The link below is to an article that gives an introduction to the Kindle, especially for those who may have just got one for Christmas.
For more visit:
http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/here-is-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-new-kindle
The links below are to articles that take a look at speed reading and speed reading apps.
For more visit:
– http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/12/24/how-to-speed-read-in-reading-apps-on-android/
– http://www.dailydot.com/technology/best-speed-reading-apps-and-sites/
The link below is to an article that takes a look at how to give an ebook as a gift.
For more visit:
http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/how-to-send-an-e-book-as-a-gift/114274
The links below are to articles that take a look at giving books as gifts and how to prepare them as gifts.
For more visit:
– http://www.readitforward.com/give-a-book-as-a-gift/
– http://www.readitforward.com/5-creative-ways-to-wrap-a-book/
Charis Palmer, The Conversation and Helen Westerman, The Conversation
Challenging, inspiring and funny: a handful of our economics writers share the favourite books they read this year.
Rodney Maddock, Adjunct Professor of Economics, Monash University
The Courage to Act by Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke’s The Courage to Act gives a wonderful insight into the problems he faced in trying to deal with the crisis, around legislative restrictions, and blame shifting amongst the various regulators.
Doing Good Better by William MacAskill
William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better is a great read about the problems with international charities and on ways in which we can do better in providing assistance.
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last was my best novel of the year: she is simply a wonderful writer and this one extrapolates ideas about how a prison might be run for profit, posing a possible end state of privatisation.
Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic
Emma Viskic’s Resurrection Bay is the perfect holiday detective story set; perfect for aeroplanes or the beach.
Janine Dixon, Senior Research Fellow, Victoria University
Creating Cities by Marcus Westbury
Marcus Westbury, founder of Renew Newcastle, identified a problem and set about trying to fix it. An economist would hardly credit the idea that the main street in the CBD of a major Australian town could lie mostly empty, while at the same time property owners were declining genuine offers of business. Without being an economics textbook, Creating Cities gives us insight into the market incentives that lead to this sub-optimal allocation of resources. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the process of renewal of an urban centre. Westbury describes the failure of large, centrally-led projects (think monorail) to revive Newcastle, and the surprising success of individuals and small enterprises in breathing life into the once empty shopfronts.
Melbourne University Publishing
City Limits by Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan
“A higher proportion of Australians live in cities than almost any other country, and most of our national wealth is generated in them.” There is no question that well-functioning cities are a great enabler of economic activity and provide residents with a high standard of living. However, in cities a diverse range of individuals and agencies operate and respond to incentives which are not always in the interests of the greater good. This book gives detailed and informative descriptions of the state of many Australian cities, and explores the many challenges faced by city planners, residents and businesses alike.
The Economics of Just About Everything by Andrew Leigh
I’ve been lucky enough to hear Andrew Leigh speak on a couple of occasions and he tells a great yarn. His message is clear – economics is about incentives – and he illustrates his point over and over with interesting data and stories to go with it. He dispels the myth that economists are only interested in money. I’ve got this one for my 14-year-old nephew for Christmas this year.
Stephen King, Professor, Department of Economics, Monash University
From Protection to Competition by Kerrie Round and Martin Shanahan
I reviewed this book for an international competition law journal earlier this year. It is a great little book that provides a history of Australia’s attitudes to competition and our competition laws from 1788 to 1974 (the end date is when our current competition laws were introduced). It is a comprehensive work of economic history and also a great “story”. It is easy to forget that for most of Australia’s history businesses happily and legally formed cartels to prevent “undesirable” competition and to harm consumers. It is also interesting to see government responses (e.g. having government owned businesses to try and increase competition – they usually failed). It is a gem that I referenced in my most recent article on The Conversation.
Deborah Ralston, Professor of Finance, Monash University
Melbourne University Publishing
Advanced Australia by Mark Butler
Much of my research over recent years has been on post-retirement and I think this book is a really accessible discussion of the issues involved. Although a sitting member, Butler seems to take a pretty balanced view of how the ageing population is impacting on the economy. His track record as Minister for Mental Health and Aged Care through a period of considerable reform to aged care gives him a fairly authoritative point of view. I really enjoyed his speech on this topic to the National Press Club recently.
