From a bestselling author and economist, a contemporary moral case for economic growth—and a dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. Growth is good. Through history, economic growth, in particular, has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue on our trends of growth, and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it, every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us. So, how do we proceed? Tyler Cowen, in a culmination of 20 years of thinking and research, provides a roadmap for moving forward. In this new book, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities. As a means of practicing the altruism that Stubborn Attachments argues for, Tyler Cowen is donating all earnings from this book to a man he met in Ethiopia earlier this year with aspirations to open his own travel business.
In a world where more people know who Princess Di was than who their own senators are, where Graceland draws more visitors per year than the White House, and where Michael Jordan is an industry unto himself, fame and celebrity are central currencies. In this intriguing book, Tyler Cowen explores and elucidates the economics of fame. Fame motivates the talented and draws like-minded fans together. But it also may put profitability ahead of quality, visibility above subtlety, and privacy out of reach. The separation of fame and merit is one of the central dilemmas Cowen considers in his account of the modern market economy. He shows how fame is produced, outlines the principles that govern who becomes famous and why, and discusses whether fame-seeking behavior harmonizes individual and social interests or corrupts social discourse and degrades culture. Most pertinently, Cowen considers the implications of modern fame for creativity, privacy, and morality. Where critics from Plato to Allan Bloom have decried the quest for fame, Cowen takes a more pragmatic, optimistic view. He identifies the benefits of a fame-intensive society and makes a persuasive case that however bad fame may turn out to be for the famous, it is generally good for society and culture.
Renowned economist and author of Big Business Tyler Cowen brings a groundbreaking analysis of capitalism, the job market, and the growing gap between the one percent and minimum wage workers in this follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation. The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over. In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy works and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.
A Wall Street Journal and Washington Post Bestseller "Tyler Cowen's blog, Marginal Revolution, is the first thing I read every morning. And his brilliant new book, The Complacent Class, has been on my nightstand after I devoured it in one sitting. I am at round-the-clock Cowen saturation right now."--Malcolm Gladwell Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist and best selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition—we’re working harder than ever to avoid change. We're moving residences less, marrying people more like ourselves and choosing our music and our mates based on algorithms that wall us off from anything that might be too new or too different. Match.com matches us in love. Spotify and Pandora match us in music. Facebook matches us to just about everything else. Of course, this “matching culture” brings tremendous positives: music we like, partners who make us happy, neighbors who want the same things. We’re more comfortable. But, according to Cowen, there are significant collateral downsides attending this comfort, among them heightened inequality and segregation and decreased incentives to innovate and create. The Complacent Class argues that this cannot go on forever. We are postponing change, due to our near-sightedness and extreme desire for comfort, but ultimately this will make change, when it comes, harder. The forces unleashed by the Great Stagnation will eventually lead to a major fiscal and budgetary crisis: impossibly expensive rentals for our most attractive cities, worsening of residential segregation, and a decline in our work ethic. The only way to avoid this difficult future is for Americans to force themselves out of their comfortable slumber—to embrace their restless tradition again.
A leading economist, “who may very well turn out to be this decade’s Thomas Friedman” (Wall Street Journal), illuminates the state of American food today. Tyler Cowen, one of the most influential economists of the last decade, wants you to know that just about everything you’ve heard about how to get good food is wrong. Drawing on a provocative range of examples from around the globe, Cowen reveals why airplane food is bad, but airport food is improving, why restaurants full of happy, attractive people usually serve mediocre meals, and why American food has improved as Americans drink more wine. At a time when obesity is on the rise and forty-four million Americans receive food stamps, An Economist Gets Lunch will revolutionize the way we eat today—and show us how we’re going to feed the world tomorrow.
