Book description
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.
Paul Ormerod is the author of The Death of Economics, Butterfly
Economics and Why Most Things Fail. He studied economics at Cambridge
and his career has spanned the academic and practical business worlds,
including working at the Economist and as a director of the Henley
Centre for Forecasting. He is a Fellow of the British Academy of
Social Science and has been awarded a DSchonoris causafor his
contribution to economics by the University of Durham.
