Buy New

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
Buy Used
Used - Good See details
$3.99 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life [Paperback]

David D. Friedman (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)

List Price: $16.99
Price: $9.78 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $7.21 (42%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Want it delivered Thursday, May 24? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  
Paperback $9.78  

Book Description

July 18, 1997

David Friedman has never taken an economics class in his life. Sure, he's taught economics at UCLA. Chicago, Tulane, Cornell, and Santa Clara, but don't hold that against him. After all, everyone's an economist. We all make daily decisions that rely, consciously or not, on an acute understanding of economic theory--from picking the fastest checkout tine at the supermarket to voting or not voting, from negotiating the best job offer to finding the right person to marry.

Hidden Order is an essential guide to rational living, revealing all you need to know to get through each day without being eaten alive. Friedman's wise and immensely accessible book is perfect for amateur economists, struggling economics students, young parents and professionals--just about anyone who wants a clear-cut approach to why we make the choices we do and a sensible strategy for how to make the right ones.


Frequently Bought Together

Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life + The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company + Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity
Price For All Three: $39.93

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman), economics explains everything. In a way, that's an odd thing for him to say: Friedman Jr. has never taken an economics course in his life (by training he's a physicist). Yet he defines economics broadly and uses it as a tool to understand all aspects of human behavior, from selecting a mate to picking a grocery store line to switching lanes in rush-hour traffic jams. If you like the economics-for-everyman approach of such writers as Steven E. Landsburg, then Friedman is for you. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Friedman puts the passion back into economics with this unconventional, demanding primer. A professor at Santa Clara University (and son of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman), he insists that economics is not primarily about money, but rather about needs, wants, choices, values?an imperfect science predicated on the assumption that people tend to rationally choose the best way to achieve their objectives. Using scores of everyday examples to steer the reader through complex concepts, he discusses consumer preferences, street crime, lotteries, plea bargains in trials, sharecropping, financial speculation, political campaign spending and much else. He demystifies international trade (e.g., there's nothing inherently bad about a trade deficit) and deconstructs the economy as an interacting system all of whose elements are interdependent. A rewarding text for serious readers. Translation and U.K. rights: Writer's Representatives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (July 18, 1997)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0887308856
  • ISBN-13: 978-0887308857
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #359,299 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Authors

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 62 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Economics for the laypersons has become the topic "du jour." This book written nearly a decade ago before economics became hot far surpasses its successors such as "Freakonomics." David Friedman does not dumb down economics like the others. Other reviewers who had at least a rudimentary interest in economics really enjoyed it. A few others who confused economics with their own political views predictably got frustrated with it. Economics is not always intuitive. As a result, several reviewers thought the author made mistakes regarding the graphs on page 29, or the example on housing on page 35. I reread these passages carefully. The author is accurate, it is just that these economics concepts are counter-intuitive. And, contrary to Steve Levitt in "Freakonomics" David Friedman did not shy away from tackling the inherent complexity in economics.

The book gives you a good foundation in both macro and microeconomics. Very early in the book he introduces and graphs demand and supply curves, marginal costs and revenue curves, utility functions. His coverage of international trade, taxation, subsidies, rent control is excellent. Along the way, you will also learn about investment theory and corporate finance. Friedman explains how the Efficient Market Hypothesis applies not only to stocks but freeway traffic and supermarket lines.

Friedman also gives full credit and fleshes out the ideas from the founders of modern economics, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Alfred Marshall. This is unlike Steve Levitt in "Freakonomics" who truly believed he was the first economist to tackle every day issues forgetting that economics is the science of understanding everyday behavior to begin with.

For further reading, if you want to pursue an econ refresher I recommend an actual textbook: "Principles of Economics" by Gregory Mankiw. This is a textbook with a hip and humorous attitude. The Economist, the British magazine, raved about it when it came out. I also recommend Gary Becker's "The Economics of Life", and Steve Landsburg's "The Armchair Economist."
Was this review helpful to you?
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Like Steven Landsburg's "Armchair Economist," David Friedman's "Hidden Order" is an excellent primer in basic economics. Any book that helps bring real economics (as opposed to pseudo talk-show/pundit/political speech "economics") to an understandable level is good in my book, even if occasionally flawed.

