters. His writing style is newspaper prose, prolix, plain and garrulous.
According to Mr. Glasser, choice theory works everywhere and anywhere - and at any time. How do you evaluate such a claim? With a grain of salt.
I'm glad I read this book, but everything I wanted from this book was found (finally) in the very last chapter in which William Glasser lists the essential elements comprising choice theory. If this chapter were at the front of the book, it would have given the reader a chance to choose how much of the book he or she would want to read. That, too, ought to be part of choice theory's practicality in the concrete.
Good read so far.......2007-07-29
I have only read a few chapters; but, it has already made a difference in my views toward behavior.
Excellent resource for coaches!.......2007-07-14
I am a family and life coach and focus mainly on coaching parents and teens. Glassers' books is definitely among resources I provide to parents.
William Glasser states that "control can take many forms that can start from a disapproving glance ..." Using control on children and youth does not teach them how to make their own choices. Practicing Choice Theory with children can help them learn to think for themselves and have more confidence in themselves and the choices they make.
Choice Theory brings forward the idea that we are all in control of our lives and that we can attain the freedoms we all want and need. The seeds of unhappiness are planted when we are young and impressionable - when people think they know what is right or wrong for us and then try to force what they know is right.
I found Glasser's book reaffirmed my theory that we do not have to be victims forever and that we have choices to take our experiences - good or bad - and grow from them.
An excellent Choide.......2007-06-27
This is the best self help book that I have found. While the word psychology may scare you off, it is not tough reading. The principals described seem like common sense, once you think about them. This book has proven to be useful in multiple areas of my life and I am actually giving out copies of this book to everyone I see that could use it. You cannot go wrong in spending time with this book. Reality Therapy, by the same author, provides a good example of where choice theory came from. I have read over a dozen psychology books and this is by far my favorite.
Everyone should get a copy!.......2007-03-16
I love this book. Even though it contains so much information we all know, already, it somehow was just what I needed when I needed it.
I give this as a gift to a lot of my middle aged single male friends who cant get past their ex's or cant get on with life as a singleton.
I totally CHOOSE to take responsibility for my life, where I go, what I do, and how I do things. My past is my responsibility and I accept that and embrace it. It is very freeing.
I highly recommend that you read this book and embrace your choices in life. We all have them!
A great read, and even better rule for life.
Book Description
In Investors and Markets, Nobel Prize-winning financial economist William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices. But until now asset-price analysis has largely been inaccessible to everyone except PhDs in financial economics. In this book, Sharpe changes that by setting out his state-of-the-art approach to asset pricing in a nonmathematical form that will be comprehensible to a broad range of investment professionals, including investment advisors, money managers, and financial analysts. Bridging the gap between the best financial theory and investment practice, Investors and Markets will help investment professionals make better portfolio choices by being smarter about asset prices.
Based on Sharpe's Princeton Lectures in Finance, Investors and Markets presents a method of analyzing asset prices that accounts for the real behavior of investors. Sharpe makes this technique accessible through a new, one-of-a-kind computer program (available for free on his Web site, at http://www.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/apsim/index.html) that enables users to create virtual markets, setting the starting conditions and then allowing trading until equilibrium is reached and trading stops. Program users can then analyze the final portfolios and asset prices, see expected returns, and measure risk.
In addition to popularizing the most sophisticated form of asset-price analysis, Investors and Markets summarizes much of Sharpe's most important previous work and reflects a lifetime of thinking about investing by one of the leading minds in financial economics. Any serious investment professional will benefit from Sharpe's unique insights.
Customer Reviews:
good new book for good price.......2007-09-06
good new book for good price. of all the books on the subject, this is by far the easiest to read.
Important read for professional investors.......2007-08-23
An important, relatively recent book by William Sharpe, a Nobel Prize winning economist and Stanford business prof. Not for the rank-and-file investor; but much useful information for pros and teachers of finance. Last chapter contains a summary of very useful advice suitable for anyone who invests in stocks.
"Normative Issues in a Positive Context".......2006-12-05
William Sharpe, who really needs no introduction, has made major contributions to some of the most influential discoveries in financial economics. From his parsimonious diagonal model which simplified the use of Markowitz' normative (prescribing how investors should behave) mean/variance approach to portfolio choice to the positive (describing how investors actually behave) Capital Asset Pricing Model, Professor Sharpe clearly approaches -- even from his earliest investigations - financial economics from a pragmatic perspective. Of course that work contributed to his selection in 1990 as a co-recipient (along with Harry Markowitz and Merton Miller) of The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Professor Sharpe has also been commercially successful, as a RAND economist, and as President, Chairman and/or Director of several enterprises related to investments. Of course, practitioners may know him best for his famous "reward-to-variability" ratio which we all know as the Sharpe ratio. Professor Sharpe has also made important fundamental contributions to options valuation, asset allocation implementation, and returns-based style analysis.
