I heard about this book on NPR and I thought it would be interesting. The subject was interesting, but the book read like a technical paper, not for a general public: mostly about numbers and repetitive themes and arguments.

I do hope for a better pension system, but I am not sure her book was able to convince me of her Guarantied Retirement Account plan.

I enjoyed reading it. I can see why some might say he and his book represent “bears”, but I think Robert Shiller is more about rationality and why the public’s perception of a possible infinite growth is just a dream.

I think this second edition came out in 2005, some time before all the talk about housing bubble bursting, but his analysis would correctly note the inevitable fall of the housing market.

I liked the fact that the historic prices used by him was adjusted to the consumer price index. I think this is really important for the true analysis of value growth (or shrinkage). You just can’t compare the face currency values in the historical senses.

Unfortunately I don’t think this book will change that much. We are, after all, irrational being (only being able to be rational for a short period of time).

This is one of the most fun reading I’ve done recently. I think I saw it mentioned in BusinessWeek. The words that caught my interest was “gambling”, “stock market”, and “Claude Shannon“. Especially Late Dr. Shannon. Ever since I got involved in video and audio codec works, I’ve been interested in finding more about the man who invented a field of science, Information Theory, which brought forth all the digital communication we enjoy today.

Although Dr. Shannon is one of the principal characters in Mr. Poundstone’s non-technical (more of historical narrative) book, it’s really the “Kelly’s Criteria” which was formulated by a Texas physician, John L. Kelly, Jr., that is at the center. The formula gives a guide to how much of one’s bankroll to bet given the odd and the “edge” you have (his assertion was it should be edge/odd).

At its opposite at the center, is the “Efficient Market Theory” which is (I believe) still prevailing in the economic and financial circle. This theory states that the market is so efficient that no one can have an edge and exploit it.

And another main character is Ed Thorp who was a math Ph.D when he wrote one of the first to publish a blackjack card counting system. Using the Kelly’s criteria, he was able to maximize his earnings in blackjack (which got him banned in many casinos). Then, he found something better than blackjack when he was a professor at U.C. Irvine: stock market. Using math and computers, he was able to exploit the small (and probably temporary) inefficiencies that can be found in the market.

Anyway, it’s a fun reading. I can see that in a long term, the market will correct itself. However, I also think that there are always small localized “anomalies” in any complex system (e.g., matter and anti-matter briefly appearing out of “empty” space). Although I won’t be able to really make use of the Kelly’s criteria, but it sure was fun to read about mafia, casinos, and stock market.

It was an interesting and easy read: Not really academic and not too technical. I think I can understand why some of the Amazon.com readers’ reviews were critical of the book’s non-technical contents. But this is really a lighter reading than anything else.

Although the writers seem to say the book does not have any unifying theme, in short, the book is about incentives and using economic tools to analyze social and cultural data. Steven D. Levitt is the economist who did (and probably still does) this type of studies. Stephen J. Dubner wrote for The New York Times Magazines where he wrote articles featuring Levitt’s studies. I believe the idea for the book came out of those articles. It also seems two of them are currently writing articles for the paper.

The book contains some very interesting examples, but the writing is very easy to digest. It also gives something to think about your everyday life although not for too long since we normally lack the data and the analysis to gain any real insights (I mean, without proper data analysis, your hypothesis is just that, an interesting story and nothing more). Anyway, I’d like to see more analysis on other social/cultural data.

I was held up with reading Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1), a very long and “boring” book by Neal Stephenson. After several months, I realized that I am never going to finish this, so I stopped about a third into it. I had other books to read.

Anyway, the next one I picked up is a book by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and a former economic adviser to President Clinton.

The book is about the mid- and late-1990s where most thought that the boom would never end. But it did at the turn of the millennium. Mr. Stiglitz gives his analysis of what really went on during the decade and what could have been done better. His main points on the inevitable bust were basically these two, that the market is not all efficient/perfect/good (thus, de-regulation is not all good), and that the globalization were mis-managed.

I did appreciate his analysis and insights about the relationships between various events that went on during the 90s. I absolutely agree with him that the U.S. has been (and still is) hypocritical in its foreign affairs, where the ideologies are just fronts to its own agendas.

However, I think the book could have been much shorter, and I didn’t like the book’s political tone. Mr. Stiglitz do criticize some aspects of the Clinton administration, but his main criticism was clearly targeted on the current Bush (and the former Bush and the Reagan) administration. Not that I don’t agree on most, but still it was too political for my taste, especially for the Election year, for a mostly macro-economy analysis literature.

Beside the obvious political criticisms toward the current administration, I think it’s an interesting read on what the future policy makers (and the voting citizens) should be aware for the future prosperity for all.