Here are 100 books that Mixed Signals fans have personally recommended if you like
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In my first year as an undergraduate in computer science at the University of Illinois, I took two classes that set the course for my 54-year career (6 years at TRW Systems aerospace firm, and 48 years teaching at Harvard and Princeton Universities): 1) introduction to optimization, and 2) computer algorithms. These topics continue to fascinate me, especially as they relate to improving investment performance via modern optimization technology and data sciences. Optimization plays a critical role in many domains, including supply chains, quantitative finance, and machine learning algorithms. Everyone interested in improving performance ought to understand the successful uses of this proven technology.
There is much evidence that individuals often suffer from inertia when it comes to making significant decisions – including investment choices.
This engaging book by Professor Milkman at the Wharton School aims to create a climate in which “change” can be accomplished in an efficient, systematic, and relatively painless way. There are numerous examples of improvements by both individuals and organizations. This highly readable book is a must for anyone interested in creating and sustaining positive change habits, for example, to encourage increased savings and systematic investment policies.
Professor Milkman is one of our successful undergraduate alums and participates on the advisor committee of the ORFE Department at Princeton. She is a terrific teacher and writer. The lessons in this book are most appropriate for investors who are interested in establishing and maintaining sound habits to improve their investment performance.
'Game-changing. Katy Milkman shows in this book that we can all be a super human' Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit
How to Change is a powerful, groundbreaking blueprint to help you - and anyone you manage, teach or coach - to achieve personal and professional goals, from the master of human nature and behaviour change and Choiceology podcast host Professor Katy Milkman.
Award-winning Wharton Professor Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behaviour change. An engineer by training, she approaches all challenges as problems to be solved and, with this mind-set, has drilled into the roadblocks…
My passion is using field experiments to explore economic questions. Since the early 1990s I have generated more than 200 papers published in academic journals using the world as my lab. That’s what we do as academics. The problem is that locked away in these journals is an enormous amount of wisdom and insights that can not only help the realm of academia, but also change the world as we know it. The brilliant authors of these books unlock the ideas and knowledge found in the academic papers that are full of jargon and math, aimed towards a narrow audience, and put them in language aimed towards the masses where real change can be implemented.
Parents are the foundation of our society. However, too many parents do not receive the support they need to meet the needs of their children.
Dr. Dana Suskind, my incredible wife, combines the latest science on the key role of parents in the development of children’s brains with stories of the experience of parents left shouldering this vital responsibility. Leaving parents unsupported is detrimental not only to children and families, but also society.
This book is essential for all members of society to read in order to understand why and, importantly, how we must support parents. Parent Nation provides a blueprint for a more sustainable future.
***INSTANT New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestseller***
World-class pediatric surgeon, social scientist, and best-selling author of Thirty Million Words Dr. Dana Suskind returns with a revelatory new look at the neuroscience of early childhood development—and how it can guide us toward a future in which every child has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Her prescription for this more prosperous and equitable future, as clear as it is powerful, is more robust support for parents during the most critical years of their children’s development. In her poignant new book, Parent Nation, written with award-winning science writer…
The more I learn about the brain, the more I want to dig in and discover more. Why do we procrastinate? Why do people buy things? Why do some people naturally seem to have more influence than others? As an applied behavioral economist, I love unlocking these topics weekly on The Brainy Business podcast (where each person on this list has been a guest) and sharing those insights with the world. Three of the most downloaded episodes (in over 300) featured increasing influence (and authors showcased here), a key factor of being more impactful in life and at work. Enjoy your newfound influence!
There are countless amazing insights from Influence Is Your Superpower, by Yale’s Zoe Chance.
Three that stick with me the most for applying these insights at work are: 1) Zoe’s Magic Question of “What would it take?” This little question is so powerful in coming up with innovative solutions that increase buy-in from the person you are asking (and Zoe of course explains why in the book). 2) people are more likely to say yes to you than you may think, so simply asking is important to increasing your influence. 3) saying “no” is key to success (and isn’t as hard as it seems).
She encourages a 24-hours of “no” challenge that can help anyone get more comfortable with saying no.
Get what you want without compromising who you are: the new rules of persuasion to influence others for good
We're all nice. In fact, we're told we're too nice and we have to change to succeed: 'Play the game!'; 'Beat them down!'; 'Toughen up!'. Do we have to choose between betraying our own values and being left behind without a voice? Absolutely not. We can naturally be persuasive and successful every day without making enemies of ourselves or other people.