His pioneering books are standard text assignments for both undergraduate and graduate students of finance; these include Portfolio Theory and Capital Markets (McGraw-Hill, 1970 and 2000), Asset Allocation Tools (Scientific Press, 1987), Fundamentals of Investments (with Gordon J. Alexander and Jeffrey Bailey, Prentice-Hall, 2000), Investments (with Gordon J. Alexander and Jeffrey Bailey, Prentice-Hall, 1999). Now we are fortunate as an industry to have Professor Sharpe's latest book, Investors and Markets: Portfolio Choices, Asset Prices and Investment Advice (Princeton University Press, 2007), available.
Investors and Markets is the culmination of a series of three lectures Professor Sharpe gave at Princeton University in May, 2004. The lectures, titled "Asset Prices and Portfolio Choice" are designed to help individual investors make good saving and investment decisions, and Professor Sharpe is the first author I have seen to treat both asset pricing and portfolio choice as a single subject in an attempt to do so. The book is also a nice departure from the well-worn mean/variance framework (which places restrictions on beliefs), relying instead on the state/preference approach (which places restrictions instead on tastes) originally developed by Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu. Although it relies on a discrete-time formulation, one advantage of the state/space framework is that it accommodates both consumption preferences and production outputs. Because there are (literally) an infinite number of future states of the world, closed-form derivations are nearly impossible and simulation is required in this context if we are to achieve equilibrium. To do so, Professor Sharpe built a simulation program called APSIM (Asset Pricing and Portfolio Choice Simulator), which was not available a couple of years ago when the lectures happened but since then he has made freely available on his website, [...].
Professor Sharpe's original Princeton Lectures are organized into 1) Equilibrium, in a single-period setting with homogeneity of investor expectations, 2) Diversity, in a setting where investors have heterogeneous expectations, and 3) Protection, a world in which investors have access to spanning instruments such as principal-protected notes. This is also largely the sequence of the book, which is organized into discussions of equilibrium, preferences and prices in chapters 1-4, which basically comprise Lecture 1; positions (reflecting preferences), and predictions (reflecting disagreement among investors) in chapters five and six, material primarily from Lecture 2, and protection and advice in chapters seven and eight, which is composed mainly of material from Lectures 2 and 3. The book concludes with four simple recommendations for personal investment: diversify as broadly as possible; economize on unnecessary costs; incorporate the circumstances and preferences of the individual client in the portfolio decision; and contextualize portfolio choice vis-à-vis asset pricing, keeping in mind the distinction between investing versus betting, desire for principal protection, and the potential trading impact of the investor when he or she eventually requires liquidity.
In Investors and Markets, Professor Sharpe is "primarily concerned with helping individual investors make good saving and investment decisions - usually with the assistance of professionals such as financial planners, mutual fund managers, advisory services, and personal asset managers." Although this book may prove tough going for the layperson, all professionals in the asset management industry would do well by their clients to buy, read and re-read it ... the clients will certainly benefit.
Book Description
An ideal supplement in any introductory course, American Politics: Strategy and Choiceanalyzes American politics through the lens of individuals making rational choices within a set of rules and institutions. This book introduces students to the core areas of interest to rational-choice scholars, including rule-making, collective-action problems, decision making, strategic behavior, and the role of institutions. Written in cleat prose and filled with numerous concrete examples, american Politics: Strategy and Choiceprovides readers with a thorough understanding of the basic principles of the rational-choice approach and its many applications to American politics.
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Uncertainty, Information and Communication: Essays in Honor of Kenneth J. Arrow, Volume III
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Economic History
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ASIN: 0521327040 |
Book Description
Professor Kenneth J. Arrow is one of the most distinguished economic theorists. He has played a major role in shaping the present state of the subject and now is to be honored by the publication of three volumes of essays on economic theory. Each volume deals with a different area of economic theory. The books include contributions by some of the best economic theorists from the United Stated, Japan, Israel and Europe. This third volume is entitled Uncertainty, information, and communication.
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Public Goods, Redistribution And Rent Seeking (The Locke Institute Series)
Gordon Tullock
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 184376637X |
Book Description
Gordon Tullock, eminent political economist and one of the founders of public choice, offers this new and fascinating look at how governments and externalities are linked.
