Followers of this blog and the “economics of outsourcing” series know how much I admire Ronald Coase and the contributions he has made to economic thought regarding transaction costs, total costs, getting the math right and the emergence of modern outsource contracting. His groundbreaking work, stretching back to the 1930s, shed light on a new […]
Economics of Outsourcing
A Nobel Laureate Who Says Globalization Needs Fixing
For the most part the economics of outsourcing series has examined the big thinkers in economics who have influenced the development of modern outsourcing. Today I’ll put the focus on Joseph E. Stiglitz, whose work has the power to influence how companies think about globalization. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, received the […]
Umair Haque: Value Through Thick and Thin
The economist Umair Haque, who writes prolifically and provocatively on economic and business issues in his Edge Economy blog for the Harvard Business Review and in his own blog, Bubblegeneration, thinks that many companies just don’t get it when it comes to creating sustainable profitability and value. With the near collapse of the financial system […]
Thomas Friedman: Why Outsourcing is Here is to Stay
If you’ve been following the previous posts in my economics of outsourcing series, I hope you see that thanks to Coase, Solow and their colleagues, outsourcing is now a major part of the business and economic landscape. However, it has been popularized, debated and indeed lionized in the mainstream press by Thomas Friedman. His major […]
Steven D. Levitt: It’s All About Incentives
Next in my mini-series on the seminal economic thinkers who prepared the way for outsourcing I’d like to look at the more current and less theoretical side of the economics of outsourcing and there’s no better place to start than with Freakonomics and the followup mega-bestseller, SuperFreakonomics. Steven D. Levitt and his sidekick and co-writer […]
Robert M. Solow: Brains are Better than Brawn
Most – OK many – of us can remember when there was no Internet, when email was a clunky toy for a few that could never revolutionize communication, when computers were huge, slow and really annoying, when wireless was just another word for radio, when a phone sat on a table, hung on a wall […]
John Nash: Playing Nice is Good for Everyone
Next in my mini-series about the great economic thought leaders who were seminal in the development and success of modern outsourcing is one of my favorites, the mathematician John F. Nash, who took economists a step or two beyond Adam Smith with his ideas on Game Theory and Behavioral Economics. His conclusions are right in […]
Ronald Coase: Business is a Math Problem
Lately I’ve been thinking and writing about the economic theorists and thought leaders who set the stage for modern outsourcing to really take off. For me, the obvious choice to begin this mini-series of posts is with Ronald Coase, who was a pioneer in the area of transaction costs and the nature of the firm. Coase’s […]
