Tag Archives: publishing

When a nearly 30-year old textbook is still the best on the digital economy

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There’s a gap in the market. I’ve started developing a Digital/AI economics syllabus for policy MPhil students who won’t all be economics graduates; and of course there are loads of fantastic papers and resources online.

It’s fairly straightforward to write down a list of topics – recognising that one can’t cover anything.Here are my headings for an 8 week Cambridge term – so there’s nothing on crypto for example, as I don’t know enough about it (& am still pretty sceptical). This is the first half – the second 8-week term will cover competition, regulation and trade.

  1. Basics: Information and the economy, why digital is different from the old economy
  1. Implications for organisations: Business models, platforms, ecosystems; auctions
  1. Intangible assets: IP, copyright, data (& privacy), measurement
  1. Inputs: finance, energy and materials, chips
  1. Innovation: clusters and types, direction, policies
  1. The demand side: technology diffusions, ‘free’ services, household production, open source
  1. Impact on labour: task models, AI & jobs
  1. Policies for the digital/AI economy: skills/jobs, industrial policy, digital public infrastructure, ‘the stack’ & sovereignty,

The structure might well shift as I get into details. But naturally I wondered whether somebody had done much of the work for me and written a textbook covering a lot of this. And it seems the answer is no: nobody has done an update of Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian’s fantastic 1998 Information Rules. I just re-read it and of course the examples have dated but the principles have not. The brilliant Daniel Rock told me (via BlueSky) that he still teaches using it.

I wrote Markets, State and People a few years ago as a policy economics textbook because the ones available were unsatisfactory for the course I was teaching then – none took the perspective of the basic co-ordination problems policy seeks to tackle. So maybe it’s me. But I still think there is a gap in the market for a new Information Rules – somebody could surely do this in time for its 30th anniversary?

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Calling economics PhD students

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Thanks to a couple of train journeys – upcoming travel is going to be so good for my work-related reading! – I read again The Economist’s Craft: An Introduction to Research, Publishing and Professional Development by Michael Weisbach. Again, because I looked at a copy in draft a while ago.

I highly recommend this book for economics PhD students and their supervisors. As my blurb for it says, it’s the book I needed when I was starting out. It’s full of advice both wise and practical. It starts with the selection of a research topic, which is surprisingly hard – getting from a broad area of interest to an addressible specific question or hypothesis is something a lot of people struggle with. There are five chapters about writing papers/chapters, which might seem a lot except Professor Weisbach argues researchers should think of writing the paper as part of the research process rather than a dreaded add-on at the end. So this section integrates doing research with writing it, and incorporates sound advice such as not obsessing about statistical significance at the expense of meaning and actual significance. I wholeheartedly agree with all this. The competition to publish is intense and writing good papers is fundamentally important. It’s how disciplinary knowledge progresses.

There is then a section about presentations (don’t put too much on one slide! don’t prepare 50 slides for a 20 minutes slot! don’t stand looking at the display with your back to the audience! A lot of senior academics could do with paying attention), circulating papers and the publication process. The final section is about being a good academic, winding up with becoming a good thesis advisor and planning a research trajectory. Pretty much every page has some points to take on board.

In short, aimed at a specific audience, but for all of its target readers, very well worth buying and reading.

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Books, books, books

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The Publishers Association just published its 2016 figures for the UK book trade, so it’s time for my annual post about (a) how well the publishing industry has innovated its way through the wave of digital disruption compared with the music industry and (b) it isn’t always obvious which goods and services are susbstitutes and which are complements.

From the figures, it looks like digital is becoming steadily a platform for academic and professional texts, and those formats where it is inherently part of the product (audio) – consumer ebook sales have peaked and are declining. This is the substitutes-complements point: it’s always wrong to assume that a new technology will completely replace an old technology, and hard to tell a priori which will settle down to be the majority version in use. It is particularly the case that communications technologies tend to complement each other: on the whole people want more of all, although some do become redundant (telex).

Interestingly, sales of fiction have declined substantially in recent years, while children’s books and non-fiction have increased. This supports my theory about the demand for understanding in uncertain times, although probably it will turn out the growth was mainly stars’ memoirs and recipes….

As for the innovation, there has been experimentation with formats – for example, the popularity of short books (such as the excellent Perspectives series 🙂 – a new one, Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin by Dave Birch, will be out soon. Click here to pre-order for a signed copy at a discounted price!). But a key one has been to focus on the inherent distinctiveness of books: their physical bookness. The design and quality of books has improved enormously, in my view.