One of America’s most respected economists presents a quirky, incisive romp through everyday life that reveals how you can turn economic reasoning to your advantage—often when you least expect it to be relevant. Like no other economist, Tyler Cowen shows how economic notions—such as incentives, signals, and markets—apply far more widely than merely to the decisions of social planners, governments, and big business. What does economic theory say about ordering from a menu? Or attracting the right mate? Or controlling people who talk too much in meetings? Or dealing with your dentist? With a wryly amusing voice, in chapters such as “How to Control the World, The Basics” and “How to Control the World, Knowing When to Stop” Cowen reveals the hidden economic patterns behind everyday situations so you can get more of what you really want. Readers will also gain less selfish insights into how to be a good partner, neighbor and even citizen of the world. For instance, what is the best way to give to charity? The chapter title “How to Save the World—More Christmas Presents Won’t Help” makes a point that is every bit as personal as it is global. Incentives are at the core of an economic approach to the world, but they don’t just come in cash. In fact, money can be a disincentive. Cowen shows why, for example, it doesn’t work to pay your kids to do the dishes. Other kinds of incentives—like making sure family members know they will be admired if they respect you—can work. Another non-monetary incentive? Try having everyone stand up in your next meeting if you don’t want anyone to drone on. Deeply felt incentives like pride in one’s work or a passing smile from a loved one, can be the most powerful of all, even while they operate alongside more mundane rewards such as money and free food. Discover Your Inner Economist is an introduction to the science of economics that shows it to be built on notions that are already within all of us. While the implications of those ideas lead to Cowen’s often counterintuitive advice, their wisdom is presented in ordinary examples taken from home life, work life, and even vacation life… How do you get a good guide in a Moroccan bazaar?
In a world full of economics blogs, Cowen and Tabarrok’s Marginal Revolution (marginalrevolution.com) ranks is one of the Web’s most popular and most respected. The same qualities that make the blog so distinctive are also behind the success Modern Principles of Economics—engaging authors, unbiased presentations of essential ideas, and a knack for revealing the “invisible hand” of economics at work. The thoroughly updated new edition of Modern Principles again draws on a wealth of captivating applications to show readers how economics shed light on business, politics, world affairs, and everyday life.
In a world full of economics blogs, Cowen and Tabarrok's Marginal Revolution (marginalrevolution.com) ranks is one of the Web's most popular and most respected. The same qualities that make the blog so distinctive are also behind the success Modern Principles of Economics--engaging authors, unbiased presentations of essential ideas, and a knack for revealing the "invisible hand" of economics at work. The thoroughly updated new edition of Modern Principles again draws on a wealth of captivating applications to show readers how economics shed light on business, politics, world affairs, and everyday life.
An economics professor and author describes how the World Wide Web is changing the way our minds work, and provides a guide to the coming world of Web 3.0, where social networking and Tweeting will improve education and enrich lives.
A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra's "My Way" as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist's eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural "destruction" breeds not artistic demise but diversity. Through an array of colorful examples from the areas where globalization's critics have been most vocal, Cowen asks what happens when cultures collide through trade, whether technology destroys native arts, why (and whether) Hollywood movies rule the world, whether "globalized" culture is dumbing down societies everywhere, and if national cultures matter at all. Scrutinizing such manifestations of "indigenous" culture as the steel band ensembles of Trinidad, Indian handweaving, and music from Zaire, Cowen finds that they are more vibrant than ever--thanks largely to cross-cultural trade. For all the pressures that market forces exert on individual cultures, diversity typically increases within society, even when cultures become more like each other. Trade enhances the range of individual choice, yielding forms of expression within cultures that flower as never before. While some see cultural decline as a half-empty glass, Cowen sees it as a glass half-full with the stirrings of cultural brilliance. Not all readers will agree, but all will want a say in the debate this exceptional book will stir.
Previously published as Create Your Own Economy "Will change the way you think about thinking."—Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind Renowned behavioral economist and commentator Tyler Cowen shows that our supernetworked world is changing the way we think—and empowering us to thrive in any economic climate. Whether it is micro-blogging on Twitter or buying single songs at iTunes, we can now customize our lives to shape our own specific needs. In other words, we can create our own economy—and live smarter, happier, fuller lives. At a time when apocalyptic thinking has become all too common, Cowen offers a much-needed Information Age manifesto that will resonate with readers of Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, and everyone hungry to understand our potential to withstand, and even thrive, in any economic climate.
The art and science of talent search: how to spot, assess, woo, and retain highly talented people. How do you find talent with a creative spark? To what extent can you predict human creativity, or is human creativity something irreducible before our eyes, perhaps to be spotted or glimpsed by intuition, but unique each time it appears? Obsessed with these questions, renowned economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: the people with the creativity, drive, and insight to transform an organization and make everyone around them better. Cowen and Gross guide the reader through the major scientific research areas relevant for talent search, including how to conduct an interview, how much to weight intelligence, how to judge personality and match personality traits to jobs, how to evaluate talent in online interactions such as Zoom calls, why talented women are still undervalued and how to spot them, how to understand the special talents in people who have disabilities or supposed disabilities, and how to use delegated scouts to find talent. Talent appreciation is an art, but it is an art you can improve through study and experience. Identifying underrated, brilliant individuals is one of the simplest ways to give yourself an organizational edge, and this is the book that will show you how to do that. Talent is both for people searching for talent and for those who wish to be searched for, found, and discovered.
