Hour Between Dog and Wolf (eBook)

Now shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is a resonant exploration of economic behaviour and its consequences. Neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates here explains how we think with our body as well as our brain, when we take risks at work, in sport, on the battlefield, and the financial markets. Could the biological responses to making and losing money trigger the extreme reactions that regularly destabilise the global economy? In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Coates shows that under the pressure of risk we biologically transform, a metamorphosis he refers to as the hour between dog and wolf. Traders are especially prone, testosterone-driven when winning, tentative when cowering from losses. Drawing on recent research, Coates looks at how our bodies produce the gut feelings we often rely on and how sports science can teach us to overcome stress. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf comprehensively reveals the biology behind bubbles and crashes.

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Now shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is a resonant exploration of economic behaviour and its consequences.Shortlisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, this startling and unconventional book from neuroscientist and former Wall Street trader John Coates shows us the bankers in their natural environment, revealing how their biochemistry has a lasting and significant impact on our economy.We learn how risk stimulates the most primitive part of the banker's brain and how making the deals our bank balances depend on provokes an overwhelming fight-or-flight response. Constant swinging between aggression and apprehension impairs their judgment, causing economic upheaval in the wider world. The transformation between each split-second decision is what Coates calls the hour between dog and wolf, and understanding the biology behind bubbles and crashes may be the key to stabilising the markets.