Economists frequently justify government as dealing with externalities, defined as benefits or costs that are generated as the result of an economic activity, but that do not accrue directly to those involved in the activity. In this original work, Gordon Tullock posits that government can also create externalities. In doing so, he looks at governmental activity that internalizes such externalities.
Monarchical governments originally introduced, for the benefit of the monarch rather than to eliminate externalities, many standard government activities such as road building, war, and internal policing. Most modern governments spend more money on redistribution than on more traditional government activities. This can be thought of as another effort to reduce externalities, since suffering in the community imposes externalities on the rest of us. Rent seeking, a relatively new field in economics and political science, is closely related to externalities and to the structure of government. An analysis of rent seeking, as well as some suggestions for improving government structure, cap off this fascinating treatise.
Economists and political scientists will find this lively and readable book both stimulating and provocative.
Customer Reviews:
Needs an editor.......2006-09-04
I can't recommend this very strongly. In the first place, it badly needs an editor to remove the excess and strangely placed commas, to put dropped words back in, and to remove the extraneous words. In the second place, it just doesn't seem like the kind of book you would expect from someone of Tullock's stature. I think he stretches the meaning of "externality" too far. He covers lots of ground already covered in Calculus of Consent (of which he repeatedly reminds us that he was a co-author). About the only thing I learned was a new biological justification for charity and altruism, but that only accounts for one chapter. For that, I am tempted to upgrade to 2 stars, but won't give into that temptation.
Book Description
Internationally renowned artist and best-selling author Stephen Quiller shows readers how to discover their own personal "color sense" in Color Choices, a book that offers readers a fresh perspective on refining their own color styles. With the help of his own "Quiller Wheel," a special foldout wheel featuring 68 precisely placed colors, the author shows artists how they can develop their own unique color blends. First, Quiller demonstrates how to use the wheel to interpret color relationships and mix colors more clearly. Then he explains, step by step, how to develop five structured color schemes; apply underlays and overlays; and use color in striking, unusual ways. This book will bring out every artist's unique sense of color whether he or she works in oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, or casein.
Customer Reviews:
Totally Excellent Analysis .......2006-10-04
Stephen Quiller's books,(I have his book on using Acrylics as well) are definitly the most helpful to me as I am attempting to take up painting again after a long hiatus. His color wheel is fabulous as are his suggestions on mixing results for different pigments, suggestions on setting up one's pallette, what colors are available in various named brands, etc. on and on. All of this information is for water based media, so if that is what you need, it is all here! One may or may not like his style of painting---it is semi-abstract with elements of realism that makes it appear more commercially appealing I suspect, but his color info is dead on! One definitely does not wind up with mud when following his suggestions.
Color can be everything!.......2006-08-14
Great book presenting a complex theory in understandable fashion! Quiller is an expert in the theory of color.
A Master of Color Harmony.......2004-09-17
Stephen Quiller is a real master of color harmony. I warmly recommend his book. He teaches not only the color theory, but also demonstrates how it works in practice with his own work. Quiller shows how to mix colors in real life and how to find out the complementaries. His color wheel adds the commercial names of hues that one finds in shops, which is quite handy.
Quiller will teach you not to use the "real" surface color of the objects, but to search for feelings and the atmosphere of the ambient. The leaves may be, say, violet and the sky yellow, if that is how you see them.
One thing Quiller misses to point out is additive color mixing like it was used by pointillists. When colors mix in the eye the rules of harmony are somewhat different.
If you are sceptical about brave color mixtures I recommend you to first have a look at Quiller's art at his internet pages.
5 stars for his color wheel.......2003-09-21
This book is worth buying for Quiller's color wheel. It is by far the best and most practical I have ever seen. It makes paint mixing very easy. Throw out your color mixing cook books and buy this one.
This book is trash.......2003-08-09
If you want a book about jarring, hideous color combinations and no useful information whatsoever, get this one. There are so many bad art instruction books, and this one is one of the worst & most useless. The cover of the book gives you an example of the horrible color schemes the author uses. Do you really want to make paintings like that? Also, the color theory in this book is WRONG. Quiller is one of those who still believes that the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow, when they are actually cyan, magenta, and yellow. I bought another book, "Color Theory Made Easy," which is much better. It teaches correct color theory and useful information. I don't know what other good color theory books there are, but I do know you shouldn't buy this useless piece of junk by Quiller. I am really tired of bad art instruction books getting rave reviews on Amazon.com and buying them because I was gullible enough to believe all these reviews.