"Armchair" did a good-to-excellent job of boiling down complex economic questions and answers. "Hidden Order" does so as well, but note that it's not for the light-hearted; plenty of graphs are available, and one not versed in Econ 101 may become temporarily lost. Thankfully, Friedman shores up his chapters by proving the theory with graphs, then stating "Here it is in English..." This allows readers who are not graphically inclined to skip over it without losing much understanding, while readers more interested in finding the proof behind the claim can peruse the mathematics at their leisure.

Still, it's not all perfect. There's some issues that he goes into great length, but others are touched on and left hanging. In part this is to reduce the down time for an already-sluggish topic, but the length for each issue varies quite a bit. And I have no idea why a parking meter is on the cover.

Was this review helpful to you?
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Shaped my life (not kidding) February 5, 2006
Format:Paperback
This book shaped my life since i picked it up in 1999 while browsing. I found it fascinating and adept - see the other reviews. I did an MBA, changed careers, worked in strategy consulting, and now have a VP-level job in a $6B enterprise. (Well, besides reading this book, the MBA helped...) This book is really eye-opening and you'll see the world around you differently, and how all kinds of people, organizations, and forces respond to incentives that can be subtle to figure out. For example, I'd known since junior high the Brits wore Red Coats in the Revolutionary War, and that made them easy to shoot at. It had never dawned on me, the British management felt the risk of Brit infantry fleeing AWOL was greater than the risk of the same, getting shot. They took the risk of getting shot, to avoid the risk of their troops fleeing (too obvious in bright red coats). Fascinating. Their are apparently some typos in the book which you can correct via the author's website, but I hadn't known that and was impressed by the book anyway, as is.
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Okay book
This is a decent book but it's problem is that it is not intended towards a particular audience. Readers familiar with economics will find the theoretical parts of the book to be... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Justin
Boring
I loved Freakonomics and expected it to be the same. I liked it much less and found it extremely difficult to get through.
Published on October 30, 2009 by James
Deeper than conventional wisdom
Friedman strikes a great balance between complexity and plain explanations, while demonstrating why many conventional views of economic behavior are incomplete. Read more
Published on September 12, 2009 by D. Low
GIBBERISH
I was expecting a book that explained economic principles using plain language, clear analogies, and relevant examples. It does none of this. Read more
Published on June 14, 2009 by James B. Johnson
an excellent primer
David Friedman is a wonderful writer. His "Law's Order" fascinated me and helped draw me into the field of economics, in which I have since earned an MA. Read more
Published on January 5, 2009 by Timothy Michael Vock
Terrible Book
Sorry for being so negative about it, found it clumsily written with childish logic... waste of time
Published on January 2, 2009 by TS 2912
Not What It Seems
This book attempts to explain the dry, boring field of economics in an engaging and painless manner. It fails at doing that. Read more
Published on November 1, 2007 by Philip B. Rich
It's an excellent book!
It's an excellent book. Although I enjoyed reading Freakonomics, "Hidden Order" is a much deeper and broader book in terms of issues discussed. Read more
Published on July 28, 2007 by Igor from Silicon Valley
Good micro-economics primer, but not of the "popular" genre as it...
What David Friedman has written here is a good, but very serious, micro-economics book in a relatively conversational tone. Read more
Published on January 31, 2007 by M. Strong
Not Recommended
Having read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Levitt's Freakonomics, I picked up "Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life" looking for more of the same. Read more
Published on June 26, 2006 by Dirk Avenue
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
To most people, economics is a dull science full of statistics and jar , mainly concerned with money and designed to answer a nar (but important) set of questions. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
marginal value curve, budget line shows, caveat venditor, minimum average cost, insecure property rights, producer surplus, per widget, risk averter, excess burden, depletable resource
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, New York, Cost of Making, Lord Thomas, Brown Girl, Los Angeles, Standard Oil, Alfred Marshall, Hong Kong, John von Neumann, Adam Smith, Gordon Tullock, Harvard University Press, Santa Monica, Saudi Arabia, Soviet Union, New Orleans
New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:




What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(2)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject