Some tidbits

See A French Sneaker Maker Grapples With How to Bring Production Home: Salomon has built a new shoe factory in France. Now it must also build a footwear supply chain in a country without one. by Trefor Moss of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"The company is banking on the shoe’s local, sustainable back story being a strong selling point"

See Fiction: ‘Trust’ by Hernan Diaz: Who was financier Andrew Bevel, and how did he successfully short the Crash of 1929? by Sam Sacks of The WSJ. He reviews the book Trust by Herman Diaz. Excerpt:

"Money may be a fiction, but it can be used to “bend and align reality”—that is to say, it’s a fiction that those with the right technique can alchemically transform into facts, like base metal into gold."

See ‘Hidden Games’ Review: Secret Equations: How game theory explains conspicuous consumption, royal coronations, rap lyrics, trench warfare—and more. by Matthew Hutson. He reviews the book Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior by Moshe Hoffman. Excerpt: 

"Higher-order beliefs also explain indirect speech (“Would you like to come up for coffee?”), which enables plausible deniability. And symbolism. “Symbolic gestures are puzzling,” Messrs. Hoffman and Yoeli write, “because things that don’t matter matter: we put enormous weight on mere words like I’m sorry and I love you and spare no expense on rituals, ceremonies, and elaborate displays that don’t convey any new information.” Public apologies and royal coronations both enable coordination, harmonizing everyone on who’s in debt or service to whom."

See ‘Narrative Economics’ Review: Costly Tales We Tell Ourselves Like songs you can’t get out of your head, familiar story lines about the economy elicit thoughts and emotions; they also impel action. by James Grant. He reviews the book Narrative Economics by Nobel Prize Winning Economist Robert Shiller. Excerpts:

"A Nobel laureate, Yale economics professor and caller-out of the millennial-era bubbles in houses and dot-com equities, Mr. Shiller now entreats his fellow economists to make room for “narratives” in their otherwise quantitatively focused minds. As Mr. Shiller defines them, narratives are contagious stories. Like the songs you can’t get out of your head, they elicit thoughts and emotions. But unlike musical earworms, they also impel action." 

"Mr. Shiller wants not only to identify the stories we live by (or at least spend, hire and invest by) but also to present “the beginnings of a new theory of economic change.” Trying to understand big economic events by studying the data alone, he observes, “is like trying to understand a religious awakening by looking at the cost of printing religious tracts.”"