Author: Philip J. Romero

About the book: Businesspersons need to learn accounting, finance, and marketing: skills that allow you to make better business decisions. But success requires both control of these things that you can control, and smart responses to what you can’t control. You can’t control what your competitors do, or your customers. You can’t control the national and international economies. But understanding these equips you to leverage them—protecting yourself from threats, and exploiting opportunities.

How Competition Works is a guide to the external forces that can affect your business’s future. In academic terms, it is an introductory economics text. But it differs in two key ways:

• It applies economics to corporate strategy, making connections that most business coursesignore.
• It is selective, emphasizing ideas that you really can use—as a business decisionmaker, and in your own retirement investing. It is far briefer than traditionaltextbooks.

This book stresses two key perspectives:

• Economists and public policymakers want industries to be as competitive as possible, since that protects consumers and limits the necessary size of government.
• But business leaders and investors seek to create “moats” that shield their firms from vigorouscompetition.

Where you will stand on these issues will depend on where you sit. How Competition Works can help you in any of these roles, and help you understand those with whom you must negotiate.

About the author: Philip J. Romero is professor of finance and former dean of the University of Oregon’s business school.  Elsewhere in his career he has served as chief economist to the governor of California, as corporate strategist to the Chairman of United Technologies Corp., and as a RAND Corporation consultant to the Secretary of Defense, Director of the CIA, and U.S. Air Force.  Romero is a frequent columnist or commentator for major media outlets, including Marketwatch, the Wall Street Journal, PBS, CNN, and the BBC. He is author of such books as How Competition Works: Strategy and Economics that Real Business People Can Use (Sentia Publishing, 2016); Health Financing without Deficits (Business Expert Press (BEP), 2016); What Hedge Funds Really Do (BEP, 2014); and Your Macroeconomic Edge (BEP, 2012).