Ross Guest, Professor of Economics, Griffith University
Real-world Economic Policy by Jan Libich
This is the best book for me this year. Succinct contributions on a range of topical themes from economists from various fields and persuasions.
Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Australia
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Paypal founder and noted venture capitalist Peter Thiel discusses how monopoly is essential for innovation, not the terrible thing economists have always told you.
Destiny and Power by Jon Meacham
Biography of George Herbert Walker Bush (aka Bush 41).
Crippled America by Donald Trump
Just because…
America’s Bank by Roger Lowenstein
How challenging it was to create the US Federal Reserve system.
Catherine de Fontenay, Associate Professor, Melbourne Business School
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
In the last decade, development economics has undergone a revolution, led primarily by Esther Duflo, an intense young Frenchwoman who is a professor at MIT. The new approach emphasises using randomised control trials (similarly to medicine) to test the efficacy of different policies, and to build a more accurate picture of the economic challenges of the bottom billion (the poorest billion people on earth). The insights garnered are simply amazing, and will lead to changes in policy that will have a profound effect on the condition of the poor for many decades.
Tim Harcourt, J.W. Nevile Fellow in Economics, UNSW Australia
Why Australia Prospered by Ian McLean
Ian McLean turns economic history conventional wisdom on its head in this thought provoking book.
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Why did the USA succeed while Mexico struggled? Same with Argentina or Australia or Botswana and Sierra Leone? The role of institutions matters. A country needs well defined property rights and democratic rights to succeed.
Korea: The Impossible Country by Daniel Tudor
How South Korea went from one of the world’s poorer nations to an OECD nation in five decades.
Australia’s Second Chance by George Megalogenis
Even better than his first book. Megalogenis looks at the role of immigration in Australian economic development.
The Story of Australia’s People by Geoffrey Blainey
Australia is 50,000 years old, not 230, and Geoffrey Blainey tells us why. Amazing stories of indigenous history and innovation.
Charis Palmer, Deputy Business Editor, The Conversation and Helen Westerman, Business + Economy Editor, The Conversation
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
I have not watched the Reese Witherspoon movie based on this book – I’m not sure that I will to be honest. The hype, however, was enough to get me to actually read the book (or ebook in my case). I had also seen an interview on Australian television with the author in which this book and the author’s experience were discussed. I, therefore, had some idea of what to expect with the book and approached it with a measure of reticence. It still was not quite what I expected, though I expect this was more of a case of what I had hoped to see in the book than what it actually sought to be itself.
This book is a personal memoir, not just of Cheryl Strayed’s trek along portions of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California, Oregon and Washington State (which actually doesn’t feature greatly in the book in any leading way really), but of her personal journey from a time just prior to her mother’s tragic death with cancer, through a period of self-destructive behavior that impacted on her family and what Strayed would have you believe was her healing. It is in your face at times and quite confronting. At other times there are periods of humour and human warmness.
This book has the potential to polarise sentiment, with some believing Strayed’s journey to be inspirational and even heroic, while others will inevitably move to the other end of the spectrum. I confess to being closer to the latter grouping of readers. To me, this is a self-indulgent whine-fest, from someone ill prepared for her trek and seemingly for life itself. Certainly there appears to be significant personal growth by the end of the book and this is a wonderful thing. If you can get past the initial early chapters, which can be difficult if you aren’t impressed with the seeming constant whining and whinging, the reading experience does improve along the way.
I think I would give it 3 out of 5 as a rating.
Buy this book at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Journey-Found-Cheryl-Strayed-ebook/dp/B0082FPIY8/
Jeff Borland, University of Melbourne
It’s hard to imagine that too many economists in Australia will receive Christmas cards from book publishers this year. A long campaign of lobbying, culminating with the recent Harper review into competition policy, has resulted in the Commonwealth government deciding to remove restrictions on the parallel importation of books.
