|
|
Real Adriatic Store - The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
|
List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $16.50
Your Save: $ 8.50 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Random House
|
Average Customer Rating:   
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 339
EAN: 9781400066421
ISBN: 1400066425
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2008-01-15
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2008-01-15
Studio: Random House
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune for sitting behind a mahogany altar? Thorny questions–and you might be surprised to hear the answers coming from an economist.
But Tim Harford, award-winning journalist and author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist, likes to spring surprises. In this deftly reasoned book, Harford argues that life is logical after all. Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most unlikely places.
Using tools ranging from animal experiments to supercomputer simulations, an ambitious new breed of economist is trying to unlock the secrets of society. The Logic of Life is the first book to map out the astonishing insights and frustrating blind spots of this new economics in a way that anyone can enjoy.
The Logic of Life presents an X-ray image of human life, stripping away the surface to show us a picture that is revealing, enthralling, and sometimes disturbing. The stories that emerge are not about data or equations but about people: the athlete who survived a shocking murder attempt, the computer geek who beat the hard-bitten poker pros, the economist who defied Henry Kissinger and faked an invasion of Berlin, the king who tried to buy off a revolution.
Once you’ve read this quotable and addictive book, life will never look the same again.
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Harford goes imperialist
Comment: Tim Harford made his book-length debut with relatively conventional economic subjects in The Undercover Economist. With The Logic of Life, he has gone imperialist, following Gary Becker across the discipline's ancient boundaries to analyse sex, gambling, divorce, crime and racism. Since the book is a lightly disguised collection of his Slate columns rather than a true stand alone project, more traditional subjects such as wage structures, rent seeking and long run growth also get the odd look in.
Generally, the book is well written, informed and informative. The discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of behavioural economics is particularly good, showing how "irrational" behaviour tends to disappear over time as market participants gain experience.
On the downside, Harford has an irritating habit of being so excited when incentives (such as parental notification of abortions or the age of adult criminal responsibility) have a statistically significant effect on behaviour, that he forgets to tell us how big those effects are (I think I can hear Diedrie McCloskey screaming). The introduction has a particularly saccharine few pages about a day at the park with his daughter, but I suppose a new father must be forgiven that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Insubstantial filler
Comment: I agree with everything Gertrude Whitman said, but I won't be able to say it as well as her. If you've read anything at all about behavioral economics before, there is nothing for you in this book. I bought it because it was on The Economist's list of best books and I often like their recommendations, but I was quite disappointed. Flipping through it, I found myself saying over and over "Heard that before ... read that on a blog months and months ago... Don't see why that's supposed to be illogical in the first place."
You read this book and you just cannot shake the impression that Mr. Harford's publisher really had to squeeze the 272 pages out of him. Its full of casual, page-consuming asides about where he's sitting when he's writing the book and how lucky we are to be reading it. It should have been published as an article in Wired or something, but even then it might not have enough original content.
It certainly has its merits. Its breezy and covers a variety of interesting topics, but this book would never have been published without the success of Freakonomics or Mr. Harford's first book. Three of the four economists quoted praising the book on the back cover are featured in chapters that describe their work in glowing terms. I don't mean to question their credibility, but its a little fishy that the publishers couldn't find anyone who didn't stand to gain from the book's success.
The paperback could make a pleasant, quick read, but do not buy the hardcover and do not expect anything truly novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Engaging and thought-provoking
Comment: This book is Harford's second contribution to that lucrative contemporary genre of pop-economics inaugurated by Levitt and Dubner's megabestseller Freakonomics and by Harford's excellent debut, The Undercover Economist.
The goal of this book, like its predecessors, is to apply rational choice theory and evidence-based economic analysis to all kinds of conundrums and social forces that are familiar from everyday life. This time, the topics tackled include divorce, teenage sex, gambling, racism, and workplace politics. The point is that even seemingly irrational phenomena like racism, poverty, and exuberant executive "compensation" can be explained (though not justified, Harford emphasizes) in rational terms if we analyze them in the harsh light of economic incentives.
While I'm sympathetic to this view in general, I think that Harford, Levitt, et al. sometimes give short shrift to alternative hypotheses in their rush to explain everything in terms of the rationalizations of Homo economicus. For example, many "irrational" behaviors like drug abuse, teen suicide, antisemitism, and religious awakenings are cyclical in nature, like hemlines or musical fads. They spread like social viruses (memes). Cocaine was popular in the 1880s and the 1980s, but not in the 1950s. Understanding why requires understanding the workings of social networks and trends, not just plans and incentives.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Welcome to The Service of the Free.
Comment: Swing from a branch on an irrational tree?
Yes, I think you might, but should you?
Ah, Now you see. You will and you will probably actually enjoy it. Truer words?
-Jane Stevens
Tao Cycle Therapy: Natural Happiness via Self Directed Cure for Chronic Anxiety & Depression
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well written, but contentious
Comment: I enjoyed 'Freakanomics' & Harford's earlier book, 'The Undercover Economist'.
This was an enjoyable read with topics including poker tournaments, divorce, workplace politics, neighbourhood effects, racism, geographic agglomeration, voting and long-term economic growth.
I have some queries about the racism section though, and Harford's query "Why bother to get a degree or work experience if you are young, gifted, and black?". Bryan Caplan has looked at this and wrote:
"I tested these claims using one of the world's best labor data sets, the NLSY. The results directly contradict Tim's self-fulfilling prophesy story. Blacks actually get a substantially larger return to education than non-blacks! The same goes for experience, though the result is not statistically significant. The real lesson of the data is that if you are young, gifted, and black, you should get a ton of education, because it has an exceptionally large pay-off."
Also, I wonder if Harford considered Dr Satoshi Kanazawa's paper "The Myth of Racial Discrimination in Pay in the United States" (2005, Managerial and Decision Economics. 26: 285-294).
Overall, an interesting addition to the growing number of 'pop economics' books on the market, but not quite up to the predecessors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
