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John Kay

Born

Edinburgh, Scotland

Website

http://www.johnkay.com/

Genre

Business & Investing

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I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1948, and completed my schooling and undergraduate education in that city: I am fortunate to have lived most of my life in beautiful places. I went to the University of Edinburgh to study mathematics. But, after taking a subsidiary course in economics, I decided that I wanted to be an economist. The notion that one might understand society better through the application of rigorous and logical analysis excited me – and it still does. After graduating from Edinburgh, I went to Nuffield College, Oxford. I worked there under James Mirrlees, who was in due course to win the Nobel Prize for his contributions to economic theory.

On Mirrlees’s advice, I applied for and to my astonishment got a permanent teaching I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1948, and completed my schooling and undergraduate education in that city: I am fortunate to have lived most of my life in beautiful places. I went to the University of Edinburgh to study mathematics. But, after taking a subsidiary course in economics, I decided that I wanted to be an economist. The notion that one might understand society better through the application of rigorous and logical analysis excited me – and it still does. After graduating from Edinburgh, I went to Nuffield College, Oxford. I worked there under James Mirrlees, who was in due course to win the Nobel Prize for his contributions to economic theory.

On Mirrlees’s advice, I applied for and to my astonishment got a permanent teaching post in the University of Oxford at the embarrassingly early age of 21. Oxford is a collegiate university – members of the faculty generally have both University and College appointments. This post carried with it a fellowship at St John’s College, an association which I have maintained and enjoyed ever since. Through the 1970s I developed a conventional academic career, publishing in academic journals, and writing my first book Concentration in Modern Industry (with Leslie Hannah, an economic historian colleague). My particular interests were in public finance and industrial organisation.

But my rationale for studying economics had, from the beginning, been concerned for application. My career began to change direction when I was asked to join a group to review the structure of the British tax system. This group was established under the auspices of a newly established think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and was headed by James Meade, another economist who had achieved the ultimate distinction of a Nobel prize. Meade’s rigour was as demanding as that of Mirrlees, (both delivered it with extraordinary personal charm). But the most important effect of my experience with the Meade Committee was that I began to develop a taste for the popular exposition of economic concepts.

In this vein, I wrote (with Mervyn King, now Governor of the Bank of England) a more personal account of issues in taxation, The British Tax System which ran through five editions.

Pursuing these interests, I moved from Oxford and joined the Institute for Fiscal Studies as its first research director. Soon after I became Director of the Institute. IFS developed into (and remains) one of Britain’s leading think tanks, respected and feared by policymakers and journalists for its fiercely independent analysis of fiscal issues.

After seven years, I decided it was time to move on. The success of IFS had been built on serious economics accompanied by a commitment to popularisation and application. If this could be done for public policy issues, could the same be done in the area of business policy? This was the thinking that led me to accept a chair at the London Business School in 1986 and, at the same time, to establish a consulting company, London Economics.

Over the next few years, the application of economics to business issues became my intellectual focus. During this period, London Economics grew rapidly, largely on the back of the wave of privatisation and regulatory change in Britain in the 1980s. By 1991, managing the company had become a major responsibility. I revised my arrangements with London Business School. My new contract was as Visiting Professor but my job as executive chairman of London Economics took the larger part of my time. London Economics grew until, by its tenth anniversary, its annual turnover exceeded £10m with offices in three continents and assignments in over sixty countries.

London Economics gave me insights into the business world. These came both through consultancy work with major corporations and first hand observation of the growth and development of a small business. Other activities have enriched my more scholarly work by broadening the experi ...more

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Average rating: 3.81 · 5,260 ratings · 536 reviews · 68 distinct works • Similar authors

	Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance 3.92 avg rating — 1,472 ratings — published 2015 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly 3.62 avg rating — 1,228 ratings — published 2010 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers by John Kay, Mervyn A. King 3.87 avg rating — 1,006 ratings — published 2020 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Long and the Short of It - Finance and Investment for Normally Intelligent People Who Are Not in 3.96 avg rating — 605 ratings — published 1996 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Truth About Markets: Why Some Nations are Rich But Most Remain Poor 3.86 avg rating — 355 ratings — published 2003 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Corporation in the 21st Century: Why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong 3.65 avg rating — 236 ratings — published 2024 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Everlasting Light Bulbs by John Kay, Roger Beale 3.61 avg rating — 67 ratings — published 2004 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hare and the Tortoise: An Informal Guide to Business Strategy 4.05 avg rating — 39 ratings — published 2006 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Foundations of Corporate Success: How Business Strategies Add Value 4.14 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1993 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Why Firms Succeed 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1995 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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“The great muckraker Upton Sinclair had expressed a deep insight into the relationship between the world of ideas and the world of practical men: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’34”
― John Kay, Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance

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“Investors look at economic fundamentals; traders look at each other; ‘quants’ look at the data. Dealing on the basis of historic price series was once described as technical analysis, or chartism (and there are chartists still). These savants identify visual patterns in charts of price data, often favouring them with arresting names such as ‘head and shoulders’ or ‘double bottoms’. This is pseudo-scientific bunk, the financial equivalent of astrology. But more sophisticated quantitative methods have since proved profitable for some since the 1970s’ creation of derivative markets and the related mathematics. Profitable”
― John Kay, Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance

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“For all that has recently been said about ‘the wisdom of crowds’, the authors prefer to fly with airlines which rely on the services of skilled and experienced pilots, rather than those who entrust the controls to the average opinion of the passengers.”
― John Kay, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers

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