Book Description
This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II (1989). As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined. The book is suitable for upper level courses in economics dealing with politics, and political science courses emphasizing rational actor models.
Download Description
This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II (1989). As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined. The book is suitable for upper level courses in economics dealing with politics, and political science courses emphasizing rational actor models.
Customer Reviews:
Good Review Text on Rat-Choice Politics and Public Choice.......2003-05-22
This is a great book! As a political-science graduate student I've been exposed to a great deal of game-theory and rat-choice in my seminar classes, but, unfortunately, it has come in the form of numerous papers, piles of books, and several classes that did not build off of one another. I was left with the feeling that it was a very, very important subject, but it was presented in a manner that left me, as a student, with an incomplete picture of the topic and the breadth of work that has gone on in this field.
Mueller's achievements in this volume have been three:
1. Coherent presentation of the theory of public choice / rational politics.
2. Discussion of the most important empirical work that has gone on in this field in a unified fashion that leads one naturally into further inquiry in this area.
3. Logically organizes and presents the material in a way that reinforces concepts, logic, and thinking in the book.
These three things make this book a great review or introductory text to the field of public choice / rational politics that should be on the "must have" list of every serious student of politics and economics. Moreover, not being terribly skilled at mathematics myself, the material is presented both through intuitive written discussions, fairly simplistic "example" equations that are pretty easy to follow if you've had a "principles" microecon course with calculus, and, which I greatly appreciate, a fair amount of graphs. Moreover, the bibliography that the book draws on is very, very extensive...meaning that it has the additional utility of being a handy jumping off point if you're doing research in this area.
My only complaint, and this is a minor one, is that I would like a bit more math in the book either at the end of each chapter or in an appendix that works out, step-by-step, some of the additional concepts he runs over that aren't dealt with mathematically in the main text of the chapters themselves.
This, at least in my opinion, is an excellent book for the graduate student interested in learning about public choice / rational politics.
Book Description
Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In Analytic Narratives, five senior scholars offer a new and ambitious methodological response to this important question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically testable, general hypotheses from particular cases. The result is both a methodological manifesto and an applied handbook that political scientists, economic historians, sociologists, and students of political economy will find essential.
In their jointly written introduction, the authors frame their approach to the origins and evolution of political institutions. The individual essays that follow demonstrate the concept of the analytic narrative--a rational-choice approach to explain political outcomes--in case studies. Avner Greif traces the institutional foundations of commercial expansion in twelfth-century Genoa. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal analyzes how divergent fiscal policies affected absolutist European governments, while Margaret Levi examines the transformation of nineteenth-century conscription laws in France, the United States, and Prussia. Robert Bates explores the emergence of a regulatory organization in the international coffee market. Finally, Barry Weingast studies the institutional foundations of democracy in the antebellum United States and its breakdown in the Civil War. In the process, these studies highlight the economic role of political organizations, the rise and deterioration of political communities, and the role of coercion, especially warfare, in political life. The results are both empirically relevant and theoretically sophisticated.
Analytic Narratives is an innovative and provocative work that bridges the gap between the game-theoretic and empirically driven approaches in political economy. Political historians will find the use of rational-choice models novel; theorists will discover arguments more robust and nuanced than those derived from abstract models. The book improves on earlier studies by advocating--and applying--a cross-disciplinary approach to explain strategic decision making in history.
Customer Reviews:
Narrativistic Public Choice Theory.......2000-07-03
The book under review is one of the best books that has appeared in the field of Public Choice Theroy. Myself doing a post-doctoral research on the public choice theory, I found it a necessary reading for not only those interested in the field but also for general scholars of political theory. The author has covered almost all the necessary subjects about which all over the world increasing attention is being paid or needs to be paid. This book is an answer to those who find public choice theory as basically a statistical theory only. The books has actually covered all the philosophical underpinnings of the public choice therory. This books stands out to be a highly recommended reading for scholars of social science. Sukant Vyas Lecturer Department of Political Science Dyal Singh (Evening) College Lodi Road New Delhi - 110003 (India)
Average customer rating:
- One of the Giants!
- Choice Theory for Science Teachers is a joke.
- If you want a book that will help you in the classroom...
- Fashionable Nonsense
- It's "Control Theory" all over again.
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Choice Theory in the Classroom
William Glasser
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
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ASIN: 0060952873 |
Book Description
William Glasser, M.D., puts his successful choice theory to work in our schools--with a new approach in increasing student motivation.
