Consumer Economics

Why do three out of four professional football players go bankrupt? How can illiterate jungle dwellers pass a test that tricks Harvard philosophers? And why do billionaires work so hard - only to give their hard-earned money away? When it comes to making decisions, the classic view is that humans are eminently rational. But growing evidence suggests instead that our choices are often irrational, biased, and occasionally even moronic. Which view is right - or is there another possibility?

Unlock the mysteries of thriving economies with "Understanding Economic Cycles," your essential guide to the ebb and flow of financial prosperity. This comprehensive eBook delves into the rhythmic dance of economic booms, demystifying the forces that propel growth and the delicate balance required to sustain it. Begin your journey with an insightful exploration of economic booms by understanding their defining characteristics and historical significance. Discover why comprehension of these phenomena is crucial for anyone eager to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of global markets. As ...

A major new exploration of the economics of animal exploitation and a practical road map for how we can use the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures from the renowned animal-rights advocate Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and New York Times best-selling author of The Bond.

Dive into the captivating world of economic booms and their impact on consumer behavior with Riding the Wave, your ultimate guide to understanding and thriving in periods of prosperity. This insightful eBook takes you on a journey through the heart of booming economies, unraveling the mysteries of growth, consumer psychology, and market trends. Begin your adventure by exploring the essence of economic booms and their historical patterns, laying the groundwork for deeper insights into consumer behavior. Discover how the psychology of abundance shapes spending habits and how increased incomes...

The digital revolution poses a mortal threat to the major creative industries - music, publishing, television, and the movies. The ease with which digital files can be copied and distributed has unleashed a wave of piracy with disastrous effects on revenue. Cheap, easy self-publishing is eroding the position of these gatekeepers and guardians of culture. Does this revolution herald the collapse of culture, as some claim? In Digital Renaissance, Joel Waldfogel argues that digital technology is enabling a new golden age of popular culture, a veritable digital renaissance.

Luxury! The word alone conjures up visions of attractive, desirable lifestyle choices, yet luxury also faces criticism as a moral vice, harmful to both the self and society. Engaging ideas from business, marketing, and economics, The Vice of Luxury takes on the challenging task of naming how much is too much in today's consumer-oriented society.

In four decades, bookended by the Pope’s visits to Ireland in September 1979 and August 2018, Ireland has become one of the wealthiest and most progressive nations in the world. Characteristically brilliant and timely, Renaissance Nation is a thrilling account of Ireland’s vertiginous rise and a timely exploration of its conflicted present, where stark decisions await the next generation of would-be revolutionaries.

Corporations are broken, reflecting no purpose deeper than profit. But the tools we are relying on to fix them - corporate social responsibility, divestment, impact investing, and government control - risk making our problems worse. With lively storytelling and careful analysis, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good.

Great marketing strategy looks like magic to the uninitiated. The mystical aura surrounding behavioral economics draws in the intellectually curious but has also confined the discipline to the fringes of modern marketing practices. Unpacking the drivers of human behavior is critical to connecting with consumers, but insights from psychology, neuroscience, and other fields are hidden away in arcane academic publications and books that aren't designed for practitioners.

Could you lose weight if you put $20,000 at risk? Would you finally set up your billing software if it meant that your favorite charity would earn a new contribution? If you’ve ever tried to meet a goal and came up short, the problem may not have been that the goal was too difficult or that you lacked the discipline to succeed. From giving up cigarettes to increasing your productivity at work, you may simply have neglected to give yourself the proper incentives.

Today's established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial DNA and jump-start revenues - or risk losing their way. By working with startup companies, says Jim Stengel, renowned consultant to Fortune 500 companies and the former global marketing officer for Procter & Gamble, legacy companies can renew themselves: by acquiring new technology and creating new business lines, relearning the need for speed, sparking innovation, and learning from failures.

We are using up the planet at almost double the rate it can regenerate. To support our economies, we're told we must shop now like we've never shopped before. And whilst we can do it more responsibly, the scale of our consumption remains the biggest factor in the ruination of the planet. Yet our reliance on stuff continues to grow. But what would our world look like if we stopped? Would civilisation collapse? Would the planet's ecology be reborn? What would happen to the way we think, make products, use time, express our individuality? Would life be better - or worse?

Taking behavioral economics from the cocktail party to the boardroom, with dramatic results Books like Predictably Irrational and Nudge have brought behavioral economics into the mainstream. But while we all marvel at how different-and weird-real people behave compared to the "rational actors" of traditional economics, in the end we go back to business as usual.

Bitter fighting over deficits, taxes, and spending bedevils Washington, D.C., even as partisan gridlock has brought the government to the brink of default. Yet the more politicians on both sides of the aisle rant and the citizenry fumes, the more things seem to remain the same. White House Burning looks squarely at the burgeoning national debt and proposes to defuse its threat to our well-being without forcing struggling middle-class families and the elderly into poverty.

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own ‘utility’. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to ‘cognitive biases’ with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.

Money Anxiety is a behavioral economics book exploring how financial anxiety impacts consumer behavior. The book explains why we make instinctive financial decisions, why we are more risk averse when stressed, and why we hate to lose more than we love to win.

Today's consumers can seem impossible to understand, and even harder to please. For instance, the average mall shopper will spend about $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size. And the store most likely to get her money isn't the one with the nicest display or the deepest discounts, it's the one closest to her parking spot.

Last Rights: The Fight to Save the 7th Amendment shines a bright spotlight on a grave but often overlooked effort by large corporate interests to undermine America's civil justice system and consumer rights. Trailblazing Plaintiff's lawyer, Jeffrey B. Simon, wrote this book as a rallying cry for anyone who has ever been wronged by a rigged system of laws. Through riveting tales of real courtroom drama, Simon exposes the insidious influence of corporate greed and political power weaponized to repeal personal rights and weaken public safety.

Countless enterprises fall apart the moment they scale; their positive results fizzle, they lose valuable time and money and the great electric charge of potential that drove them early on disappears. In short, they suffer a voltage drop. Yet success and failure are not about luck - in fact, there is a rhyme and reason as to why some ideas fail and why some make it big. Certain ideas are predictably scalable, while others are predictably destined for disaster.

Over the last four decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels, and the personal savings rate has sunk dangerously low. Why, in the richest nation on Earth, can't Americans hold on to their money? First published in 2008, Stuart Vyse's Going Broke described the epidemic of personal debt that existed in the years leading up to the Great Recession and anticipated the home mortgage crisis that started it. Ten years later, this fully updated new edition tackles the post-recession era of economic recovery.