Influence is a science and renowned Yale professor Zoe Chance will help you master it in this fascinating book. Drawing…
My passion is using field experiments to explore economic questions. Since the early 1990s I have generated more than 200 papers published in academic journals using the world as my lab. That’s what we do as academics. The problem is that locked away in these journals is an enormous amount of wisdom and insights that can not only help the realm of academia, but also change the world as we know it. The brilliant authors of these books unlock the ideas and knowledge found in the academic papers that are full of jargon and math, aimed towards a narrow audience, and put them in language aimed towards the masses where real change can be implemented.
We all loved Freakonomics. The incredible Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt did it again in their second book Super Freakonomics.
Thinking like an economist is a powerful tool. What might surprise you are the motley assortment of questions that you can think about from the perspective of an economist.
This book is bold, funny, and insightful. And what’s the underlying theme? Well, it’s one thing all economists can agree on – incentives matter. Dubner and Levitt are masterful storytellers and teachers.
Even if you aren’t interested in thinking like an economist, their perspective on topics covered is worth the read.
The international bestselling Freakquel to Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics, this book sees them looking deeper, questioning harder and uncovering even more hidden truths about our world, from global cooling to patriotic prostitutes, drunk walking to why suicide bombers should buy life insurance.
'Mind-blowing' Wall Street Journal
'Page-turning, politically incorrect and ever-so-slightly intoxicating, like a large swig of tequila' The Times
'Like Freakonomics but better ... you are guaranteed a good time' Financial Times
'Great fun ... Levitt is a master at drawing counter-intuitive conclusions' Sunday Times
'Studded with intriguing examples' Daily Telegraph
I’ve been working in value-based pricing for over 20 years and I’ve seen firsthand how it can transform a company’s profits when done right and executed properly through sales. While the specific strategies and tactics vary across industries, company size, and product offerings, many of the foundations and logic behind those strategies can be learned, and must be understood in order to grow a company’s revenue and profit growth in today’s markets. I’d love to connect about any of these topics – feel free to reach out on LinkedIn!
This book takes a deeper look into the psychology of choices and pricing.
It helps provide more context and understanding around some familiar tactics and what drives buyer’s decisions. While price setting can be a technical activity, leaders need to understand the softer/behavioral skills to sell that price both internally and externally. Both components are important in order to get your pricing right.
Winner, 2022 Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award, American Marketing Association
How do leaders, managers, and proprietors go about the essential task of setting prices? What biases enter into this process, and why? How can a business debias its price setting to become more productive, strategic, and profitable?
Combining perceptive insights from behavioral economics with leading-edge ideas on price management, this book offers a new approach to pricing. Gerald Smith demonstrates why understanding, reframing, and refining everyday pricing processes-a firm's or manager's pricing orientation-results in a better long-term pricing strategy. He explores how pricing actually happens in practice and shows…
I first fell in love with the markets when in 1995, I made more on 1 stock investment than I did working all winter in the freezing cold as a ski instructor. I see it as the world’s greatest game and it has given me a life of unparalleled freedom that I am eternally grateful for. Trading has allowed me to pursue my interests and go deep into behavioral psychology, economics, neurobiology, and would never have had the breakthroughs I have had like the Bottega method for AI or the Myalolipsis technique for developing effortless, unshakable self-discipline if I hadn’t been an active trader.
The markets are always changing. My ability to maintain performance for over 25+ years I believe comes from my deep foundation in the universal principles that drive market prices.
This book was pivotal in my understanding that some things never change. It is a bit difficult to get through, since it was written in the early 1900s. I think the strangeness of the language forced me to really think through and understand the lessons the book teaches.
In my experience, mental strengthening is step #1.
Then you need to learn the art of behavioral analysis and economic psychology if you want to be able to consistently understand why markets move so you can begin to forecast those movements…
This book is a great place to get that process started.
Rollo Tape is the colorful pen name of Richard D. Wyckoff. This 1910 classic on tape reading and stock market tactics is by one of its most astute students. Wyckoff for many years was a publisher of the Ticker Magazine which was later changed to The Magazine of Wall Street. He contributed more to the study of price movements than anyone else in America.
I’m a Swiss researcher and university professor who applies mathematics and psychology to build quantitative models for financial decision-making. Most of my scientific contributions belong to a field of research called behavioral finance, that is, the study of how psychology affects financial decisions. I love mathematics, and I am fascinated by its ability to describe complex mechanisms, including those that generate human behavior.