"Dr. Glasser translates choice theory into a productive, classroom model of team learning with emphasis on satisfaction and excitement. Working in small teams, students find that knowledge contributes to power, friendship and fun. Because content and the necessary student collaboration skills must be taught, teachers need to develop skills if they are to use this model successfully. The dividends are 'turned-on ' students and satisfied teachers."
--Madeline Hunter, University of California at Los Angeles
"Choice Theory in the Classroom is a landmark book, without question one of the most important and useful books for teachers to appear in a long while. Written with rare lucidity and grace, the book has numerous instantly usable ideas that will contribute fundamentally to the success of classroom teachers. William Glasser combines his extensive theoretical expertise and wide practical experience to provide a practical and illuminating guide for teachers [that] should be required reading in every college of education in the country."
--David and Roger Johnson, University of Minnesota
"Choice Theory in the Classroom presents an insightful analysis of what is wrong with traditional school and what need to be done about it. Dr. Glasser gives a compelling rationale for the use of learning-teams in schools to capture the excitement and commitment students display in sports but rarely in the classroom. The book is well written and persuasive. I hope every teacher in America buys it, believes it, and behaves accordingly."
--Robert Slavin, John Hopkins University
Customer Reviews:
One of the Giants!.......2007-05-13
Glasser is defenitely one of the extra-sensory GIANTS! A great tool for anyone with an open mind to upgrade their teaching skills. If you only beleive in what your 5 senses tell you then this book is probably not for you.
Choice Theory for Science Teachers is a joke. .......2007-02-06
Let me start by saying this book is not useless. William Glasser is an egomaniac, but he has some good ideas (though they arn't as original as he claims they are). The eternal concept of always having a choice is important and can help student and teacher alike. However, as a science teacher, there was one section of the book that completely ruined it for me.
Glasser likes to describe everything as choice; we are depressing rather than depressed, because being depressed is a choice (forget clinical depression -- doesn't exist, says Glasser)... mark 1 point against Glasser for throwing medical research into the fire. What REALLY got me upset (As a science teacher) was this little diddy -- "Wehn you run on a hot day, you sweat, but do not be misled into thinking that the running is causing the sweating. It is not. The sweating is the correct or normal physiological component of the total behavior; running..." (pp 53). While the aforementioned philosophy might be a *useful* way to think about things, it is scientifically WRONG. There is a direct cause and effect link between running and sweating (well documented on the microscopic level!) -- to imply, many times, that science is wrong to me, a science teacher, is offensive.
Again, this book is not useless, but it should not be considered scientific. The concept of choice theory and 'total behaviors' are potentially useful, just like the mental tricks used by Buddhists for thousands of years might be useful -- but, now matter how much he thinks it is, Glasser's "revolutionary" choice theory is NOT scientific.
I did read the whole book. I got furious at it a few times, but I don't regret reading it. It has some good ideas -- but the Glasser thinks way too much of himself and his work. Only read this if you have a very open mind and are willing to work hard to find diamonds in the rough.
If you want a book that will help you in the classroom..........2006-01-26
...I don't believe this is a book you will want.
This is one of those books that I bought sight unseen based on the recommendations written by others on amazon (for this book and the precursor _Control Theory..._ by the same author). The prohibitive postage costs saw me retain possession rather than return it for a refund.
I haven't got a lot of time for dry books of educational theory without practical examples. Great, so the current system of institutionalized teaching is not doing what we want it to do and it needs to change. Fantastic, tell us how.
I never finished this book in detail. It was so dull, so unhelpful. Reading the glowing quotes on the back cover makes it seem that I skipped over something vital: "translates choice theory into a productive, classroom model", (I do hope the comma after productive was a type setting error and not intentionally used) "numerous instantly usable ideas". These phrases describe what I was after and I what I did not find.
It's possible I could choose to dig it out from the back of my bookshelf and re-read it, discover something of use but it's more likely I'll choose to spend my time in more interesting and profitable pursuits.
Fashionable Nonsense.......2005-10-06
Glasser takes an idea that has some merit and then keeps pushing it long after it becomes unhelpful. Glasser would have teachers quit using rewards and punishments to motivate students. He tries to justify this warm and fuzzy theory by pointing out misuses of rewards and punishments but its hard to understand how he could be blind to productive and fair uses of rewards and punishments that many teachers use. I know a poor teacher that use Glasser's model and a teacher that is good despite using it. If you want more objective research on schooling check out Stevenson and Stigler's the Learning Gap.
It's "Control Theory" all over again........2000-07-06
This book is the updated of "Control Theory in the Classroom". If you have that book, you don't need this one. If you don't, this is a great book for educators.
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