Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 288 pages
- Published by: Oxford University Press, USA November 1, 2005
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0195189779
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195189773
-
Book Dimensions:
9.4 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Nattily packaged-the cover sports a Roy Lichtensteinesque image of an economist in Dick Tracy garb-and cleverly written, this book applies basic economic theory to such modern phenomena as Starbucks' pricing system and
Microsoft's stock values. While the concepts explored are those encountered in Microeconomics 101, Harford gracefully explains abstruse ideas like pricing along the demand curve and game theory using real world examples without relying on graphs or jargon. The book addresses free market economic theory, but Harford is not a complete apologist for capitalism; he shows how companies from Amazon.com to Whole Foods to Starbucks have gouged consumers through guerrilla pricing techniques and explains the high rents in London (it has more to do with agriculture than one might think). Harford comes down soft on Chinese sweatshops, acknowledging "conditions in factories are terrible," but "sweatshops are better than the horrors that came before them, and a step on the road to something better." Perhaps, but Harford doesn't question whether communism or a capitalist-style industrial revolution are the only two choices available in modern economies. That aside, the book is unequaled in its accessibility and ability to show how free market economic forces affect readers' day-to-day.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Harford exposes the dark underbelly of capitalism in
Undercover Economist. Compared with Steven Levitt’s and Stephen J. Dubner’s popular
Freakonomics (*** July/Aug 2005), the book uses simple, playful examples (written in plain English) to elucidate complex economic theories. Critics agree that the book will grip readers interested in understanding free-market forces but disagree about Harford’s approach. Some thought the author mastered the small ideas while keeping in sight the greater context of globalization; others faulted Harford for failing to criticize certain economic theories and to ground his arguments in political, organizational structures. Either way, his case studies—some entertaining, others indicative of times to come—will make you think twice about that cup of coffee.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Reader ReviewsIf you read only one pop economics book this year, The Undercover Economist should be it. Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times among other distinctions, has written a book that could almost serve as a textbook for an Economics 101 course. But it's emphatically not dry or dull. Instead, what Harford has done is convey the excitement, the power, and the often counter-intuitive results of economic thought. In so doing, he has written more or less the economic equivalent to The Selfish Gene. Many recent books (notably Freakonomics) have dealt with the more exciting realms of economic research, such as the application of certain economic models to what most people would consider non-economic behavior. And far more books have talked about "economics" in the context of even trendier ideas like globalization (think The World is Flat or even No Logo). Such books, however, are reflections of marginal (in the case of the former) or unsophisticated (in the case of the latter) economic schools of thought. Harford presents the orthodoxy in all its glory, and reminds readers that economists really do see the world in a different--and fascinating--way. He explains simple, but often misunderstood, concepts like adverse selection (that is, why health insurance costs too much), as well as even simpler, but far more consequential, economic models, such as David Ricardo's explanation of why landowners, and not farmers, make money from rising crop prices. Along the way, he explains why the prices at Safeway and Whole Foods are about the same--and why the prices for items on the top shelf are higher than prices for the same goods on the bottom shelf. Granted, the book has its flaws, principally its (market-driven) lack of any equations or graphs and, more important, its refusal to take up any serious questions of macroeconomics. If you want to understand how recessions occur or how federal spending affects the world and national economy, then you're out of luck. But in focusing tightly on basic microeconomic principles--the foundation of the most insightful parts of economics--Harford succeeds in keeping the book accessible and useful.
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