From this book, I learned that cognitive errors and human misbehaviours are not necessarily in contradiction to rationality.
It taught me that the generally negative perspective on psychological mechanisms provided by behavioural economics is limited. By contrast, a deeper understanding of what rationality means is needed. This book enriched my own way of analyzing how psychological factors impact daily decisions.
For a long time, economists have assumed that we were cold, self-centred, rational decision makers - so-called Homo economicus; the last few decades have shattered this view. The world we live in and the situations we face are of course rich and complex, revealing puzzling aspects of our behaviour. Optimally Irrational argues that our improved understanding of human behaviour shows that apparent 'biases' are good solutions to practical problems - that many of the 'flaws' identified by behavioural economics are actually adaptive solutions. Page delivers an ambitious overview of the literature in behavioural economics and, through the exposition of these…
I’m a Swiss researcher and university professor who applies mathematics and psychology to build quantitative models for financial decision-making. Most of my scientific contributions belong to a field of research called behavioral finance, that is, the study of how psychology affects financial decisions. I love mathematics, and I am fascinated by its ability to describe complex mechanisms, including those that generate human behavior.
This book inspired me to apply quantitative and theoretical models to analyse the impact of human psychology on financial decision-making. The book is sometimes a bit technical, but I felt that that the explanations around the mathematical requirements sufficiently supported the development of my own intuition about their economic and psychological motivation.
I learned from this book how to combine economic theory and psychology to explain empirical and experimental evidence on asset prices. As a mathematician, I was excited to learn how Prof. Shefrin mathematically included psychological factors in classical models for financial decision-making and analyzed the implications for asset prices.
Behavioral finance is the study of how psychology affects financial decision making and financial markets. It is increasingly becoming the common way of understanding investor behavior and stock market activity. Incorporating the latest research and theory, Shefrin offers both a strong theory and efficient empirical tools that address derivatives, fixed income securities, mean-variance efficient portfolios, and the market portfolio. The book provides a series of examples to illustrate the theory.
When I became a minimalist, I found that having less made my household chores so much easier. Before then, I thought I was a loser who lets dirty dishes and laundry pile up. But when my environment changed, what I had believed was my personality also shifted. Once my apartment was tidy, it became a habit to do the dishes right away and vacuum the floor before going out, and my life became consistently enjoyable. But other habits were harder nuts to crack, like quitting drinking or exercising regularly. In Hello, Habits I write about my journey of acquiring these habits through a process of trial and error.
Hyperbolic discounting is a term used in behavioral economics to describe our tendency to overvalue immediate gratification while undervaluing future rewards. When asked to choose between getting (A) one apple a year from now or (B) two apples a year and a day from now, people pick (B). However, if the choice is between getting (A) one apple today or (B) two apples tomorrow, people find (A) more attractive. Why is it so difficult to acquire good habits, like going to bed early or getting important work done, instead of playing with our smartphone? The idea of hyperbolic discounting offers a brilliant explanation, shedding light on the troublesome natures we humans possess. Although that’s not the main focus of this book, it’s still an excellent, easy-to-read introduction to behavioral economics.
Could you lose weight if you put $20,000 at risk? Would you finally set up your billing software if it meant that your favorite charity would earn a new contribution? If you’ve ever tried to meet a goal and came up short, the problem may not have been that the goal was too difficult or that you lacked the discipline to succeed. From giving up cigarettes to increasing your productivity at work, you may simply have neglected to give yourself the proper incentives.
In Carrot and Sticks, Ian Ayres, the New York Times bestselling author of Super Crunchers, applies the…
When I first started covering Wall Street as a reporter, I faced a steep learning curve. I had always loved history, but I knew almost nothing about the history of Wall Street itself. I started educating myself -- and what began as a utilitarian effort to do my job better became a life-changing passion. Too often, financial history gets written for analysts and academics; it was a rare joy to find writers who told these wonderful Wall Street tales in an engaging, accessible way. That became my goal as an author: to write financial history in a way that could fascinate the general reader.
Perhaps no academic theory has had a more pernicious impact on how we understand and regulate the markets than the “rational market hypothesis” – the theory that “markets know best” and work best if left alone. Justin Fox explains the rise, the rule, and the ruin of this powerful but fundamentally flawed idea in a remarkably engaging way. A delight to read!
Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's "The Myth of the Rational Market" is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through the Great Depression and into the financial calamity of today. It's a tale that features professors who made and lost fortunes, battled fiercely over ideas, beat the house in blackjack, wrote bestselling books,…
