Economic Rationality Meets Celebrity Urbanology: Exploring Edward Glaeser's City

This article presents a critique of the popular and public‐policy work of Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, which has been constructed at the nexus of neoclassical economic rationality and celebrity urbanology. Widely recognized as one of the world's leading urbanists, Glaeser has combined a high‐flying academic career with public‐policy engagement and extensive work as a newspaper columnist and media commentator, enabled by a longstanding affiliation with the Manhattan Institute, a leading conservative think tank. The critique is pointed, but seeks to exceed argumentum ad hominem by calling attention to sociopolitical and institutional factors that have facilitated the accelerated diffusion and enlarged dominion of this model (and mode) of microeconomically rationalized urbanism, including the production of new forms of intellectual marketing, the construction of colonizing variants of urban‐economic expertise, and the ongoing rearticulation and creeping consolidation of market‐centric policy norms. The article argues that a distinctive form of urban‐economic orthodoxy is under construction, based on a potent fusion of scientific reasoning and pop presentation, combining ideologically disciplined applications of neoclassical economics with dissemination in the register of the ‘freakonomics' franchise. Edward Glaeser's intellectual accomplishments have been significant, but the ‘Glaeser effect' is more than a story of individual scholarly endeavor, calling for more than a merely ‘internal' critique. Its conformity to Manhattan Institute principles testifies to a telling consistency of ideological purpose, contributing as it does to a sustained effort to rationalize and normalize lean and limited modes of neoliberal urban governance, fortified by microeconomic reason.     

做辅导关系的受益者

白手起家,创建起一家非常成功且令人羡慕的公司,并且拥有一个由一批异常优秀的人组成的忠诚的客户群,只需想想就令人惬意了。驰骋商场的历练,功成名就的洒脱,心之境界犹如马儿奔跑在茫茫草原,豁达宽广。更不必说,在一个用白色小篱     

Seven Management Lessons from Microsoft

The software giant Microsoft is a mere corporate stripling. Yet around its formidable success lies an equally indomitable mystique. It is phenomenally successful. Few are bold enough to analyse how and why Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's bright idea turned into the corporate titan of our times. Until now.     

Live Streamers on Twitch.tv as Social Media Influencers: Chances and Challenges for Strategic Communication

ABSTRACT

Twitch.tv is one of the most successful online live streaming platforms in the world, with 200 million viewers, 2 million regular “streamers,” and a market value of over $1billion. In this paper, we offer a first conceptualization of streamers as social media influencers, and how effectively they can perform strategic communication for sponsors. We draw on extensive ethnographic research and over a hundred semi-structured interviews with streamers to address two questions: first, how does Twitch operate as a platform for strategic communication; second, what skills do streamers need to be successful influencers? In the first case, we show Twitch is well suited to influencing, in large part due to its integration of data analytics, while streamers are using these tools to adopt a business-oriented mindset; in the second case, we show the importance of authenticity to both streamers and clients, and how channels of different sizes offer strategic communication opportunities. The article contributes to the emerging literature on Twitch, developing insights from influencing and strategic communication, but given the increasing scope of live streaming, we also argue the phenomenon – particularly when combined with the economic dynamics of influencing – is just as important for making sense of the wider media landscape today.     

On academic publishing,the myth of the East–West nexus,and tourism scholars in a regime era – a commentary on “The global permutations of the Western publication regime” by Erik Cohen,Scott A. Cohen,and Victor T. King

The article, “The global permutations of the Western publication regime” (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2016.1272556), inspires this short commentary. I respond directly to two points made in the original article about academic publishing and divisions between the “East” and “West” and make an additional point about the role of tourism scholars in these debates. My reason for writing this commentary is twofold: to take seriously the publishing regime’s influence in academia around the world and to challenge a universalizing critique of its features.     

如何选择核级流体系统元件供应商

随着核电行业的重新振兴,世界各地开始兴建许多新的大型核电项目,导致有核级资质的元件产品供应商短缺。在20世纪后30年,核工业的衰退使得供应商锐减,一些元件供应商破产倒闭,其它的则放弃了维护成本昂贵的核电认证项目。今天,随着核电行业的复兴,公用事业公司、工程公司、建设公司和大型设备供应商发现在寻找具有广泛产品线及有能力在合理时间内交付产品的合格元件供应商方面有很大困难。     

Skills audits - a framework for local economic development

Skill creation and utilisation are important to local economic development as they represent an area in which local authorities have a track record of intervention and some very real powers, through their ability to influence parts of the training infrastructure. There is, of course, no direct causal link between changes to the training system and local economic performance. Fine-tuning the training infrastructure to meet identified needs in the labour market must be recognised as a necessary not a sufficient condition for creating or retaining jobs.

In providing an organising framework for a skills audit we have emphasised the four dynamic elements of a local skills pool: utilised skills, under-utilised skills, and the depletion and replenishment of skills. From our initial run through of the framework several factors already emerge as important considerations -- the need to try to establish an age profile of skilled workers, the desirability of providing a .local technology profile and the need to foster and maintain responsiveness in the training system to changing skill needs. This latter aspect requires local initiatives to improve signalling between demand and supply for training.     

Book Reviews

Stephan Haggard (2000), The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis, Institute for International Economics, Washington DC, pp. xvii + 272.

Colin Barlow (ed.) (1999), Institutions and Economic Change in Southeast Asia: The Context of Development from the 1960s to the 1990s, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. xi + 204.

Asian Policy Forum, Asian Development Bank Institute (Forum Secretariat) (2000), Policy Recommendations for Preventing Another Capital Account Crisis, Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo, pp. ii + 16.

Masaru Yoshitomi and Sayuri Shirai (2000), Technical Background Paper for Policy Recommendations for Preventing Another Capital Account Crisis, Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo, pp. ii + 85.     

Beyond risk mitigation: Enhancing corporate innovation with scenario planning

The impact of exogenous shocks on business strategy, and possible responses to those threats, have received growing attention when considering the challenges of conducting business in an increasingly complex business environment. Scenario/contingency planning is a tool used by firms to translate their organizational learning capabilities into preconceived operational responses designed to react to, and then recover from, an exogenous shock. The use of scenario planning that includes exogenous shock scenarios has become a best practice in many industries. This article explores the additional potential usefulness of scenario planning as a tool for promoting innovation and corporate entrepreneurship.