The Undercover Economist Paperback – January 30, 2007

My 17 year old grandson told me of this book. He liked it and I read it to talk with him about it. I found it very delightful from the first page and have been discussing the issues the author raises with my mid 50 year old children. Can't recommend it enough. The author provokes thinking about our economic life and how it creates our world. It is easily read and understood.

The title of this review comes from the Economist's recent piece on Tim Harford's book. In my view, the Undercover Economist is quite simply a triumph of good writing. Harford turns the "dismal science" on its head, making the concepts that most of us failed to learn in econ 101 understandable and RELEVANT to our everday lives by using them in everyday situations, from walking the aisles of a supermarket to picking the stock market. How many of you have been guilty of the "Grolsch method" of stock picking? Read this book to find out!

The most entertaining book on economics I think I've read. There is probably more to some of the issues that Harford choses to provide, but that's all good. His explanations for coffee prizes, rent inside Londons's green belt, rush time transportation and supermarket packaging are both illuminating and fun. Enjoy!

This particular book changed my perspective on how to think. The analysis of normal things and phenomenon is so logical and intelligent. I absolutely love the way of logical deduction from Tim Harford. This book is also surprisingly easy to read. It doesn't have equations or graphs that a regular economy textbooks would have. You need to read this book if you haven't read it yet!

A lot of people are going to draw comparisons between The Underground Economist and the inexplicably popular Freakonomics particularly since the author of Freakonomics is used as the leading quote on the cover. The fact of the matter is that Freakonomics had very little to do with traditional economics per se while Underground is pretty much an economics books with some coolness added to keep it entertaining. The first chapter is essentially a primer on supply and demand.

Tim Harford is an economist from England who pushes a free-trade, pro-globalization agenda. In fact two of the five authors with quotes on the back cover have pro-globalization books in their `Author of' section. The second to the last chapter is a hard sell of globalization and the final chapter is a portrait of the happy results of globalization in China. Harford also comes down on taxes saying they are inefficient and destroy competitiveness. Instead of a progressive income tax he argues in support of a flat sales tax. It all sounds like a sale of conservative economics which isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as it's done with honesty and clear thinking (many conservative economists have such an ideological bias that they become useless).

The author spends a chapter on healthcare in the United States and demonstrates how flawed it is. The system is hugely expensive, highly bureaucratic, extremely patchy and unpopular to most American's. Harford writes, "United States government alone spends more than the combination of public and private expenditure in Britain, despite the fact that the British government provides free health care to all residents" In fact no country spends more as a percentage of the GDP as American's. Not even close. And as a final kick in the teeth American's aren't even particularly healthy when compared to the rest of the developed nations. However, rather than look to his own country's model for health care or Germany's or Canada's Mr. Harford looks to Singapore. It seems as if the author has mind melded with the Bush administration in believing that American's are over insured and need to look into Health Savings Accounts which to the best of my knowledge don't address ANY of the problems the author recounted. The book contains some real insight on why health insurance is often incompatible with a market based economy but the idea that we should just scrap it in favor of only catastrophic health insurance seems to deny that anyone could possibly be nickeled and dimed into poverty.

The author also has some interesting views on handling pollution. The idea is that companies can buy the right to pollute using vouchers. Initially it seems to be a horrible idea but the thinking is that since businesses regularly inflate the cost of keeping clean we ask them to put their money where there mouth is. If the vouchers cost enough businesses will try to find cheap ways to stay under the emissions threshold rather than pay the voucher cost and the problem is solved in a very market based manner. On the other hand the author tends to discount environmentalism as a small cost (2 percent of manufacturing) and of little real concern to businesses. If this is true than why do business interests in the United States spend millions on think tanks and lobbying if it's no big deal? Global Warming is a huge deal and business seems willing to do just about anything to suppress legislation.

Besides globalization the author doesn't seem to really be an ideologue. He is clearly a fan of market based economies but admits that participants often don't act sensibly. He's no cheerleader for the stock market by pointing out that price to earning ratios of companies are still vastly inflated and gives a great explanation on why internet companies lack any scarcity power making their ridiculous stock values in the late 90's look like nothing more than a fools dream. The Underground Economist is a very good book. Unlike Freakonomics it is legitimately an economics book and most assuredly has an agenda. Not that that's a bad thing.

This is my favorite economics book. It is a pretty light read, but subtly changes the way you view the world. It is not infrequently that I find myself musing on price discrimination while ordering a cup of coffee, or eye opening economic principals in every day life occurrences. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a fresh look at everyday economics.

Couldn't finish it. The book started out promising with analogies to explain simple concepts but then it seemed the author was trying to be too cute or clever in his writing and I lost interest

It's a dull truism that there's no economic theory so preposterous that it hasn't been seriously advocated by an economist. But it is equally true that real economic wisdom has been provided by practitioneers of the "dismal science". All economic insights--good and bad--tend to have a shelf life. Without periodic renewal the best ideas become stale platitudes distilled into curves in textbook graphs, then slowly rinsed away by the latest or (most politically comfortable) fad. We need readable economists to periodically dust off timeless truths of human behavior with original perspectives that cut through the fog of political rhetoric and identify by relevant metaphor and example what actually works for us, and why it does. Harford does this with a folksy, conversational wit that avoids the polarizing arguments that attend every economic controversy. This isn't any groundbreaking milestone in the advance of economic theory, but it is a humorously wise series of essays presented in original (and very eloquent) ways.