NEWS
Readings

Robert W. Fogel
In a new book titled The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism, published in May by the University of Chicago Press, Robert William Fogel writes about four “awakenings” in American history. He describes a recurring pattern in the way people have reacted to the clash between technological advances and moral values by attempting to impose moral frameworks on economic realities. The fourth awakening, the main subject of the book, began sometime in the 1960s and became political on a national level in the 1980s and 1990s, argues Fogel, Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions. Tracking these periods with respect to social and political attitudes toward “egalitarianism,” which he identifies as our “national creed,” Fogel detects in the fourth awakening a reversal of the “equality of condition” attitude that informed the third awakening. Specifically, he identifies a shift in the direction of a “postmodern egalitarianism” ideal where equality of condition is replaced by equality of opportunity, a turn in part induced by technological change. Articles about Fogel’s book appeared in Newsweek on May 19, Business Week on May 22, the Boston Globe on May 23, and the Wall Street Journal on June 21.

Steven N. Kaplan
A new volume edited by Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, and published by the University of Chicago Press, hit bookstores in February. Mergers and Productivity (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report), a compilation of articles based on case studies, analyzes high-profile mergers in a range of industries. The book focuses on specific acquisitions to illustrate the contingencies involved. The authors found that merger and acquisition activities were associated with technological or regulatory shocks and that a merger’s success or failure depended on the acquirer’s knowledge and understanding of the target, its corporate culture, and its workforce and wage structures prior to acquisition.--E.T.