Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing
Puzzles
Richard B. McKenzie
Springer-Verlag
The author of this book wrote a clever column in The Wall Street
Journal earlier this year about how he had applied economics to
dieting. McKenzie essentially agreed to pay an acquaintance $500 if
he did not meet his goal. By applying the financial penalty to
everything - such as how much that morning bagel was really costing
him - he found it easier to meet his goal. In that same vein,
McKenzie offers up the often obscure connection between the actual
cost of an item and what we have to pay. (Oddly enough, he suggests
that a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust decision has a lot to do
with the price of movie popcorn - as does the fact that if we were
to produce the same popcorn at home, we wouldn't save all that
much.) Just in time for our global energy meltdown, the author also
examines the (unintended) consequences of high-minded efforts to
encourage the use of environmentally friendly fuels. The result, he
suggests, is starvation among of people around the world and the
destruction of rain forests in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our
Decisions
Dan Ariely
HarperCollins
In looking through a number of reviews of this book we found that
writer after writer praised the author for pointing out what idiots
we are. The book is wildly original, however. It shows why "much
more often than we usually care to admit, humans make foolish and
sometimes disastrous, mistakes." That view came from George
Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics. We guess he should know
something about the topic. With a combination of case studies,
experiments, and anecdotes of what normal people do when making
financial and other decisions, he builds a case we may not want to
embrace. After a while, you begin to believe that we have only
survived on this planet as long as we have because of dumb luck.
Prove the author wrong, if you can, by not paying retail for it.
The Training Measurement Book: Best Practices, Proven
Methodologies, and Practical Approaches
Josh Bersin
Pfeiffer
If you are convinced that the world of learning measurement starts
and ends with the Kirkpatrick model, then this book may just make
you a bit itchy. It's not that Bersin is exactly knocking the
traditional multiple-level tool; it's just that he thinks that
there is more to consider. Obviously he has some true believers in
his camp. The publisher notes that by using the book as a resource,
"readers can free themselves from traditional, often cumbersome
measurement models and put in place pragmatic, useful, and
easy-to-implement approaches for measuring training activities."
For those of you who have CFOs and others questioning every
activity you undertake, spend some time with Chapter 2. Bersin
spends some time explaining the dangers and advantages of relying
on ROI measurements.
University and Corporate Innovations in Lifelong
Learning
Charles Wankel and Bob DeFillippi
Information Age Publishing
This British offering is intriguing if only for how un-corporate
some of its ideas are - at least based on conventions in the United
States. We read a lot of articles on workplace and lifelong
learning in U.K. publications, and frankly the British seem to "get
it" more than we do. While our hometown newspapers may report on
local battles to keep a big box retailer out of a community, the
local British press often publish articles on the efforts of local
unions and schools to maintain dollars for skills-development
programs. One chapter reports on the European Council's effort to
promote Europe-wide lifelong management learning and the creation
of a toolbox of ideas, concepts, models, and methods that can be
used to promote lifelong learning. Imagine the howling here if
Congress tried that.