What drives wealthy and powerful people to white-collar crime? "Fascinating portraits" (Washington Post) of the dark side of the business world.From the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the insider traders at McKinsey, to the Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the failings of corporate titans are regular fixtures in the news. In Why They Do It, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes ...

Rarely does a week go by without a well-known executive being indicted for engaging in a white-collar crime. Perplexed as to what drives successful, wealthy people to risk it all, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes spent seven years in the company of the men behind the largest corporate crimes in history—from the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemers Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.Soltes refutes popular explanations of why se...

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide. In this book, acclaimed economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller challenge the economic wisdom that got us into this mess, and put forward a bold new vision that will transform economics and restore prosper...

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall of Bernard Madoff, and the Cha...

The reputation of the financial industry could hardly be worse than it is today in the painful aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. New York Times best-selling economist Robert Shiller is no apologist for the sins of finance--he is probably the only person to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the real estate bubble that led up to the subprime mortgage meltdown. But in this important and timely book, Shiller argues that, rather than condemning finance, we n...

How beauty leads to better jobs, better wages, and better spousesMost of us know there is a payoff to looking good, and in the quest for beauty we spend countless hours and billions of dollars on personal grooming, cosmetics, and plastic surgery. But how much better off are the better looking? Based on the evidence, quite a lot. The first book to seriously measure the advantages of beauty, Beauty Pays demonstrates how society favors the beautiful and how b...

A road map to empathic and efficient decisions and policies, constructed from new insights in the science of human judgmentFaced with another's suffering, human beings feel sympathy and may even be moved to charity. However, for all our good intentions and vaunted free will, we are lousy at making the bigger decisions that actually improve lives. Why? Drawing on his sweeping and innovative research in the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience...

Economists can help shape monetary policy, global policy and even how much you pay for a new pair of shoes. For example, did you know globalization changed the market for illegal drugs? How do fitness studios and providers of Internet access earn most of their money?--From the laziness and irrationality of their customers.The book features recent work from top thinkers in the economic field from around the world, such as Philippe Aghion, Paul Krugman, George Akerlof, Gary Becker, an...

How should we deal with societal ills such as crime, poverty, pollution, terrorism, and corruption? The Character of Harms argues that control or mitigation of 'bad' things involves distinctive patterns of thought and action which turn out to be broadly applicable across a range of human endeavors, and which need to be better understood. Malcolm Sparrow demonstrates that an explicit focus on the bads, rather than on the countervailing goods (safety, prosperity, environmental stewardship, e...

How mandated disclosure took over the regulatory landscape—and why it failedPerhaps no kind of regulation is more common or less useful than mandated disclosure—requiring one party to a transaction to give the other information. It is the iTunes terms you assent to, the doctor's consent form you sign, the pile of papers you get with your mortgage. Reading the terms, the form, and the papers is supposed to equip you to choose your purchase, your treatment, and your ...

The definitive introduction to organizational economics, with contributions by leaders in the fieldIn even the most market-oriented economies, most economic transactions occur not in markets but inside managed organizations, particularly business firms. Organizational economics seeks to understand the nature and workings of such organizations and their impact on economic performance. This landmark book assembles the leading figures in organizational economics to pr...

Workplace injuries are common avoidable and unacceptable. The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada reveals how employers and governments engage in ineffective injury prevention efforts intervening only when necessary to maintain the system's legitimacy. Dr. Bob Barnetson sheds light on this faulty system highlighting the way in which employers create dangerous work environments yet invest billions of dollars into compensation and treatment. Examining this dynamic clarifies the w...