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Estado | Reservas de ítem | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Búsqueda… Science | Book | 306.4 F851W 1995 | 1 | Stacks | Búsqueda… Desconocido | Búsqueda… No disponible |
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Resumen
Resumen
The emergence of winner-take-all-markets, with few winners and many losers, has transformed the US economy. The authors of this book conclude that this has resulted in income inequality, overcrowding in some areas and increased cultural conformity, and suggest policies for reversing this trend.
Reseñas (3)
Kirkus Review
An unsettling report from two economists on how new competitive forces are impacting Americans' social, business, and ethical lives. According to the Frank (Cornell Univ.; Passions Within Reason, 1988) and Cook (Duke Univ.), winner-take-all markets have two major characteristics: reward by relative rather than absolute performance and concentration of rewards in the hands of few top performers. In other words, these markets have rewarded winners disproportionately compared with runners-up, despite sometimes infinitesimal differences in outcomes (e.g., although Mary Lou Retton won her Olympic gold medal by only a slim margin, she went on to years of Wheaties endorsements, while the name of her rival is barely recalled). Although there are some benefits to these markets, they have widened the gulf between rich and poor, channeled citizens away from their natural talents and into less socially beneficial but potentially lucrative tasks, and even led to greater concentration of the best students into elite institutions. In recent years, winner-take-all imperatives have spread from professional sports and the performing arts to other sectors of the economy, including publishing, where the midlist book is being crowded out at the expense of the next blockbuster; law and investment banking, fields that lure flocks of college graduates looking for fast lucre; and even management. Frank and Cook ably explain the forces (e.g., global competition and technology) that have upped the competitive ante and raised the stakes so much that contestants will continually strive to maintain an advantage. To their credit, the authors urge changes in reward structures rather than direct regulations of career choices, though some of their proposals (e.g., loser paying in tort cases) might worsen the growing inequality that they cite as a result of winner- take-all markets. A thoughtful analysis of how today's haves and have-nots got this way.
Reseña de Booklist
If everyday avarice explained the astronomical remunerations garnered by stars and enter(info)tainers, this would be a one-page book, but economists Frank and Cook have broken down the market forces that push salaries into the stratosphere and produced some 200-odd pages on the subject. One major culprit is inherent in mass culture: when millions have a small interest in the winner's performance, however minutely superior to the runner-up's, a large reward goes to that winner (as in a golf tournament). The reward ratchets upward as the market in question becomes overcrowded with aspiring winners (as in acting), but at the end of the game, the inevitable multitude of losers are left with little reward for their efforts. Result: increasing inequality in income. If confined to arts and sports, the authors would just be telling interesting anecdotes, but the phenomenon has invaded law, business, and academia, where the pressure to win leads to sterile "positional arms races." Their solution won't appease free marketeers, who nonetheless will have nothing to object about in this economic analysis of the situation. --Gilbert Taylor
Revisar OPCIONES
Frank and Cook delve into one of the most important and controversial topics in contemporary economics--growing inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in the US; however, the book's 22-word subtitle suggests that this is a polemic rather than serious scholarship. Their contention that small differences in performance in certain industries (e.g., entertainment, professional sports, journalism, and, to some extent, higher education) can result in large differences in economic rewards and are a byproduct of a highly technological age is generally acknowledged. That this phenomenon is spreading rapidly to other sectors and is large enough to make more than a dent in the observed income distribution, as the authors contend, is far from the empirical mark. Furthermore, worse could be said for their complementary assertions that this fosters unproductive efforts and overcrowding in many fields; rewards relative not absolute performance; and can be eliminated by government regulations that restrict incomes of those at the top, hours of work for all, and competition itself. Researchers who have focused on more conventional explanations of increasing inequality (e.g., government tax and expenditure policies, a changing industrial mix, expansion of the global marketplace) are on firmer ground than these authors. Nevertheless, the timeliness of the topic and the simple appeal of their arguments will attract a large audience in many quarters. All levels. A. R. Sanderson University of Chicago