The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor--and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!
by Tim Harford
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Read in January, 2005
In the spirit of becoming a recovering shopaholic, I really needed to find out what drives my consumptive, materialistic, hedonistic, cosmopolitan buying habit. Why do I – the present tense honestly indicates that these are still my preferred way of life – choose Starbucks over the so-called warung kopi? Taste, I believe, is something to be enjoyed, not something to be explained.
But with a pure intention of finding out the naked truth behind my – and of course your - preferred li...more
But with a pure intention of finding out the naked truth behind my – and of course your - preferred li...more
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Read in January, 2008
From buying a used car to purchasing health insurance, Harford takes a look at a variety of situations that can have a real pratical impact on how we look at some of our everday activities. His take on health care, and how it is dealt with differently in Britain and the United States, was perhaps the most meaningful topic for me.
Growing up, I constantly heard how poor the health care was in socialized medicine and how we should protect our market system. The problem is that our health ca...more
Growing up, I constantly heard how poor the health care was in socialized medicine and how we should protect our market system. The problem is that our health ca...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
Everyone
Skip the begining, but the chapters on healthcare, why some nations are poor and why china is growing so quickly are the best descriptions I've ever heard on all three topics. I learned more econ in this book than I did during my MBA.
Aside on Healthcare:
With the chance of summarizing this wrong, he thinks insurance doesn't work for healthcare since not everyone has all the information. Instead we should give everybody catostrophic insurance and then make them put $1,000 a year in a h...more
Aside on Healthcare:
With the chance of summarizing this wrong, he thinks insurance doesn't work for healthcare since not everyone has all the information. Instead we should give everybody catostrophic insurance and then make them put $1,000 a year in a h...more
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Read in April, 2007
I did not like this book, but gave it 1 star because I did learn a few things about how the economy works between fits of rage and explitives. The author takes a very pro-big business, pro-globalization stance and explains why these institutions are crucial and beneficial to the world in a playful and humorous tone that falls flat most of the time. In his attempt to reach the non-economists and pull them into the dark side that is the abuse of third-world labor and privatized health care, he did...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone without an economics degree
This book was a fantastic overview of (what I think is) basic economic theory, but told in a way that made it incredibly readable. Harford is a great writer and manages to frame his topics in a way that is both highly relevant to real life while being simple enough that anyone can understand. It ranges from the small (the economics of Starbucks and how to prevent traffic jams) to the huge (why poor countries stay poor and how china became rich). I imagine that someone with a serious backgroun...more
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Read in January, 2008
For me, the standard in "Economics for People Who Hate Economics" books is Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, which opened my mind to all the things economists studied besides just GNP and GDP. This is another entry in the field, and I liked it as much or more than Freakonomics.
Harford does a fantastic job of explaining basic economic theory in even more basic terms, using examples like Starbucks, the gover...more
Harford does a fantastic job of explaining basic economic theory in even more basic terms, using examples like Starbucks, the gover...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
everyone who has not been a fan of complex economics graphs but still thought the subject was cool!
This is a must-read for all non-economics graduates (I'm not sure how real economists would take this, cos I don't know too many of them!). The author guides the reader through the simple concepts of marginal costs and more complex ones on national policies with quiet equanimity.
I chanced upon this book in a bookstore while I was accompanying friends--the title was interesting enough for me to pick it off the shelf, but having read the first chapter in the bookshop itself, I was smitten (th...more
I chanced upon this book in a bookstore while I was accompanying friends--the title was interesting enough for me to pick it off the shelf, but having read the first chapter in the bookshop itself, I was smitten (th...more
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Read in August, 2007
As an econ major, I'm not the intended audience, but it's always interesting to see what economists think are the basic ideas of their discipline. This book gives a nice introduction to some theoretical principles and, to his credit, Harford does acknowledge that in the real world, things almost never follow that simplistic model. But then he decides to make policy recommendations anyway, with weak and misleading arguments. I understand that he was going for simplicity, but there are basic, m...more
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Read in January, 2008
Well, this is another one that I loved at the beginning, but seemed to loose its appeal.
But, as with other books that I feel this way about, the end/middle/latter parts may have just paled in comparison to the beginning.
In the case of UE, the first 3 or 4 chapteres seemed related to each other, there seemed to be fleshing out of theories, and it felt like Learning.
But later on, there seemed to be a lot of hand waving, and the chapters seemed like glossy introductions with no m...more
But, as with other books that I feel this way about, the end/middle/latter parts may have just paled in comparison to the beginning.
In the case of UE, the first 3 or 4 chapteres seemed related to each other, there seemed to be fleshing out of theories, and it felt like Learning.
But later on, there seemed to be a lot of hand waving, and the chapters seemed like glossy introductions with no m...more
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Don't understand how money works? Missed out on Economics in school or just couldn't be bothered because it seemed boring? Read this book quick! It's important for EVERYONE to know the basic principles of what makes the world of money go round.
