Are You a Free Market Supporter? A Self-test

Question: Do you think the government should support businesses or the free market?

Yes or No?

The answer can be find in this book, and this is a recent profile of one of the authors the book. And yes he is from Chicago's Business School.

Gang Leader for a Day

That's the title of a book which I bought yesterday at Page One's Central branch.

What's it about?

Well, if you have read Freakonomics, you should remember that there is a segment in it where Steve Levitt wrote about his research on gang activities coauthored with sociologist S Venkatesh. Well, Venkatesh is the author of this new book.

Here is a short blurb of the book from Steve, here is another review by my former teacher Tyler Cowen up at Marginal Revolution.

Here is the page for the book.

Two-sided Markets

In "Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report," Rochet and Tirole explained the thinking behind the bourgeoning literature as of the end of 2005. "Getting the two sides on board" might be a useful characterization, but it didn't go nearly far enough. "We define a two-sided market as one in which the volume of transactions between end-users depends on the structure and not only on the overall level of the fees charged by the platform."

The two sides' willingness to trade depends on the policies of the platform; its membership (or fixed) fees get them into the tent; its usage (variable) fees condition their enthusiasm once they are there. A favorite example: dating bars, which charge men a stiff fee and let women in for free, making money on the sale of drinks. But in fact the model illuminates matchmaking in everything from portals such as Google and Yahoo, TV networks and newspapers (in which "eyeballs" are the stock-in-trade) to mobile phone networks, personal computers, credit cards and videogames (in which more sophisticated commodities are marketed).

That is from a book review of Catalyst Code, read more here.

Wang Hao

I have just finished reading a biography of an old professor teaching at Tsinghua University. The title of that book is "My School Days," published by Beijing's Joint Publising Company last year (in Chinese). I enjoy it a lot!

There is a chapter in his book where he recollected his interaction with his classmates while they were all attending National Southwestern Associated University during the Second World War.

One of his classmate is Wang Hao, a first class mathematician and philosopher. I have never heard of his name before. Wang went to Harvard after graduating from National Southwestern Associated University and studied under well-known Harvard professor Willard Van Orman Quine. Wang got his Ph.D. only after spending one year and eight months at Harvard!

Here is more information about Wang Hao. This is a book written by by Wang Hao and published by the MIT press. According to the biography, that book is only the first part of a planned trilogy.

Apparently Wang tried to answer 3 questions through his trilogy according to what he told the author of biography. The first one, ie the published one, attempts to answer the question of "What could we know?" The second and third one supposedly attempt to address the questions of "What could we do?" and "What are we after in life?" respectively.

A Book You Would Want to Bring with You on Your Next Doctor's Visit

How Doctors Think

Jerome Groopman, a New Yorker staff writer and professor at Harvard Medical School unravels the ultimate medical mystery: how doctors figure out the best treatments -- or fail to do so.

"Jerome Groopman has written a unique, important, and wonderful book about a central paradox of modern life: even though diagnosing an illness is often as much art as science, we want our doctors to speak with scientific surety. Groopman gives a rationalist's tour of the doctor's thought processes -- or lack thereof -- and yet, unlike many rationalists, he never veers toward cynicism. You'll never look at your own doctor in the same way again -- for better or worse," ---- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of Freakonomics

Find out more about the author here.

More Sex is Safer Sex !

Steve Landsburg's new book is out! The title of the new book is, yes, you get it right: "More Sex is Safer Sex."

Here is an advance praise from another Steve of Freakonomics fame:

"Steve Landsburg proves once again that he is better than anyone else at making economics interesting to noneconomists. Landsburg is provocative and playful in his mission to demonstrate how an understanding of economics will change the way you live your daily life. I loved this book."

Here is more info about the book.