I picked up Tim Harford’s second book “The Logic of Life” in a local charity shop. His first book, “The Undercover Economist”, set out to show how the tools of economics could be usefully applied to many other data-rich subjects and TLOL basically covers similar territory. Every chapter has a different thematic area – the one on “rational racism” stood out for me – showing how very small and quite reasonable individual preferences could lead to strong separation of people based on different characteristics (for example, but not only, race).
I enjoyed this book but if I have a gripe it is that I don’t think it is really about the application of economics to the different subject areas at all, rather it’s about the application of mathematics. Economics is the study of the flow of capital (money and resources) through utilising maths surely. If you then use the same maths (e.g game theory) to study other things then that is just data analysis or modelling, not economics. So, if you read this book and are inspired to study economics, take care, you probably want to study maths!
Tim O'Hare 