Sunday, June 10, 2007

Dead Economists and Pricing



I have always enjoyed reading economics, although it has has been described as a dismal science before. Recently, read two books which are are very well written.

The first, New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought brought to life what I studied in my economics class many years. I remembered I scored an A then, and surprisingly so, since I had no grounding in this discipline. This book tells the story of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, Keynes and all the long gone dead economists that still to this day heavily influenced the way our governments run our economies.

There are some injection of humour and its gives me great pleasure to read this book, providing me a firm understandingof how our markets work. Although the different ideas and theories seem contradictory with each economist firmly entrenched in their positions, they have their own logical reasons for them. One notable economist I remembered from the film "The Corporation" is also cited in this book, Milton Friedman. I won't bore you with the details, but truly an enjoyable book.

The second, The art of pricing by Rafi Mohammed. This book show how to really price any product or service. He uses great day to day examples of how he uses his principles. It seems we should price any product based on the perceived value of the product or service. Everyone places different values on the same product. Again, go read his website or the book and you will fair idea how companies set prices for consumers like us.

1 comment:

Journeyman said...

Anyway the real reason i came in here was to leave a note that i've picked up "new ideas from dead economists" and intend to read it over the weekend. I've always wanted to read a good introductory book on economics.

To repay your "gd deed", i was thinking of a gd bk to recommend you. I've read a lot of biographies and the gd ones are more captivating than novels, more motivational than any self-improvement bks and teach you many things that you'll otherwise have to learn the hard way. The one that started it all for me was written by Jonathan Aitken on Richard Nixon. Try searching this title "Nixon: A Life" in Amazon but i suggest you borrow it from the library. I picked it off the library shelf intending to just browse it. It's pretty thick and i remember thinking to myself "who in the right mind would read a 800pg BIOGRAPHY?!"

Well i ended up borrowing it and finishing it over the weekend. Suggest you give it a shot because it's well-written and tells the life of a relatively poor boy who'd go on to become one of America's great (by my reckoning) presidents. There's much much more to him than "Watergate" and this bk will tell you his life story in a very enjoyable and engaging manner.

If you ever finish this bk, let me know as there's another very gd biograhy which i want to recommend...one bk at a time eh..