Skip to main content

Amazon Customer Reviews

My new book Banking in Crisis had its first customer review on Amazon (see below). It got five stars! I actually know who the reviewer is - YuXiang Long - a very enthusiastic student from my 2013 Money and Banking class. Thanks Long!  If you want to write a customer review on Banking in Crisis, please feel free to do so.

But can we trust Amazon  (or TripAdvisor) reviews? Could I not manipulate Amazon reviews of my book by bribing family, friends and students to post overly positive reviews? Are Amazon customers savvy enough to catch on and do they simply ignore them?  What type of Amazon reviews do I pay attention to? If I'm buying a book or DVD, I usually ignore customer reviews. However, if I'm buying a piece of gadgetry, I usually read a cross-section of the reviews, particularly those which comment on the functioning etc of the gadget.  When it comes to hotels, I usually ignore hotels with under 200 reviewers and I start by reading the terrible (one-star) and poor (two-star) reviews. In this way, I gain an insight into things which turn me off hotels (excessive noise, poor breakfasts etc.).


Popular posts from this blog

Bitcoin Bubble?

According to Robert Shiller , speaking at Davos, Bitcoin is a perfect example of a bubble - story here . Shiller sees Bitcoin as a backwards step in the evolution of money.   George Selgin , a free banker, takes an opposing view - click here .  Although he doesn't believe that Bitcoin is money, he sees its development as a fascinating turn in the evolution of money. In particular, he lauds the fact that Bitcoin production is constrained and cannot be infinite. There is a short video below where Bitcoin explain how it works.
Read more

How Valuable Are Connections?

Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne
Read more

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles, co-authored with my colleague Will Quinn , is forthcoming in August. It is published by Cambridge University Press and is available for pre-order at Amazon , Barnes and Noble , Waterstones and Cambridge University Press . 
Read more