Richard Thaler: Writing Contracts for Humans
Nobel laureate Richard Thaler understands the “human” side of economics. He’s a founding member of behavioral economics and most recently won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences.
Nobel laureate Richard Thaler understands the “human” side of economics. He’s a founding member of behavioral economics and most recently won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences.
This month’s Academic of Outsourcing tribute goes to Douglass C. North for his work on “new institutional economics.” North – a professor, economist, philosopher and economic historian – was the co-recipient (with Robert Fogel) of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.”
Professors Bengt Holmström (MIT) and Oliver Hart (Harvard) received the 2016 Nobel Prize in economic science in October for their work in the realm of contract theory and, most intriguing, the nature of contracts as being essentially incomplete.
Economist and philosopher Deirdre McCloskey has some thought-provoking and highly nuanced takes on innovation and ethics in the commercial arena.
How about this for starters: capitalism is innovation, in her estimation. And she contends that capitalism/innovation backed by liberal economic ideas “has made billions of poor people pretty well off, without hurting other people.” Did I mention she is also controversial?
Jean Tirole, the French professor of economics who recently received the Nobel Prize, is one of the most influential modern economists for his extensive theories and rigorous mathematic analysis of strategic behaviour and information economics in what is known as “Industrial Organisation” (IO).
As part of his research, he studied firms and markets where a firm had “power” to dominate the market and perhaps abuse that power.
I’ve talked a lot about “economic rationality” in outsourcing and business relationships in a globalised marketplace. This blog is dedicated to Paul Krugman, an economist and Nobel laureate, who fights for rationality mostly against great odds from within and without the economic community.
This month’s column pays a tribute to Elinor Ostrom, who shared the Nobel Prize award in economic science in 2009 with Oliver Williamson. Ostrom, who died at age 78 on June 12, was cited by the Nobel Committee for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” a term that refers to resources that are owned or shared in common among communities.
If you walk past a bookstore or watch 60 Minutes you have likely heard of the wonderful works by the academic economist Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics. Levitt teamed with his journalist collaborator Stephen J. Dubner to create two bestsellers I highly recommend reading.
Common sense tells us that businesses grow when they innovate. And that those with the greatest amount of innovation benefit the most.
This week’s column focuses on big thinker Ronald Coase. Coase, a giant of modern economic science and 1991 Nobel laureate helps us understand a key fundamental of business: that business (and outsourcing decisions) are a math problem.
While outsourcing has been in the limelight for some 20 years, various threads of economic thought and research stretching for more than 80 years planted the seeds of modern outsourcing, centering on growth theory, transaction costs, game theory, property rights, deregulation and the nature of the firm.
What does Adam Smith tell us about outsourcing? The answer is somewhat complicated: Nothing directly, but then again everything.