Available for the first time with Macmillan's new online learning platform, Achieve, Modern Principles is a tour-de-force with a unique combination of vivid writing, up-to-date relevant examples, and online resources unlike any other textbook for this market. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok have long demonstrated their mastery at communicating economic principles in a clear, captivating way through their blog, The Marginal Revolution. And they are pioneers in online education. Their fully updated new edition has more high-quality material designed for online teaching than any other principles of economics textbook. Videos from Marginal Revolution University (MRU), Discovering Data questions, live links to FRED data, an e-book, and assessment all live under Macmillan's new learning platform, Achieve and combine to provide an online learning product for all types of learners whether in face to face, hybrid or pure online classes.
This intriguing work explores the world of three amate artists. A native tradition, all of their painting is done in Mexico, yet, the finished product is sold almost exclusively to wealthy American art buyers. Cowen examines this cultural interaction between Mexico and the United States to see how globalization shapes the lives and the work of the artists and their families. The story of these three artists reveals that this exchange simultaneously creates economic opportunities for the artists, but has detrimental effects on the village. A view of the daily village life of three artists connected to the larger art world, this book should be of particular interest to those in the fields of cultural economics, Latino studies, economic anthropology and globalization.
In a world full of economics blogs, Cowen and Tabarrok’s Marginal Revolution (http://marginalrevolution.com/) is one of the Web’s most popular and respected. The same qualities that make the blog so distinctive are also behind the success of Modern Principles of Economics—engaging authors, unbiased presentations of essential ideas, and a knack for revealing the “invisible hand” of economics at work. The thoroughly updated new edition of Modern Principles again draws on a wealth of captivating applications to show readers how economics shed light on business, politics, world affairs, and everyday life. Changes to the second edition include: • New chapter on Consumer Choice, which uses indifference curves • New separate chapter on Taxes and Subsidies, with a new introduction and new coverage of wage subsidies • Coverage of Costs (Ch. 11) and Competition (Ch. 12) split into separate chapters • New separate chapter on The Economics of Network Goods (Ch. 16), including coverage of contestable markets • Increased coverage of oligopolies and new coverage of monopolistic competition (Ch. 15, Cartels, Oligopolies, and Monopolistic Competition) • New coverage of bubbles (Ch. 22, Stock Markets and Personal Finance) Stay connected: "Like" Modern Principles of Economics on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ModernPrinciples
Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.
For the first time ever renowned economist and coauthor of one of the world’s most influential economic blogs, Tyler Cowen, sits down with best-selling author and autism advocate Temple Grandin for a lively in-depth exploration of the value of autism in the modern world. Just as he does in his book Create Your Own Economy, Cowen argues that individuals on the autism spectrum are integral to the world’s many faceted economy; they create all kinds of value in financial, intellectual, cultural and even political markets. Their talents regarding the organization of information are of critical value now, and they are talents we all share to some extent. Cowen and Grandin discuss the nature of autistic thinking, the historical, future and global contributions it can make, as well as the damage done by the stigma currently associated with the autistic label. Valuing the unique and specialized autistic cognitive abilities of each member of society--understanding how we think differently--is the key to the unimaginable prosperity the modern world has yet to offer.
Americans agree about government arts funding in the way the women in the old joke agree about the food at the wedding: it's terrible--and such small portions! Americans typically either want to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, or they believe that public arts funding should be dramatically increased because the arts cannot survive in the free market. It would take a lover of the arts who is also a libertarian economist to bridge such a gap. Enter Tyler Cowen. In this book he argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty--and how it could result in even more and better. Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America's meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental--but decidedly not laissez-faire--system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe. Bringing serious attention to the neglected issue of the American way of funding the arts, Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.
Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.
Working toward developing your economic way of thinking, Cowen and Tabarrok focus on modern content and modern delivery, teaching economics in a way that makes it more memorable for you.
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