Chapter 2 – The One Lesson of Business Wealth-Creating Transactions
Capitalism 101 Which assets do these transactions move to higher-
valued uses? To identify money-making opportunities, you must first understand how wealth is created Factory Owners (and sometimes destroyed). Real Estate Agents Investment Bankers Keynote: Wealth is created when assets are moved Corporate Raiders from lower to higher-valued uses. Insurance Salesman Definition: Value = willingness to pay Desire + Income = You want something + you can Do mergers create wealth? pay for it Do mergers follow the wealth-creating engine of Keynote: Voluntary transactions, between capitalism? Do they move assets to a higher-valued use? individuals or firms, create wealth. - Meaning, people create wealth by pursuing Our largest and most valuable assets are self-interest. corporations. Housing Example Ex: Dell-Alienware merger: A house is for sale: In 2006, Dell purchased Alienware, a manufacturer of high-end gaming computers. The buyer values the house at $130,000 - This is the buyer’s top dollar – willingness to pay Dell left design, marketing, sales, and support in Alienware’s hands. The seller values the house at $120,000 - This is the seller’s bottom line – won’t accept Dell took over manufacturing though, using its less expertise to build Alienware’s computers at a much lower cost. The buyer and seller must agree to a price that “splits” However, many mergers and acquisitions do not surplus between buyer and seller. Here, $128,000. create value. - If they do, value creation is rarely so clear. Surplus To create value, the assets of the acquired firm The buyer and seller both benefit from this transaction: must be more valuable to the buyer than to the seller. Buyer surplus = buyer’s value minus the price - $130,000 - $128,000 = $2,000 buyer surplus Seller surplus = the price minus the seller’s value - $128,000 - $120,000 = $8,000 seller surplus Total surplus = buyer + seller surplus = difference in values - $2,000 + $8,000 = $10,000 - $130,000 - $120,000 = $10,000 - $10,000 are the gains from trade.
Does Government Create Wealth?
Discussion: What’s the government’s role is wealth Economy – is efficient if all assets are employed in their creation? highest-valued assets. This is an unattainable, but useful benchmark. Enforcing property rights and contracts, legal tools that facilitate wealth creating transactions The art of economics consists in looking not merely at Ensures that buyers and sellers keep gains from the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or trade policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Discussion: Why are some countries so poor? Must look at the intended and unintended effects of No property rights policies to understand their efficiency. No rule of law The economist’s solution to inefficient outcomes is to Discussion: Much of the justification for government argue for a change in public policy. intervention comes from the assertion that markets have failed. One money manager scoffed at this idea. Businessperson’s solution is to try to make money on “The markets are working fine, but they’re giving people the inefficiency. answers that they don’t like, so people cry market Inefficiency – implies the existence of unconsummated, failure.” wealth-creating transactions. Property Rights The One Lesson of Business: The art of business Commonly identified as a right to own or consists of identifying assets in lower valued uses and possess something, such as land or an devising ways to profitably moving them to higher automobile, and to be able to dispose of it as valued uses. one chooses. In other words, make money by identifying However, this is only one aspect of property unconsummated wealth-creating transactions and rights that focuses on the exclusive right to devise ways to profitably consummate them. ownership. The main legal property rights are the right of Destroying Wealth - Anything that stops assets from possession, the right of control, the right of moving to higher valued uses is destroying wealth. exclusion, the right to derive income, and the right of disposition. 1. Taxes Destroy Wealth: There are exceptions to these rights, and - By deterring wealth-creating transactions – property owners have obligations as well as when the tax is larger than the surplus for a rights. transaction. 2. Subsidies Destroy Wealth: - Example: flood insurance encourages people to build in areas that they otherwise wouldn’t. 3. Price Controls Destroy Wealth: - Example: rent control (price ceiling) in New York City deters transactions between owners and renters.
The One Lesson of Economics Profiting from Inefficiency
Taxes create a profit opportunity - Discussion: 1983 Sweden tax Subsidies create opportunity - Discussion: health insurance Price-controls create opportunity - Discussion: Regulation Q. & euro dollars - Discussion: What about ethics?
Wealth Creation in Organizations
Companies = a collection of transactions
They buy raw materials (capital, labor, etc.) and create and sell higher-valued goods and services Can equate market-level problems (taxes, subsidies, and price controls) with organization- level goal alignment problems Ex: The overbidding from the oil company = “subsidy” paid to management for acquiring oil reserves Allows us to use the same analysis
Summary of Main Points
Voluntary transactions create wealth by moving assets
from lower- to higher-valued uses.
Anything that impedes the movement of assets to
higher-valued uses, like taxes, subsidies, or price controls, destroys wealth.
Economic analysis is useful to business for identifying
assets in lower-valued uses.
The art of business consists of identifying assets in low-
valued uses and devising ways to profitably move them to higher-valued ones.
A company can be thought of as a series of
transactions. A well-designed organization rewards employees who identify and consummate profitable transactions or who stop unprofitable ones.
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