New Releases by Paul Ormerod

"Abstract: A list of all Orchidaceae recorded for Myanmar is presented, primarily based on many years of research in herbaria and libraries around the world, supplemented by recent fieldwork in various parts of Myanmar. As such, it is intended to form the basis for a treatment of Orchidaceae in the new flora of Myanmar project. A total of 1037 species in 152 genera is listed, which includes a number of uncertain identifications and indicates the need for further research. In addition, for four taxa occurrence in Myanmar is also suspected, but the available herbarium and literature information is not conclusive in this regard. The total number is comparatively low relative to neighbouring Thailand but expected to rise, given the fact that bio-diversity is currently poorly understood even though extensive inventory efforts are now under way. In the introduction, the orchid flora of Myanmar, phytogeographical affinities and endemism are discussed and illustrated by graphs and tables. Each species entry in the taxonomic section consists of the name, place of original description, type information (if from Myan-mar), list of citations of Myanmar specimens examined and global distribution; specific notes under many species elaborate various taxonomic issues. Two new combinations are made here, and five lectotypes and one neotype are designated. Six species are definite new distribution records for Myanmar, whereas identification of another three needs to be confirmed"--Page 5.

Economists and economics have been harshly criticised recently. This book accepts many of the criticisms of conventional theory but argues that the fundamental insights of economics are capable of reinterpretation and reinvention to deal with a host of contemporary concerns – social networks, globalisation, pay inequality, climate change, automation and the growth of ‘nudge’ policy amongst many others. The author uses his weekly column in the London business newspaper City A.M. to explain new developments in economic thinking and empirical research to a general audience. This book reproduces many of his most provocative columns with accompanying commentary and full references. The author’s witty and informed analysis of events provides an ideal introduction to important ideas for anybody interested in how the modern economy works.

We consider the resilience of a group of 20 Western economies after the financial crisis of the late 2000s. We measure resilience by the growth of real GDP between 2007, the previous peak level, and 2015. The countries exhibit a broad range of experience, from a rise in GDP of 18 per cent in Australia to a fall of 26 per cent in Greece. A substantial proportion of the differences in growth rates can be accounted for by just two variables: the perceived level of corruption and membership of the Eurozone. The euro did have a negative impact on the recovery paths of the Mediterranean economies (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain), but their perceived corruption scores in 2007 had a bigger impact, especially on the first three of these economies.

There is considerable scope for further privatisation, with the particular aim of sharply reducing public sector claims on national output. However, survey evidence indicates considerable opposition to further privatisations, particularly those taking the form of creating dividend-paying joint stock companies. The paper considers the value of surveys when compared with the economic concept of stable, revealed preferences, and the potential endogeneity of preferences as discussed by Hayek (1949). Consideration is also given to the implications of making concessions to survey opinion by carrying out privatisations under alternative corporate structures.

What is wrong with contemporary capitalism? Was the financial crisis of 2008 caused by deep structural problems in the way firms are organised? In Beyond the plc, two of the most creative thinkers in Britain today, Paul Ormerod and Greg Fisher, tackle this problem head on.

In spite of general reductions in government spending, the prime minister has found room in the government''s budget to spend money on a major survey of what makes the British people happy. This will be used, in the prime minister''s own words, to guide government policy towards improvement in general wellbeing rather than improvements in national income. But is it really true that government policy has always been orientated towards maximizing GDP? Is it true that wellbeing does not increase as income increases? Is it true that more equal societies are happier societies? Can we really improve wellbeing through workplace legislation? Is it right to orientate government policy towards the single aim of increasing aggregate wellbeing across society as a whole? These questions and many more are tackled by some of the leading intellectuals in the field. Overall, this monograph provides a substantial challenge to those who want to put the explicit pursuit of wellbeing at the heart of government policy.

According to Paul Ormerod, author of the bestselling Butterfly Economics and Why Most Things Fail, the mechanistic viewpoint of conventional economics is drastically limited - because it cannot comprehend the vital nature of networks. As our societies become ever more dynamic and intertwined, network effects on every level are increasingly profound. ''Nudge theory'' is popular, but only part of the answer. To grapple successfully with the current financial crisis, businesses and politicians need to grasp the perils and possibilities of Positive Linking. Our social and economic worlds have been revolutionised by a massive increase in our awareness of the choices, decisions, behaviours and opinions of other people. For the first time in human history, more than half of us live in cities, and this combined with the Internet has transformed communications. Network effects - the fact that a person can and often does decide to change his or her behaviour simply on the basis of copying what others do - pervade the modern world. As Ormerod shows, network effects make conventional approaches to policy, whether in the public or corporate sectors, much more likely to fail. But they open up the possibility of truly ''Positive Linking'' - of more subtle, effective and successful policies, ones which harness our knowledge of network effects and how they work in practice.

Why did VHS, an inferior video recording technology, succeed in the marketplace, driving the superior Betamax out of business? Why do big-budget, acclaimed movies sometimes flop at the box office, while low-budget, idiosyncratic films become huge hits? The answers to these questions, says Paul Omerod, remind us that economics is a science based on the workings of human society, as unpredictable an entity as there is. "Conventional economics is mistaken," claimes Omerod, "when it views the economy as a machine, whose behavior, no matter how complicated, is ultimately predictable and controllable." In this cogently and elegantly argued analysis of why human beings persist in engaging in behavior that defies time-honored economic theory, Omerod also explains why governments and industries throughout the world must completely reconfigure their traditional methods of economic forecasting if they are to succeed and prosper in an increasingly global marketplace.

Towards a Liberal Utopia? is a free-market manifesto for the next fifty years covering a diverse range of policy areas, including health, education, social security, pensions, labour markets, tax policy, Europe and the environment. In addition to these visions of the future, Ralph Harris describes the success of the IEA in changing the climate of opinion in its first 50 years. Given the impact that the ideas of IEA authors have had on policy-making in the last 50 years - for example in trade union reform, removal of exchange and rent controls, the control of inflation, independence of central banks and the development of road user charging - Towards a Liberal Utopia? is essential reading for those keen to learn about the ideas that should dominate the policy agenda in the coming decades.

From the best-selling author of The Death of Economics and Butterfly Economics, a ground-breaking look at a truth all too seldom acknowledged: most commercial and public policy ventures will not succeed. Paul Ormerod draws upon recent advances in biology to help us understand the surprising consequences of the Iron Law of Failure. And he shows what strategies corporations, businesses and governments will need to adopt to stand a chance of prospering in a world where only one thing is certain.

The ideas of modern macroeconomics provided the intellectual justification of the economic policies of the last 10 to 15 years. It is these ideas which the financial crisis falsified. The dominant paradigm in macroeconomic theory over the past 30 years has been that of rational agents who form rational expectations about the future and make optimal decisions. The aim of the paper is to study how these agents deal with risk and uncertainty, the source of the problems of the discipline of economics, the economy and the financial crisis. Modern macroeconomics has responsibility for the financial crisis, because imposes its intellectual foundation to a world that operates in situations involving risk that are systematically underestimated and leads to not recognized situations of genuine uncertainty.

Many of the problems in the British public sector directly relate to the attempt to create a world fit for the central planner in which all tasks can be set down in a system of rules. The philosophy of ''empirical consequentialism'' underpins this entire venture. This is the view that the empirically-proven consequences of an action are the most valid basis for moral judgment of the action and that these can be fully evaluated through expert research rather than democratic dialogue. A crucial policy challenge is to restore the value of ''tacit knowledge'' in the public sector, allowing individuals to exercise choice and judgment responding to feedback in a process of trial and error.