Kahneman and Smith 

Daniel Kahneman has just won the Nobel prize for economics, “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”, together with Vernon Smith.

Kahneman led what is increasingly looking like my Davos swansong — a lunch I moderated during Davos in New York on behavioural finance. It’s a curious that what was a well-attended lunch last February would now become a packed session in a main room, such is the lure of the Nobel.

Corporate weaklings 

Former World Link editor Philippe Legrain writes an anti anti-globalisation article in today’s Guardian. I agree with the main thrust of his argument, but he is over-egging it to say that brands are a sign of corporate weakness.

“Competition can constrain even the biggest companies — one reason why globalisation is such a good thing. Closed domestic markets, where national champions can cosy up to government, are much more likely to be monopolised than open global ones. So even though global companies are bigger than before, they are not necessarily more powerful.”

Ethics matters 

Historian Reinhard Wettmann had some interesting things to say at the launch of the report on Bertelsmann’s activities during the Nazi era in Germany. Wettmann was one of the co-authors of the report, which makes clear that the company profited enormously during the Third Reich, eagerly publishing anti-semitic and militaristic propaganda.

The Financial Times reports that “Wettmann thinks that the history of then-Bertelsmann chairman Heinrich Mohn, who was no anti-Semite but who believed that companies could publish whatever appealed to the widest audience and leave ethical considerations to their rulers, should act as a warning against moral relativism in business, and particularly in the media. Such management philosophy, Mr Wettmann says, would be as misguided today as it was then.” How many present day companies does that remind you of?