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Title: Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status by Robert H. Frank ISBN: 0-19-504945-4 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Nothing Fishy Here!
Comment: Robert Frank's book "Choosing the Right Pond" is a thought provoking book that offers significant explanatory power to behaviors that we see every day. Utilizing the author's economics background, but ably drawing on the fields of psychology and public policy, this book is an enjoyable read. The concepts presented within easily lend themselves to other circumstances not discussed by the author.
While the demarcation is not explicit, chapters 1-8 are applied more toward interpersonal issues of status, whereas chapters 9-12 have more to do with how status is applied on a policy or societal level. The first chapter covers who we choose to compare ourselves to and the more obvious cues we use to identify standing. The second chapter looks at the impacts that biology and proximity has upon the value we give to status. The third chapter uses income and productivity to discuss observed status behaviors and collective agreements to minimize competition in the workplace. Chapters four and five discuss the impact of proximity between status seekers to explain the disparity of incomes within the same pool of individuals. Chapter six discusses fairness within the system of progressive taxation and why the wealthy are generally willing to shoulder a disproportionate burden of payment. Chapter seven discusses how when one individual's attempt to obtain advantage are imitated by others, the advantage disappears and everyone's relative position is the same as before.
Chapter eight covers how people allocate their incomes when seeking status. Of particular interest to me was the discussion on savings. While the life cycle hypothesis, permanent income hypothesis, precautionary saving model, etc., all play roles in savings behavior, in my own explorations, I have come across very little that attempts to account for the impact of status seeking on savings, or the lack thereof. I was particularly intrigued with the author's discussion on the lack of visibility of savings (as opposed to obvious things like a large house or fancy car) reducing it's ability to connote status as yet another explanatory factor in household behavior. The remaining chapters, while I'm sure they will be of interest to some, were of a larger perspective than is of importance to me.
I found "Choosing the Right Pond" to be an engaging book that has resulted in significant discussion between my co-workers and myself. Many of the concepts found in this book are explored further in the author's later book, "Luxury Fever." "Choosing the Right Pond" offers much to anyone who enjoys understanding the role they and others play in our daily games of interpersonal status.
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Title: Passions Within Reason by Robert H. Frank ISBN: 0393960226 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.15 |
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Title: The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us by Robert H. Frank, Philip J. Cook ISBN: 0140259953 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Multiple Self by Jon Elster, Gudmund Hernes ISBN: 0521346835 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 31 July, 1987 List Price(USD): $33.00 |
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Title: Strangers to Ourselves : Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy D. Wilson ISBN: 0674009363 Publisher: Belknap Pr Pub. Date: 30 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel M. Wegner ISBN: 0262232227 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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