Buying Options
| Print List Price: | $18.00 |
| Kindle Price: | $11.99 Save $6.01 (33%) |
| Sold by: | Macmillan Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
You’ve got a Kindle.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Enter your mobile phone or email address
By pressing "Send link," you agree to Amazon's Conditions of Use.
You consent to receive an automated text message from or on behalf of Amazon about the Kindle App at your mobile number above. Consent is not a condition of any purchase. Message & data rates may apply.
Follow the Author
OK
Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero Kindle Edition
| Tyler Cowen (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $58.94 | $58.95 |
An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times bestselling author Tyler Cowen.
We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who, at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough.
In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot,” and only 6 percent trust it “a great deal.” Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateApril 9, 2019
- File size1467 KB
![]() |
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Mr. Cowen’s book is timely, and his writing style is a refreshing contrast to the strident left-wing declamations that are so common today. He is calm and conversational, splashing cool water on the firebrands.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“Cowen did not become one of the world’s most-read bloggers on economics without understanding the value of a well-timed contrarian blast.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“In true Cowenesque fashion, [Big Business] starts out with a markedly contrarian premise that by the last page seems so evident that you wonder why it first felt outlandish at all.” ―Reason Magazine
“Cowen is a smart, original thinker with a knack for reframing criticisms in the context of a larger, utilitarian perspective...that implicitly endorses the current economic system; he comes off more like a lawyer than an ideologue.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Cowen offers a highly accessible polemic touting the wonders of corporate America.” ―Kirkus Reviews
"Big Business is iconoclastic, charming, wise, and fun. A gentle soul, Tyler Cowen has kind words for Ayn Rand, Facebook, the huge salaries of CEOs, and the financial system. He demonstrates that America's large companies are a national treasure. Essential reading, above all in the current era." ―Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Conformity: The Power of Social Influences
“In this world in which capitalism and big business are under attack from both the right and the left, Tyler Cowen’s reasoned and compelling defense of free markets provides a much-needed antidote.” ―Burton G. Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, 12th ed.
“Tyler Cowen mounts a compelling defense of big business, finance, and the tech industry. Both their critics and their defenders will benefit from reading this book.” ―Walter Frick, Harvard Business Review
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07D2B8MLT
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press (April 9, 2019)
- Publication date : April 9, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 1467 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 258 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #251,058 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #63 in Free Enterprise
- #236 in Free Enterprise & Capitalism
- #302 in Government Management
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Tyler Cowen (/ˈkaʊ.ən/; born January 21, 1962) is an American economist, academic, and writer. He occupies the Holbert L. Harris Chair of economics, as a professor at George Mason University, and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. Cowen and Tabarrok have also ventured into online education by starting Marginal Revolution University. He currently writes a regular column for Bloomberg View. He also has written for such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Time, Wired, Newsweek, and the Wilson Quarterly. Cowen also serves as faculty director of George Mason's Mercatus Center, a university research center that focuses on the market economy. In February 2011, Cowen received a nomination as one of the most influential economists in the last decade in a survey by The Economist. He was ranked #72 among the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" in 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine "for finding markets in everything."
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Many, many books and articles have been written to address popular views of business and the consequences. Rather than this book, pieces to read that do a much better job than Cowen’s book of discussing business issues would include, for example, the Truth on the Law blog (where Gus Hurwitz’s April 16 post seems apropos here.) Or google the late, great Larry Ribstein, wrote penetrating articles and blogged considerably about the negative portrayal of business in films and worked hard to come up with a theory explaining that portrayal. For $5 one can pick up a back edition of the Klein, Ramseyer, and Bainbridge law textbook “Business Associations, Cases and Materials on Agency, Partnerships, LLCs, and Corporations” which is a remarkably entertaining and instructive source for dipping into whenever a business policy issue like many of those treated so superficially in the Cowen book. Cowen mentions Arnold Kling ever so slightly in the vacuous chapter on big banks, but one would be much better served by actually reading Kling himself on this topic and judging for oneself who has the better of the argument. Perhaps the single best article that I can find that demonstrates what a disappointment Cowen’s love letter is would be Steven M. Bainbridge’s book review of Conservatives against Capitalism:
From the Industrial Revolution to Globalization by Peter Kolozi. Entitled “Conservative Critiques of Capitalism” the review appears in the Fall 2018 edition of the journal American Affairs and is available for free online. Short and concise, it too presents a balanced and nuanced alternative to Cowen’s arguments such as they are.
I bought this book primarily to support Cowen for the great work that he does with Marginal Revolution University. So I really should not be so harsh in judging it. By making available for free great educational materials like Guinevere Liberty Nell’s Economic History of the Soviet Union he has helped to greatly enrich my life and no doubt countless others. Nevertheless, I am forced to admit that this book does his readers a disservice and I would hate for anyone to give up interest in the law and economics of corporations after reading it. It does to business what Cowen's (undisclosed in the book) paymasters at Bloomberg news do, take a worthy topic and inject it with partisan politics and the most superficial of analyses.
Some of the general topics include:
Management matters - Chinese firms can increase their productivity 30-50% if management was as good as America’s. CEO’s are paid for their rare skill at managing such complex and large firms. A sudden death of a CEO typically leads to a 2.3% decrease in value. The greater productivity of large firms lead them to pay their workers more than smaller firms for the same jobs.
Banking and Finance are essential - Ancient civilization such as Sumer and the Greek city-states had sophisticated accounting and banking institutions which led to more rapid development. A large financial system is typically a positive report card for the overall economy as assets have appreciated in value and must be monitored. Bankers’ pay has understandably increased as these firms’ assets under management have increased and employees need more education and training in managing risk. Canadian banks weathered the Great Depression better than American banks because they were bigger meaning they had more diversified risks.
Big Business is not effective at regulatory capture - Businesses basically want free trade, balanced budgets and predictable government. You could argue these benefit everyone and that Big Business has not been successful in lobbying for it. Citizens United helped individuals more than businesses and the overall money spent and number of lobbyists by companies is very small. If anything, multinationals tend to be a bullseye for regulators (see the EU’s treatment of American tech companies).
Global trade has largely benefited the United States - “dark matter” in the form of intangible assets (ideas, brands) have been exported all over the world. Exporting countries plow their earnings into low yielding treasuries where American companies and investors pick up 2-3% more in yield investing abroad.
Industry specific - People are happy to have Tech companies use their data if they can use their services for free. Drug companies’ production of prescription drugs are responsible for two thirds of the increase in life expectancy starting in 1996.
Ultimately, companies are accountable to customers and regulators and their earnings go to employees and investors. They tend to temper the extremes of humanity in this pursuit. I doubt the anti-Big Business crowd will come around anytime soon as Big Business is an easy target for the failings of our society but everyone should read this book. I like how Cowen closes out with Bryan Caplan’s quote “corporations do everything for us...hating corporations is like hating your parents.”