Of special interest to the academic world, academic and professional sales were up by 10% to £2.4bn. The sales of books rose 9% to £1.1bn,  total income from journals rose 10% to £1.2bn, and the share of journal income from subscriptions fell 1 percentage point to 79% of the total while income from Open Access article processing charges increased by 46% to £81m. For the time being (until government policy irrevocably damages one of the UK’s most successful sectors through a deranged approach to overseas students, and the impact of Brexit on employment and research funding), the UK accounts for 10% of journal article downloads and 12% of citations, and produces 16% of the world’s most‑cited journal articles. Only the US does better, the Yearbook says.

Knowledge as a public good – honest!

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Yesterday was the meeting of the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press, of which I’m a member along with some very distinguished people from other disciplines. It’s always inspiring to see the Press – my own publisher – making such a success (in terms of numbers of books sold, revenues and global reach) of high quality, peer reviewed books with an emphasis on accessibility to non-academic readers. (In fact, on the tube on the way there as I stood looking around the carriage, there were at least half a dozen people within sight reading books. I think physical books are baaaack bigtime, and the figures seem to agree.)

We had a discussion about the obvious: what do Brexit/Trump/dislike of facts and experts imply both for universities and for a scholarly press? David Runciman made the point that we academics see ourselves as producers of knowledge, a public good in a knowledge economy. The votes suggest half the public doesn’t agree, whether they are right or wrong.

He also strongly criticised the ‘impact agenda’ which is now part of the Research Excellence Framework. I somewhat disagree with this, as it seems entirely healthy for academics to have to think about the outside world and how their work meshes with it. I do agree with David’s point that the way ‘impact’ is interpreted in practice favours the London universities, Oxford and Cambridge, as people are often expected to demonstrate their ‘impact’ through contacts with “elite networks of influence” (in his words). In the UK, they are massively London-centric. However, if so many citizens fail to see any positive spillovers from academic work – knowledge production – it’s all the more important to think about how to improve and demonstrate impact in ways that don’t centre on influencing Whitehall and Westminster.

An eminent political scientist, David said the book he was turning to to understand political trends is Democracy for Realists. I must add it to the ‘to read’ pile.41pmvn6eael

Because we all need more books to read…

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Friday evening is a time for settling on the sofa with the magazines and catalogues that have arrived during the week, and last night it was the next season’s catalogue for Harvard University Press. There are some terrific upcoming offerings. Top of my list will be Richard Baldwin’s [amazon_link id=”067466048X” target=”_blank” ]The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization[/amazon_link]. His papers on the successive ‘unbundlings’ in production driving global trade are wonderful.

[amazon_image id=”067466048X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization[/amazon_image]

Plenty of others look enticing too. [amazon_link id=”0674743806″ target=”_blank” ]Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent [/amazon_link]by Brooke Harrington – a study of the professional advisers who make global inequality possible. [amazon_link id=”0674659686″ target=”_blank” ]The Market as God[/amazon_link] by Harvey Cox looks intriguing, theology meets economics. [amazon_link id=”0674059786″ target=”_blank” ]Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth and Belonging Since 1500[/amazon_link] by Charles S Maier – “territorial boundaries transform geography into history,” says the blurb. [amazon_link id=”0674737296″ target=”_blank” ]China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay[/amazon_link] by Minxin Pei will be a must-read for China-watchers. Also interesting-looking is [amazon_link id=”0674971132″ target=”_blank” ]Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China[/amazon_link] by Julian Gewirtz.

[amazon_image id=”0674743806″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674659686″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Market as God[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674059786″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Once Within Borders: Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging Since 1500[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674737296″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674971132″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China[/amazon_image]

[amazon_link id=”0674545478″ target=”_blank” ]VIrtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy[/amazon_link] by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke will be one for competition policy and IO folks. So too a recent title, [amazon_link id=”0674971426″ target=”_blank” ]Antitrust Law in the New Economy: Google, Yelp, LIBOR, and the Control of Information[/amazon_link] by Mark Patterson.

[amazon_image id=”0674545478″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674971426″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Antitrust Law in the New Economy: Google, Yelp, Libor, and the Control of Information[/amazon_image]

One for all newshounds, [amazon_link id=”0674545508″ target=”_blank” ]Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism[/amazon_link] by James Hamilton. And for all Camus fans, I spotted the backlist title [amazon_link id=”0674724763″ target=”_blank” ]A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning[/amazon_link] by Robert Zaretsky.

[amazon_image id=”0674545508″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674724763″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning[/amazon_image]