To most economists this is a long-overdue reform that will increase efficiency. A group of ten prominent Australian economists today signed an open letter calling on the federal parliament to follow through on lifting the restrictions.
To Australian book publishers, and some noteworthy authors, it is an act of public vandalism, threatening the future viability of their industry.
As an economist who loves reading books, I’ve always taken a keen interest in the debate over parallel import restrictions. And I’ve always thought that there was a fairly straightforward solution – which I am going to describe and argue for in this article.
It is easy to make the argument that books by Australian authors make a big contribution to our lives. By having an Australian outlook or content, they don’t just provide entertainment or learning, they do it in a way that has a particular interest and relevance to us.
But just because something is good doesn’t mean it needs government support. An economist starts from the position that if a product is good, plenty of people will buy it, which gives an appropriate return to its supplier. Only if the market is failing to deliver a return to the supplier that reflects the full benefit to society from the product, do economists believe that the government might need to intervene.
In the case of Australian books, I believe that such an argument does exist. Here I give two reasons why the market may not get it right – and why government support may therefore be needed.
First, the knowledge about Australian public affairs that is contained in books, and the expertise that authors develop by writing those books, allows for a more informed and productive public discourse on government policy making. This is not a benefit that anyone pays for when they buy a book – but it is a benefit to Australian society all the same.
In my own area of economics, recent books by Ross Garnaut and John Edwards on the coming decade in the Australian economy, and historical perspectives by Ian McLean and George Megalogenis, have all been important source materials for debate on what policy makers should be doing.
Second, much of our thinking about Australian identity and values is formed through the perspectives and stories that are expressed in books – whether it be novels or history or biography.
There is no single book that does this. Rather, it is the putting together of the whole of what is being written about and by Australians that enables us to do this thinking. This is a collective benefit from having an Australian book industry – and as such will always be undervalued in the market.
Parallel import restrictions provide the original publisher of a book with the exclusive right to bring that book into Australia for commercial purposes. This allows publishers to treat Australia as a separate market from the rest of the world, and increases their market power compared to book buyers in this country.
The result is that (due to the smaller scale of market and our high average income level) publishers charge higher prices for books in Australia than in most other countries. This addition to book prices in Australia is a cost borne by book buyers. Publishers argue it is a necessary cost to ensure there is a strong local publishing industry.
But there is a problem with this argument. The parallel import restrictions mean that we pay more for every book we buy, not just Australian titles. Suppose that 20% of the volume of book sales in Australia is by Australian authors.
This implies that (roughly speaking) for every A$200 extra we pay in prices for books that goes to Australian authors and their publishers, we are also providing A$800 extra to international authors.
In other words, parallel import restrictions are poorly targeted, and hence an expensive way for Australian consumers to support the local publishing industry.
If our objective is to give extra funding to Australian authors and their publishers, why not do this via subsidies or direct payments to them? With such a policy it would be possible to provide the same level of support to the Australian book industry as it receives from parallel import restrictions, but without supporting international authors and their publishers.
Of course, subsidies and payments to the book industry already happen through bodies such as the Australian Council. What I am suggesting is that there should be an increase in the extent of this funding of the book industry to compensate for the removal of parallel import restrictions.
It should be possible to work out the current value that the Australian book industry derives from the import restrictions, and when the restrictions are removed, to increase the amount of funding to the industry by that amount.
That would leave the Australian book industry just as well off as before the removal of parallel import restrictions, and Australian book buyers would be better off as a result of lower prices.
The Commonwealth government has announced that it will implement the Harper committee recommendation to remove parallel import restrictions for books. Unfortunately, at the same time, it is removing funding to the Australian book industry.
Instead of increasing funding to compensate for the removal of parallel import restrictions, this week another round of cuts (including the abolition of the Book Council of Australia) was announced.
There can be no doubt of the outcome from this policy mix. Removing import restrictions together with decreasing government funding will unambiguously reduce the size of the Australian book industry; and with that we will lose the many associated benefits to Australian society.
Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, University of Melbourne
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
At the BookShelf 
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