Deloitte - Christmas Reading List!

Many thanks to our good friend Ian Stewart, Chief Economist at Deloitte for sharing this eclectic festive selection of reading, all of which is online! His Monday Morning Briefing is a delight to have in my inbox every week! Just type Deloitte Monday Briefing into Google and the right link will appear for a free sign up - it comes highly recommended!

* We are launching our Christmas reading list today. Our eight choices offer an eclectic and thought-provoking break from the rigours of Christmas. All are available free and on-line:

* This Harvard Business Review article argues that refining our ability to do apparently unproductive tasks, from clicking your fingers fifty times or counting backwards from 100 in seven, make us more resourceful problem solvers. The title alone, "Building Resilience by Wasting Time", makes this one page article by computer game designer Jane McGonigal worth reading:
http://hbr.org/2012/10/building-resilience-by-wasting-time/ar/pr

* The movement of goods relies on billions of pallets - movable wooden platforms on which products are stacked in transit. This article shows how the humble pallet changed the world and its pervasive influence. IKEA, for instance, redesigned its "Bang" mug three times, not for aesthetic reasons, but to fit more of them on a pallet (4 pages):
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/transport/2012/08/pallets_the_single_most_important_object_in_the_global_economy_.single.html

* One of the biggest debates in economics is about whether Western countries are doomed to a "new normal" of permanently low growth. The pessimists believe we face a secular stagnation in technology and innovation which consign us to permanently sluggish growth. Professor Kenneth Rogoff, a leading authority on boom bust cycles, argues that the real cause is the hangover from the financial crisis – suggesting a brighter long term outlook (2 pages):
http://www.project-syndicate.org/print/technological-stagnation-and-advanced-countries--slow-growth-by-kenneth-rogoff

* The financial crisis has sparked a searching debate about the role of the financial sector. In this speech the Bank of England's Andrew Haldane says that the protests of the Occupy movement and others have triggered a "fledgling financial reformation" (11 pages):
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2012/speech616.pdf

* This list of 110 predictions should cheer up anyone who believes in the transformational power of technology. Within a decade the author sees people being fluent in any language using instant translation, buildings repairing themselves with self healing concrete and data being measured in zettabytes (7 pages):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/print-this/110-predictions-for-the-next-110-years?page=all

* In this light-hearted article World Bank economist and James Bond fan Jacques Dethier assesses the plausibility of various Bond villains' money-making schemes, from Goldfinger's plot to attack the US Bullion Depository to Max Zorin's plan to corner the microchip manufacturing market (5 pages):
http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/which-james-bond-villain-plan-would-have-worked.html?mid=agenda--20121109

* The burgeoning area of "neuroeconomics" examines how the anatomy of the brain influences the decision making of supposedly rational economic agents. This article from The Chronicle provides a fascinating account of how such insights could add to our knowledge of how economies and markets work (6 pages):
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Marketplace-in-Your-Brain/134524/

* The launch of free, online courses by US Ivy League schools such as MIT, Harvard and Stanford puts high quality education within the reach of a vast new global market. This TIME Magazine article looks at how online courses are redefining higher education for students in developed and developing nations alike (9 pages):
http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/college-is-dead-long-live-college/print/

* Finally, for anyone who fancies their chances as an economic forecaster the Economic Research Council's economics predictions competition offers a great way to hone your skills. There are five questions covering UK growth, inflation, interest rates and unemployment. The tie breaker is on Greek government bond yields and the winner will pick up a case of Royal Tokaji wine. The competition closes this Thursday, 20th December:
http://www.ercouncil.org/competition-entry/