Gilbert Taylor
Coates' contribution to the high-interest topic of decision-making—the arena of popular titles by Jonah Lehrer (How We Decide, 2009) and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011)—hails from the realm of investment banking. A former financial trader, Coates combines his real-world experience and his clinical study of human physiology into a story of Wall Street speculators in action. Setting them as fictional characters in a bull market that turns into a bear, Coates constructs a perspective on financial bubbles in which the human endocrine and nervous systems are the central although unconscious actors. As his traders scan their screens, Coates dramatizes surges of hormones and firings of neurons as the traders place bets, comparing the traders' bodily sensations to those of athletes in competition and soldiers in combat. When crashing securities crush irrational exuberance, Coates reaches back to evolutionary biology to describe the flight-or-fight stressors besetting his traders. A provocative challenger to rational choice views of high finance, Coates makes an exceptionally clear, readable presentation that is bound to influence arguments about the regulation of Wall Street.-- Gilbert Taylor
From the Publisher
Financial Times Best Books of 2012 – Science
Foreign Policy Must Read 2012 Books from Global Thinkers
“A profoundly unconventional book… It’s also so absorbing that I wound up reading it twice… From the first page to the last, Coates challenges deep-seated assumptions.”—Bloomberg Businessweek
“If anyone is qualified to unify the seemingly disparate subjects of financial markets and neurology, it’s John Coates…The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is a powerful distillation of his work—and an important step in the ongoing struggle to free economics from rational-actor theory.”—The Daily Beast
“[I]t makes intuitive sense that biological responses inform the mood of the markets. This book puts flesh on that idea.”—The Economist
“Compelling.”—New Scientist
“[A] scintillating treatise on the neurobiology of the business cycle. Coates… draws an intimate portrait of life on a trading floor …The result is a provocative and entertaining take on the irrational exuberance—and anxiety—of the modern economy.”—Publishers Weekly
“A provocative challenger to rational choice views of high finance, Coates makes an exceptionally clear, readable presentation that is bound to influence arguments about the regulation of Wall Street.”—Booklist
“An in-depth look at how financial risk-taking is linked to human biology, especially to the testosterone levels of young male traders, and the implications of this phenomenon for financial markets and the wider economy.”—Kirkus
