Reviews for Contracting for engineering and construction projects

The average rating for Contracting for engineering and construction projects based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-04 00:00:00 Chuck Bradford Richard Parker accomplishes two noteworthy things with this book: he documents the life of one of the most influential economic figures of the 20th century while creating an enlightening backdrop in which Galbraith's work is presented. Even when Galbraith's ideas fell out of favor once the Great Depression was a more distant memory, he nonetheless exhibited the incredible ability to predict the outcomes of economic policy in the latter 20th century that ran counter to basic Keynesian concepts. The two biggest takeaways for me: 1. Galbraith's assertion (rightly) that economics, politics, and history are intertwined. As such, good economic policy should (and never will) act in a vacuum without political influence in some way. Good economic policy should never (but often does) act without a thorough examination of history. 2. His core belief that largely conservative economic policy doesn't spur real economic growth; in fact, it often does the opposite by creating wage inequality and burdening the middle class. While obviously controversial, this point is borne out by empirical data and recorded history. Interestingly, Galbraith was often sought by news media for his thoughts on failed or failing conservative policy results (which he had predicted and which were initiated by administrations of both parties ) even after he was considered outside the economic and academic mainstream. In fact, this book provides a great overview of economic policy for the presidencies of Roosevelt to the early Bush 43 days, with particular emphasis on the Kennedy and Johnson years. In summary, this book is easily a top 10 for me due to its ability to present a story on a wider canvas than just the life of a single person.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-02 00:00:00 Danny Narsaur This biography of the deceased liberal Harvard economist and author explores Galbraith's life and thought. I especially liked how the author, also an economist, explored the relevance of Galbraith's economic views in light of more recent events, and his comparison of Galbraith's economics with more recent schools of economics, such as rational expectations. As Galbraith's informal trilogy of economic books was written between the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, there are many recent events and intellectual developments to be considered. Galbraith was not a traditional academic. Born into a farm family in Ontario, Canada in 1908, he did his graduate work in agricultural economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an administrator of the Office of Price Administration during the Second World War, during which he indirectly supervised thousands in an effort to keep inflation low by controlling price increases. After his decisions in this politically touchy job got him fired, he was a journalist for Fortune, the business magazine, and then investigated the effectiveness of U. S. strategic bombing during the Second World War. During the 1950s he was an insider in the Democratic Party who wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson during both of his failed presidential campaigns. He then turned his allegiance to John F. Kennedy and served as ambassador to India, as well as general political and economic advisor, during Kennedy's term as president. I'd have to say that whatever his merits, or lack there of, as a academic economist, his political advice regarding Vietnam and the balance of payments problems of the 1960s seems to have accurately predicted the problems that would emerge (his proposed solutions were not carried out, so can't be as certain of their merits). Galbraith also wrote many books on topics other than economics. I recall enjoying the style of his roughly 1980 memoir; no doubt he did not anticipate that he had more than 20 years still to live! Galbraith's economic views did not follow the market equilibrium models that had become common in the profession after Alfred Marshall popularized them for the English-speaking world in the late nineteenth century. He saw large corporations as the dominant private business actor. Corporations generally competed with only a few other corporations in their markets, leading to oligopoly and the ability to strongly influence prices and also, through advertising, consumer demand. Thus corporations carry out decentralized planning more than they respond to market incentives. Smaller firms exist, but there influence is minimal. In his earlier views, labor unions and the government had countervailing power against corporations. Later Galbraith became less optimistic about the degree of such countervailing power, as labor unions declined and as the federal government and the citizenry seemed less interested in exerting countervailing power. Within corporations, the management is largely free to set its own agenda, with minimal oversight by stockholders. This view was subject to some modification as corporate takeovers once again became common starting in the 1980s. Galbraith did not generally advocate anti-trust activity, as he thought the oligopolistic nature of large firms made possible technical innovation not possible in a system more resembling the classroom marketplace model. Rather, he advocated public regulation within a context of Keynesian demand management to control both inflation and unemployment. With regard to the man rather than the book, I would say that Galbraith's main failing was not engage properly with his profession. This failing is of some importance, because Galbraith wanted to change the world by changing minds. I think there are 3 related failures that made his influence within the profession marginal. First, he wrote too many books and journalistic articles rather than concentrating on writing academic papers to be published in the most prestigious journals. Books, especially those for the general public, will not influence an academic discipline and writing mainly for a general audience will reduce one's academic influence. Second, although he received tenure at Harvard in roughly 1950 and retired in roughly 1976, he stopped having graduate students in the 1950s. Thus, there were few to carry on his way of doing economics. Third, he failed to dress up his economics with mathematics. Mathematical analysis has been part of economics since about the time of Alfred Marshall in the 19th century, and a lack of math can easily result in one's views being considered to be those of a light weight. I suspect that a game theory approach could have been used to express many of Galbraith's views mathematically. I found the book generally quite readable and enjoyable. Sometimes there is some name dropping associated with Galbraith, probably unavoidable when writing about a man with such a wide acquaintence among leading liberal democrats and other government officials during the middle of the twentieth century. Although the end-notes are excellent, I would have liked to also have a bibliography to make it easier for me to chase down some of the referenced works.