Summer Reading List

First up, head of the team Emiel, who will be taking Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner) with him, having been inspired by a visit to the team by Michael Mauboussin earlier this year, with the speaker having highlighted that whilst superforcasting is a talent, it is one which can be taught.

Continuing on the learning curve theme, Justin will be taking a copy of Presenting Naked! (Brad Waldron) with him on his holiday, which, rather than an homage to his conceptualised self, offers coaching and development techniques to further enhance, prime and polish even the most magnetic of presenters.

Within the Economics team, Tim will be reading The Courage To Act (Ben Bernanke) by the pool, which serves as Bernanke’s insightful memoir of the financial crisis and its aftermath, whilst James will be perusing through Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson), which looks at why borders between prosperous and non-prosperous towns matter so much.

James has also recently read The Second Machine Age – Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew Mcafee), which offers a broadly positive view that the second machine age (i.e. digitial technology; the first machine age being the Industrial Revolution) is transforming our work and our lives.

Finally, John will be sharpening his mental tools during his time out by scrutinising A Primer in Game Theory (Robert Gibbons), in which the author introduces the branches of game theory (the study of multi-decision problems) which have been applied in economics.

An impressive list. So, have finance professionals completely consciously uncoupled themselves from fictional literature? Not necessarily, with one member of the team taking a copy of Watership Down (Richard Adams) to relax to by the pool. Gordon Gekko, it seems, has finally left the building.