I cannot say that this book covers every aspect of my old econs textbook, but it damn hell isn't as boring.
How did China screw itself up? (Actually Mao did the screwing but no Chinese would admit it) How did China recover under Deng and is now gaining ...more
I cannot say that this book covers every aspect of my old econs textbook, but it damn hell isn't as boring.
How did China screw itself up? (Actually Mao did the screwing but no Chinese would admit it) How did China recover under Deng and is now gaining ...more
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Read in June, 2008
extremely interesting, entertaining, and informative for an economics book. I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn but has been turned off by the technicality of traditional economic books.I suppose it reads like freakonomics. He writes about topics everyone has thought about but forces you to think about WHY things are the way they are and provides excellent solutions. His solution for health insurance is especially brilliant. I know I can trust his word as his description of west african co...more
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Read in September, 2006
I'm a sucker for pop books about economics, and this is the best of the breed -- better, even, than that NYT bestseller Freakonomics. Why? Because Harford, unlike Levitt, actually explains the reasoning and the data he used to follow a problem from its formulation through to its conclusions. He also addresses classic economic problems--why is it hard to buy a used car? why do all the restaurants in Times Square suck? etc., as compared to why you should name your child "Tova". His chapt...more
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Read in October, 2007
More entertaining, thoughtful, and relevant than Freakonomics. Freak tended to ramble and explain how economics helped explain random things like drug-dealing cartels and cheating on standardized tests, Undercover has a planned narrative from start to finish and helps explain important things like why things cost what they do and how third world countries grow. It's admittedly a pro-free markets tome, which shows through in the international development chapter, but soundly addresses a number of...more
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Read in August, 2007
I really enjoyed this book. Harford, who writes for Slate, is entertaining, and he's not afraid to give his personal opinions. In the beginning, he goes over some very basic economic principles, and I was afraid that the book would be "econ for dummies." He picks up the pace pretty quickly, though, and he covers a lot of ground, without losing much of a flow. The problem, of course, is that by trying to do so much, he leaves out some necessary complexity. For instance, he doesn't discu...more
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Read in October, 2006
i'll never look at my latte cup the same way again! He's a freakonomist with a more tempered attitude - but actually loftier targets - combined with the tipping point - we might know more about how to get things our way... other than persuasion - its basic assumption is that human being are calculating pragmatists (totally against my industry here!) and a simple policy tweaking will get everyone lined up to do what we want them to do the way we want them to do it...
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Harford is great at explaining simple, smaller
phenomena with the logic of an economist, like why
coffee is expensive or even why our healthcare sucks.
But I have problems with his arguments about
globalization and why the poor are poor. They seem a
bit one-dimensional. It did change the way I think
about everyday things for the better, I think. Things
like waiting in lines and traffic, and sale prices
make a little more sense to me. It's definitely
helpful to see many things from ...more
phenomena with the logic of an economist, like why
coffee is expensive or even why our healthcare sucks.
But I have problems with his arguments about
globalization and why the poor are poor. They seem a
bit one-dimensional. It did change the way I think
about everyday things for the better, I think. Things
like waiting in lines and traffic, and sale prices
make a little more sense to me. It's definitely
helpful to see many things from ...more
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I love reading about economics, and this book continued fuelling my interest. I think to technology folk, what’s most interesting is how Tim put in words, how most technology nowadays is so easy to create/replicate, and since there’s a lack of scarcity, these companies move/fold quickly. There’s more to the book than just those three pages, I’d recommend this highly (in fact, I got a copy for Giuseppe in Heidelberg for just this purpose - he book-swapped with me, I got the God Delusion, ...more
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Read in June, 2008
Like a bad cup of coffee, I'm already struggling to force this down. As a former World Bank employee and Financial Times editor it will come as no surprise that Hardford thinks trade unions and free healthcare are bad, sweatshops are good and the free market will fix everything. There's something to be said for knowing your enemy, but The Undercover Economist's smug, patronising tone and Harford's self-avowed preference for armchair reasoning will have you grinding your teeth in fr...more
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Read in February, 2008
Tim Harford reveals in this book some of the underlying economic reasons behind modern day phenomena, such as why China's economy has grown significantly in the last thirty years when many others have struggled, why Starbucks coffee is expensive though coffee beans are inexpensive, and why the wages of unskilled workers will not increase if immigration is unchecked.
It's an interesting read that makes the basic principles of economics very accessible and applicable to the world's economic sit...more
It's an interesting read that makes the basic principles of economics very accessible and applicable to the world's economic sit...more
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Read in April, 2008
Although this book won't convince you that free-market capitalism is a universally good thing (tm), it does go a long way to explain basic economic principles such as scarcity power and moral hazard. A slim volume but it definitely made me think about the vast economic machinery which makes my morning cup of coffee possible. This is definitely a 'economics for laypeople' book in the vein of freakonomics, an enjoyable and informative read -- I may read a few more books on economics as a result!
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