Article Description

Every leader gets off track from time to time. As leaders rise through the ranks, they have fewer and fewer opportunities for honest and direct feedback.

Their bosses are no longer monitoring their actions, and by the time management missteps have a negative impact on business results, it’s usually too late to make course corrections that will set things right. Therefore, it is wise to go through a self-assessment, to periodically step back from the bustle of running a business and ask some key questions of yourself.

Author Robert S. Kaplan, who during his 22-year career at Goldman Sachs chaired the firm’s senior leadership training efforts and cochaired its partnership committee, identifies seven areas for self-reflection:

• Vision and priorities
• Managing time
• Feedback
• Succession planning
• Evaluation and alignment
• Leading under pressure
• Staying true to yourself

The author sets out a series of questions in each of the areas, illustrating the impact of self-assessment through vivid accounts of real executives.

Although the questions sound simple, people are often shocked–even horrified–by their own answers. Executives are aware that they should be focusing on their most important priorities, but without stepping back to reflect, few actually know where they are allocating their time.

Book Description

ISBN-038778182X

This publication will be a useful tool for practitioners and tax directors grappling with the complex and contentious issue of transfer pricing.

It contains a series of highly detailed case studies, based on the author’s twenty-one years as a government economist specializing in transfer pricing and valuation, a transfer pricing economist with Price Waterhouse, and, lastly, an independent consultant.

These case studies elucidate the types of intercompany transactions that may be scrutinized by tax authorities, lay out how one should go about analyzing these transactions in painstaking detail, and suggest how one might assess tax exposure relating to transfer pricing.

Tax policy analysts will find the evaluation and critique of existing methods and the development of alternative proposals thought-provoking and compelling.

The book is split into two parts: The first part describes and critically analyses the transfer pricing methods and regulations currently in place and proposes alternative approaches. The second part consists of ten case studies.

Book Description

ISBN-0387769994

Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, And Other Pricing Puzzles unravels the pricing mysteries we encounter every day.

• Have you ever wondered why all movies, whether blockbusters or duds, have the same ticket prices?
• Why sometimes there are free lunches?
• Why so many prices end with “9″?
• Why ink cartridges can cost as much as printers?
• Why merchants offer sales, coupons, and rebates?
• Why long lines are good for shoppers?
• Why men earn more than women, around the globe – and why they always will?

Richard McKenzie goes on to show how the 9/11 terrorists still kill Americans every day, because their attack distorted the perceived risks and relative prices of air vs. automobile travel, and jacked up both security costs and flight delays.

Professor McKenzie also explores the unintended consequences of well-meaning efforts to spur the use of environmentally friendly fuels: starvation among millions of people around the world, and the destruction of rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia.

How can these things be? If you think you know the answers, think again. Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies, And Other Pricing Puzzles shows you that the real reasons are sophisticated and surprising – and in Professor McKenzie’s hands, both informative and entertaining.

You won’t need a degree in economics to enjoy this fascinating book, just an armchair and an inquiring mind.