The Cost Disease

The Cost Disease
Author: William J. Baumol
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0300179286

Traces the fast-rising prices of health care and education in the United States and other major industrial nations, examining the underlying causes which have to do with the nature of providing labor-intensive services.

Baumol's Cost Disease

Baumol's Cost Disease
Author: William J. Baumol
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 558
Release: 1997
Genre: Art
ISBN:

With the publication of Performing Arts: an Economic Dilemma in 1966, economists Baumol and Bowen created the subject of cultural economics. This text provides an insight into the development of Baumol's analysis and perception of the problems of the arts and other labour-intensive sectors.

Soft Machines

Soft Machines
Author: Richard Anthony Lewis Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2004
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0198528558

Enthusiasts look forward to a time when tiny machines reassemble matter and process information but is their vision realistic? 'Soft Machines' explains why the nanoworld is so different to the macro-world that we are all familar with and shows how it has more in common with biology than conventional engineering.

The Service Productivity and Quality Challenge

The Service Productivity and Quality Challenge
Author: P.T. Harker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 511
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 940110073X

3 While all of these explanations seem to have merit, there is one dominant reason why the percentage of GDP and employment dedicated to services has continued to increase: low productivity. According to Baumol's cost disease hypothesis (Baumol, Blackman, and Wolff 1991), the growth in services is actually an illusion. The fact is that service-sector productivity is improving slower than that of manufacturing and thus, it seems as if we are consuming more services in nominal terms. However, in real terms, we are consuming slightly less services. That is, the increase in the service sector is caused by low productivity relative to manufacturing. The implication of Baumol's cost disease is the following. Assuming historical productivity increases for manufacturing, agriCUlture, education and health care, Baumol (1992) shows that the U. S. can triple its output in all sectors within 50 years. However, due to the higher productivity level for manufacturing and agriculture, it will take substantially more employment in services to achieve this increase in output. To put this argument in perspective, simply roll back the clock 100 years or so and replace the words manufacturing with agriculture, and services with manufacturing. The phenomenal growth in agricultural productivity versus manufacturing caused the employment levels in agriculture in the U. S. to decrease rapidly while producing a truly unbelievable amount of food. It is the low productivity of services that is the real culprit in its growth of GDP and employment share.

The Theory of Environmental Policy

The Theory of Environmental Policy
Author: William J. Baumol
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1988-02-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521311120

An analysis of the economic theory of environmental policy and the factors influencing the quality of life. Recent research in environmental economics is incorporated as well as economic incentives for pollution control.

A Handbook of Cultural Economics

A Handbook of Cultural Economics
Author: Ruth Towse
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857930575

The second edition of this widely acclaimed and extensively cited collection of original contributions by specialist authors reflects changes in the field of cultural economics over the last eight years. Thoroughly revised chapters alongside new topics and contributors bring the Handbook up-to-date, taking into account new research, literature and the impact of new technologies in the creative industries. The book covers a range of topics encompassing the creative industries as well as the economics of the arts and culture, and includes chapters on: economics of art (including auctions, markets, prices, anthropology), artists' labour markets, creativity and the creative economy, cultural districts, cultural value, globalization and international trade, the internet, media economics, museums, non-profit organisations, opera, performance indicators, performing arts, publishing, regulation, tax expenditures, and welfare economics.

The Free-Market Innovation Machine

The Free-Market Innovation Machine
Author: William J. Baumol
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2004-04-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 069111630X

Why has capitalism produced economic growth that so vastly dwarfs the growth record of other economic systems, past and present? Why have living standards in countries from America to Germany to Japan risen exponentially over the past century? William Baumol rejects the conventional view that capitalism benefits society through price competition--that is, products and services become less costly as firms vie for consumers. Where most others have seen this as the driving force behind growth, he sees something different--a compound of systematic innovation activity within the firm, an arms race in which no firm in an innovating industry dares to fall behind the others in new products and processes, and inter-firm collaboration in the creation and use of innovations. While giving price competition due credit, Baumol stresses that large firms use innovation as a prime competitive weapon. However, as he explains it, firms do not wish to risk too much innovation, because it is costly, and can be made obsolete by rival innovation. So firms have split the difference through the sale of technology licenses and participation in technology-sharing compacts that pay huge dividends to the economy as a whole--and thereby made innovation a routine feature of economic life. This process, in Baumol's view, accounts for the unparalleled growth of modern capitalist economies. Drawing on extensive research and years of consulting work for many large global firms, Baumol shows in this original work that the capitalist growth process, at least in societies where the rule of law prevails, comes far closer to the requirements of economic efficiency than is typically understood. Resounding with rare intellectual force, this book marks a milestone in the comprehension of the accomplishments of our free-market economic system--a new understanding that, suggests the author, promises to benefit many countries that lack the advantages of this immense innovation machine.

