Over the last thirty years he has consulted for companies including Bank of America, Knowledge Universe, Bell Canada. The son of concentration camp survivors, he was born in 1947 in Romania, and immigrated to Israel where he served in the Israeli Army during both the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War.
At the core of his economic model is the view that the metaphysical trumps the physical, with human capital the source of true wealth creation around the world. Physical wealth, as in wealth that comes from the ground is not portable, which means it can easily be taxed, or worse, expropriated. His most recent book, A World of Chance argues that at one time gambling fulfilled roles performed by venture capital and banking do today, and that modern financial institutions retain a strong gambling core. The book shows how people dealt with uncertainty and risk since Antiquity, how they rationalized a variety of beliefs and institutions that made it appear that decisions had some solid backing; how people in fact made decisions on a variety of issues linked to finance, gambling, insurance, religion and politics, and , last but not least, he offers his own view of human nature, linking risk taking to trial and error, and venturing into the uncertain. His views have not much in common with either economists' orthodox views of 'risk aversion, or the so-called behavioral approach. Brenner confronts with view with a wide range of facts and events - and no laboratory experiments. As he puts it, people can neither make nor lose millions in laboratories
In his 2002 book, Force of Finance, Brenner notes that economic success in certain countries often results from "political blunders of other nations," that lead "to the rapid outflow of both capital and talented people." Brenner cites Hong Kong as one beneficiary of a talented human inflow, a city with notably nothing in the way of natural wealth to redistribute. To prosper there, "one must use one's brains for a living", and as "brains are mobile, you can't tax them too much." This was also the reason Amsterdam, Singapore, Israel and Florida prospered and why post WWII Germany was able to rebuild.On the capital side of the ledger, Brenner writes that these countries have prospered because they have kept their capital markets open, something they did in part because they happened not to have natural resources on which they could collect rents.
In addition to Force of Finance, Reuven Brenner is the author of seven other books. Labyrinths of Prosperity helps to explain among other things why the Dutch are seen as frugal, why education spending rose in the United States after 1958, and why Russians refrained from buying apartments there after the U.S.S.R.'s collapse. For the macro-focused, he points out that statistics such as GDP sustain "the illusion that prosperity is necessarily linked with territory, national units, and government spending in general." For those skeptical about government measures of inflation, his discussion of the inherent flaws of CPI is particularly eye-opening. It's about why the Keynesian get it completely wrong, that the paradox of savings is not at all what they capture in their models, and, since none ever discusses that in the last Chapter of the General Theory, where Keynes says that his views are in fact those of Bernard de Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (quoting from it extensively, and which has little to do with what now passes for his framework), it is not clear if they even really read the book.
In Gambling and Speculation Brenner makes a cogent argument for gambling legalization. He uses history and theory to cover all measures of risk taking, noting that risk-taking that is a daily part our lives. Betting on Ideas and History - The Human Gamble also cover human action, including why people buy lottery tickets, foment revolutions, commit crimes, and gamble on both war and peace.
In Educating Economists, Brenner and co-author David Colander discuss ways to improve the training of future economists. Rivalry: In Business, Science, Among Nations posits a theory of business enterprise that suggests risks are taken as a way to be outranked by one's peers in the hierarchical sense. It also discusses the impact of mathematics on business, and whether the latter discipline perhaps leads to a static, rather than fluid approach to commerce. In the chapter Making Sense out of Nonsense, Brenner discusses what's wrong with the social sciences and academia today, and in two other chapters focusing on the the the main courses being taught in economics either being empty of content, or wrong.
His first two books, History - the Human Gamble (1983) and Betting on Ideas (1985) teaches his own views about "history," by looking at facts and sequence of events that other historians and social scientists have not, integrating his views of human nature with demographic changes, among others. The last chapter in the 1983 book is titled "Happy People Do not Have a History."
In addition to his books, Brenner's articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, National Post (Canada), Financial Times, The Straits Times (Singapore), Asia Times, Dow Jones and Le Figaro (Paris).
“This is a remarkable book. It challenges many conventional beliefs and established institutions. Readers will have to think through their own assumptions to contend with the author's own - a most rewarding exercise for anyone who takes up the contest.”
Robert Bartley - Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Finally a book that brilliantly analyzes the machinations related to gambling. A work like this has been missing.
Henry Loehner, Internationale Bibiliographie die Glucksspiels im Casino, Germany, 2008
A World of Chance puts up a stout defence of gambling both as a form of entertainment and source of hope, and states that it should be privately run but government regulated. State monopolies — as with all monopolies -- merely result in higher prices and less innovation. The book does an excellent job of disassembling all the bogus arguments for keeping lotteries and other forms of gambling under state control, and in particular highlights the self-interested nature of the assault on internet gaming, which is a threat neither to national security nor public morals.
Both gambling and financial speculation have tended to be objects of moralistic suspicion and condemnation by authorities who have felt threatened by the philosophical questions raised about an uncertain world, and by the alternative sources of wealth, and thus potential political power, that risk taking fosters. Nevertheless, the authors point out that “Don’t gamble” doesn’t appear among the Ten Commandments. It’s not a sin. Indeed the gambling instinct has proved a fundamental economic driver.Moreover, the notion that the “real” economy can somehow be de-linked from the “financial” economy, they point out, is both delusive and dangerous. One of the book’s most delightful analogies — into which I wish it had delved further — is between witchdoctors throwing bones to indicate some special relationship with the fates, and the entrail-like equations of Keynesian macroeconomists. Unfortunately, economics’ answer to astrology seems to be making a comeback amid universal magic incantations of “shovel-ready stimulus.
The authors display a wealth of scholarship and some wonderful quotes, including Groucho Marx’s claim that: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying he wrong remedies.” At the moment, that is almost too true to be funny. The authors note that risks inevitably sometimes lead to tears, but remind us that a world of risk-taking has produced wonders, and will continue to do so after the present crisis is over. You can bet on it.
Peter Foster, Financial Post, January 16, 2009 http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/01/16/peter-foster-from-gamblers-to-bankers.aspx
