Ford Library

The lecture, “At the Brink: The Future of Lending, Credit and Leverage,”  will be held this Saturday at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.  Leading Wall Street figures will discuss the state of lending, credit and leverage at 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 27th in Geneen Auditorium.

This is the 2nd of a four-part series and represents a joint collaboration between the Fuqua School of Business and McKinsey Quarterly.  The series will consist of forums on the following areas:  energy, the financial system, globalization and business education.

Check out some of these new titles from the Ford Library about the business landscape in the aftermath of the credit and economic crises (click on a link to place a hold or check availability). Or come browse our display in the Economics section of the library:

• The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street by Justin Fox
• In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic by David Wessel
• How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins
• Paper Fortune$: Modern Wall Street – Where It’s Been and Where It’s Going by Roy C. Smith
• How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy
• On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System by Henry Paulson
• Economics Does Not Lie: A Defense of the Free Market in a Time of Crisis by Guy Sorman
• Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction and the Future of the Global Economy by Joseph A. Schumpeter

Holliday, Charles O. (“Chad”) Walking the talk : the business case for sustainable development. Greenleaf, 2002.

Kross, Katie. Profession and purpose : a resource guide for MBA careers in sustainability. Greenleaf, 2009.

Seireeni, Richard. The gort cloud : the invisible force powering today’s most visible green brands. Chelsea Green Publishers, 2008.

The authors of these 3 books were the opening Keynote Speaker, Strategy Moderator, and Strategy Panelist at The Duke Conference on Sustainable Business and Social Impact (SBSI), held on February 17, 2010 here at the Fuqua School of Business.

All 3 of the above titles are available for check-out here in Ford Library. Just click a linked title above to request one of the books.

Don’t miss other important titles in Ford Library’s extensive collection of books on sustainable development.

We also encourage Fuqua users to take a look at the “Green Careers” Insider Guide at our affiliate WetFeet Career Resource site. After connecting, click the”Insider Guides” link at the page top, then “Industries & Careers General” at the left.

If you’d like to suggest other books on sustainable development for our collection, please let us know!

Stone, Pamela. Opting out? : why women really quit careers and head home. University of California Press, 2007.

Author Pamela Stone conducted in-depth interviews with 54 high-achieving women, in high-status, high-knowledge professional fields, such as consulting, law, finance and medicine, who were all married to equally powerful men, and who seemingly abandoned their rewarding careers to become stay-at-home mothers.

Rather than opting out of the workplace, these women found themselves with increased responsibilities at home and with husbands who were reluctant to help them. Beyond the mandated maternity leave, these highly successful women were unable to find the flexibility they needed to continue working in an environment where 60 hour workweeks and 24/7 availability was the norm. Even in companies where family-friendly policies existed on the books, individual managers paid a critical role in making flexibility available or taking it away.

Women who were able to negotiate special favors found themselves marginalized and stigmatized. These competitive women disinvested in their careers and increased their investment in family. Author Stone concludes that women are not opting out of the workplace. They are being pushed out. Interesting read. Author Pamela Stone is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, CUNY.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Ford Library tips it top hat to Patricia Valdovinos!

Patricia is a member of the Fuqua School’s top-notch housekeeping staff, and Ford Library is her area of responsibility. We’re very proud to report that Patricia has won Duke University’s Joseph G. Pietrantoni Outstanding Employee Award for January 2010.

Patricia’s warm and friendly manner, and excellent work make Ford Library a better place, and a more welcoming destination for our users.

Many thanks, and CONGRATULATIONS Patricia!

Our latest titles–

Like Stars on Earth
Amelia
Whip It
Bright Star
Funny People
50 Dead Men Walking
The International
No Impact Man
Emma

Fox, Justin. The myth of the rational market : a history of risk, reward, and delusion on Wall Street. Harper Business, 2009.

Two economists spot a $10 bill on the ground. One stoops to pick it up, and the other advises, “Don’t. If it were really $10, it wouldn’t be there anymore.”

Anyone who has taken a basic course in economics or finance knows that this joke alludes to the efficient market hypothesis, which holds that the market is always right. Prices can’t be wrong. If they are, someone would seek to profit from the error and correct it. The decisions of millions of rational investors, all acting on information, provide the best judge of an asset’s value.

This theory is the basis of a risk management and pricing system that underlies our global economy. But is this theory correct? Time columnist Justin Fox tells the story of the faculty members who designed complex financial theories. He focuses on the academic debate, explaining the theories of economists, such as Modigliani, Miller, Markowitz and Merton. Academics constructed models for managing uncertainty, which inspired the first index fund, the rise of derivatives and modern portfolio theory. Then in 2007 asset markets throughout the world collapsed, proving that the ideology was incorrect.

After the market crash of 1987, Robert Shiller called the efficient-market hypothesis the “most remarkable error in the history of economic theory.” Yet even after the disaster, the theory continued to thrive, only to contribute to the latest crash. Recently, Paul Krugman called the hypothesis “beautiful, comforting and, above all, lucrative.” It is not going away anytime soon.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

The Duke-Kunshan campus, a partnership between the university and the municipal government, will include a five-building teaching, research and residential center built by the municipal government.

Duke’s Fuqua School of Business will lead the first phase, which will focus on executive MBA and non-degree executive education programs, a pre-experience management training master’s degree, training of Ph.D. students and the recruitment of top faculty.

Duke’s educational partner in this venture is Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of the leading universities in China.

Breaking Ground in Kunshan (watch video of the ceremony)

Learn more at Laying the Foundation for The Duke Campus in China.

Reid, T. R. The healing of America : a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care. Penguin Press, 2009.

Washington Post correspondent T. R. Reid took his injured shoulder to doctors around the world to see how their health care systems would treat his shoulder pain. His American orthopedist recommended that his shoulder be replaced with a man-made titanium device. The orthopedist in France recommended physical therapy to strengthen the muscular system in his shoulder. In India, he received herbal medicines and full-body massages with sesame oil, with surprisingly good results.

The purpose of Reid’s quest was to find out why health care in other free market economies have better outcomes at a lower cost than in the U.S. On basic measures of health systems performance: coverage, quality, cost control and choice, the U.S. is far behind other countries. Reid concludes that in the U.S., the cost is higher due to the complexity of our health care system and the way American health insurance is managed. U.S. private health insurance has the highest administrative costs of any health care payer in the world.

Reid presents several health care models, including the Bismarck model used in Germany, Japan and France; the Beverage model used in the UK, Italy and Spain; and the national health insurance model in Canada. These countries combine universal coverage and government regulation with entrepreneurialism and respect for private markets to produce high-quality, low-cost health care for all.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

Duke OIT has scheduled a hardware upgrade that may affect your access to Library resources.

OIT is upgrading the hardware that supports the Shibboleth authentication services (which control access to Duke secure resources) during a scheduled maintenance window today (Tuesday, February 2nd) between 6:00 – 6:30 PM.

Users may notice a very brief (2-3 minutes) interruption in their ability to authenticate to Shibbolized services like FuquaWorld, course web sites, Ford Library & Duke Library databases and e-journals, Ford Library e-reserves and other services.

If you wish to have uninterrupted access to Library databases and e-journals during the maintenance window, please activate your Fuqua or Duke VPN connection before following links to those resources.

Thanks for your patience during this necessary system maintenance.