Estimation of Drivers of Public Education Expenditure

Estimation of Drivers of Public Education Expenditure
Author: Manabu Nose
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2015-07-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1513517384

This paper analyzes drivers of rising per-pupil public education spending, including Baumol’s “cost disease” effect. Higher wages paid to teachers contributed significantly to the increase in per-pupil spending over the past decades. Empirical analyses using a large dataset of advanced and developing economies show that the contribution of Baumol’s effect was much smaller than impled by theory. Rather, the spending inccrease reflects rising wage premiums paid for teachers in excess of market wages, especially in middle-income countries. The strong wage premium effect suggests that institutional characteristics that govern teachers’ wage setting are key determinants of education expenditure.

Post Corona

Post Corona
Author: Scott Galloway
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0593332210

New York Times bestseller! "Few are better positioned to illuminate the vagaries of this transformation than Galloway, a tech entrepreneur, author and professor at New York University’s Stern School. In brisk prose and catchy illustrations, he vividly demonstrates how the largest technology companies turned the crisis of the pandemic into the market-share-grabbing opportunity of a lifetime." --The New York Times "As good an analysis as you could wish to read." --The Financial Times From bestselling author and NYU Business School professor Scott Galloway comes a keenly insightful, urgent analysis of who stands to win and who's at risk to lose in a post-pandemic world The COVID-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old, and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask wearers and the mask haters. Some businesses--like home exercise company Peloton, video conference software maker Zoom, and Amazon--woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand. Others--like the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and live entertainment industries--scrambled to escape obliteration. But as New York Times bestselling author Scott Galloway argues, the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends already well underway. In Post Corona, he outlines the contours of the crisis and the opportunities that lie ahead. Some businesses, like the powerful tech monopolies, will thrive as a result of the disruption. Other industries, like higher education, will struggle to maintain a value proposition that no longer makes sense when we can't stand shoulder to shoulder. And the pandemic has accelerated deeper trends in government and society, exposing a widening gap between our vision of America as a land of opportunity, and the troubling realities of our declining wellbeing. Combining his signature humor and brash style with sharp business insights and the occasional dose of righteous anger, Galloway offers both warning and hope in equal measure. As he writes, "Our commonwealth didn't just happen, it was shaped. We chose this path--no trend is permanent and can't be made worse or corrected."

Fully Grown

Fully Grown
Author: Dietrich Vollrath
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-06-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226820041

Vollrath challenges our long-held assumption that growth is the best indicator of an economy’s health. Most economists would agree that a thriving economy is synonymous with GDP growth. The more we produce and consume, the higher our living standard and the more resources available to the public. This means that our current era, in which growth has slowed substantially from its postwar highs, has raised alarm bells. But should it? Is growth actually the best way to measure economic success—and does our slowdown indicate economic problems? The counterintuitive answer Dietrich Vollrath offers is: No. Looking at the same facts as other economists, he offers a radically different interpretation. Rather than a sign of economic failure, he argues, our current slowdown is, in fact, a sign of our widespread economic success. Our powerful economy has already supplied so much of the necessary stuff of modern life, brought us so much comfort, security, and luxury, that we have turned to new forms of production and consumption that increase our well-being but do not contribute to growth in GDP. In Fully Grown, Vollrath offers a powerful case to support that argument. He explores a number of important trends in the US economy: including a decrease in the number of workers relative to the population, a shift from a goods-driven economy to a services-driven one, and a decline in geographic mobility. In each case, he shows how their economic effects could be read as a sign of success, even though they each act as a brake of GDP growth. He also reveals what growth measurement can and cannot tell us—which factors are rightly correlated with economic success, which tell us nothing about significant changes in the economy, and which fall into a conspicuously gray area. Sure to be controversial, Fully Grown will reset the terms of economic debate and help us think anew about what a successful economy looks like.