Highlighting five books that I loved reading in 2017. These are not necessarily books that were published in 2017. By design, and by inhibitions imposed by the relative paucity of my prior readings, I tend to read books after a time lag. On the flip side, I would like to think that my reading is not strongly influenced by the news cycle. The time lag also provides opportunities to discover older, well-regarded books. In the recommendation below, I did not include books I read again (e.g. Tolkien and Marcus Aurelius) and also some books that I thoroughly enjoyed (e.g., a new translation of Crime and Punishment by Pevear and Volokhonsky). More or less, I have tried to curate books based…
Leave a CommentMonth: December 2017
Here are some curated recommendations for your holiday watching/reading/listening. I limit my consumption of media (not books). So, like all lists, this one is also highly subjective. (I have no financial interest in recommending these). Movies Kubo and the two strings. Animated movie (from Laika studios) with a layered and complex narrative. Great for families with kids interested in slightly mature themes (similar to Miyazaki movies). Features a beautiful cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Regina Spektor. On NetFlix. Contratiempo. (The Invisible Guest). Spanish Crime Thriller and morality play. On NetFlix. Get Out. A brilliant genre-bending film, with the audacity of vision, and taut storytelling. What a directorial debut. Wonder woman. All praise well-deserved. A blockbuster movie that…
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The Containers Podcast mini-series (with eight self-contained 30-minute episodes) by Alexis Madrigal at Atlantic is amazing! As an Operations academic in a business school, I am a fan of both nitty-gritty details and narrative story-telling canvas. When I came across the Containers podcast my stoicism vanished, and I was giddy with excitement. Containers are one of those mundane things that fundamentally changed global trade and turned supply chains into complex organisms. You would be completely mistaken to think that a podcast on containers would be boring. Alexis Madrigal brilliantly weaves logistics facts with human interest stories that form the cogs in gigantic machinery of global trade. He talks about the history of Oakland, the “deaths” of longshoremen, poetry, Filipino lives, logistics,…
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An Amazon worker at Chattanooga, Tenn., fulfillment center in August. Photo Credit: Doug Strickland/Associated Press A fascinating article by Laura Stevens on WSJ (Subscription required) talks about how Amazon sets its third-party “deal of the day”. The first compelling fact that stood out from the article was the scale of revenues generated by third-party sellers on Amazon. A graph of the total gross merchandise volume (GMV) sold by Amazon, shows that in the recent years, the third-party share of Amazon revenues have increased from 50% to about 70% (even as Amazon’s revenues have exploded). How are these deals evaluated and picked by Amazon? Amazon’s deal of the day selections hinge on two important factors—whether it thinks an item will be…
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The above chart from Quartz shows how much e-commerce sales in the US have grown because of the low price. In fact, the price level is now comparable to 2000 prices. In short, many goods on e-commerce are being sold on very marginal and progressively diminishing profits.
Leave a CommentWired Magazine reports that San Francisco is planning to adjust parking spot prices based on demand, essentially moving to dynamic pricing of parking spots. Note that SF has been experimenting with the dynamic pricing of spots already. This proposal by San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) — which has not been voted by the City Council yet — expands the dynamic pricing spots from the current 7000 meters to 28,000 meters. I’ll make 4 salient points about the issue: (a) Success depends on operational transparency, (b) Roads utilization, not spots, is the main source of congestion, (c) Dynamic pricing may not improve utilization, and (d) Dynamic pricing may hurt consumer welfare. (In fact, I will discuss research evidence that SFPark…
Leave a CommentThe Hudsucker Proxy is my second favorite Coen brothers movie on rewatchability.1 Within their oeuvre, The Hudsucker Proxy is closest to capturing the humor in American manufacturing/business culture (exceeded only by William H. Macy’s exasperated car salesman role in Fargo). While talking about Dynamic pricing in class, I typically refer to the funny story in Hudsucker Proxy, which has a retailer (ostensibly, all retailers) adjusting the price of HulaHoops in the light of the increased demand. Here is the embedded video from the movie that shows the design of the product, progression into the production process, and testing, leading to its retail sales — the lifecycle of hope, demise, and rebirth of a product. The movie also features Jennifer Jason…
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