Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #188316 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-15
• Released on: 2008-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400066421
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
A Message to Amazon Readers from Author Tim Harford

Give yourself a pat on the back. You're not as stupid as everyone says you are, and now there's a book that proves it.

When I first conceived of The Logic of Life, my aim was to show that a world full of smart people--people like you, that is--doesn’t necessarily look logical on the surface. We eat too much and worry about being fat; drink too much and cringe when we remember; spend too much at Christmas and worry about the bills in New Year. And that’s just the small stuff: what about crime, racial segregation, divorce, big-money politics?

And yet underneath it all there is a hidden logic. It isn’t always pretty, but it’s there if you know how to see it. That is what The Logic of Life is all about.

But when I'd finished the first draft, my editor told me that he didn't think that people were as logical as I'd said. He wanted me to prove my point.

At first, I thought it was my editor thinks people are illogical because he works in the publishing business. Of course life looks illogical if you do that. (In fact, life looks crazy in most offices: see "Why Your Boss is Overpaid," chapter four.) But then I realised he was right. I'd left the most important step out.

So I went back and made sure that I laid out all the amazing evidence. I looked at single women hitting the dating scene in American cities; I looked at juvenile delinquents across the US; I looked at Mexican prostitutes; I looked at traders at a convention in Disney World; I looked at professional poker players in Las Vegas and professional soccer players in Europe. I looked at violent spouses, alcoholics, and school bullies.

In every case I discovered a story of hidden incentives and unexpected logic. And through the process of writing--and living--the book, I discovered that this crazy world of ours makes more sense than you might think.

From Publishers Weekly
Financial Times and Slate.com columnist Harford (The Undercover Economist) provides an entertaining and provocative look at the logic behind the seemingly irrational. Arguing that rational behavior is more widespread than most people expect, Harford uses economic principles to draw forth the rational elements of gambling, the teenage oral sex craze, crime and other supposedly illogical behaviors to illustrate his larger point. Utilizing John von Neumann and Thomas Schelling's conceptions of game theory, Harford applies their approach to a multitude of arenas, including marriage, the workplace and racism. Contrarily, he also shows that individual rational behavior doesn't always lead to socially desired outcomes. Harford concludes with how to apply this thinking on an even bigger scale, showing how rational behavior shapes cities, politics and the entire history of human civilization. Well-written with highly engaging stories and examples, this book will be of great interest to Freakonomics and Blink fans as well as anyone interested in the psychology of human behavior. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Highly readable, funny and daringly contentious . . . a whopping good time.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“[Tim] Harford sets off on an enormously entertaining yarn backed by the findings of expert economists. He spins playfully, but smartly, across matters of sex, crime, gambling, addiction, marriage, racism, ghettos and politics, and he makes it all, well, titillating at times. Really.”
–USA Today

“Harford has a knack for explaining economic principles and problems in plain language and, even better, for making them fun.”
–The New York Times

“[Harford] is an amiable guide for the non-specialist reader . . . but his command of the subject is such that even a well-schooled economist will discover much that is new.”
–The Economist

“Highly engaging . . . entertaining and provocative.”
–Publishers Weekly

“A fascinating work with many ‘aha’ moments.”
–Booklist

“Smart, charming, penetrating, and wise.”
–Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics

“Chock-full of numbers and money talk, but oddly entertaining.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“Charming and informative.”
–Newsday

“Like Harford’s earlier book, The Undercover Economist–if you haven’t got it, get it–this book uses the basic theory of rational choice to make transparent the logic behind common but important puzzling phenomena. Even a trained economist can enjoy discovering what he didn’t realize he already knew. I did.”
–Thomas C. Schelling, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics

“This witty, intelligent book will help you see the entire world in a new light.”...

Customer Reviews

pretty thin gruel
"Logic" may be 270 pages, but it feels more like seventy. If you have the vaguest experience with behavioral economics -- e.g., from reading Dubner and Leavitt's "Freakonomics" columns in the New York Times -- a lot of the background will seem very familiar and a lot of the "gosh-wow" that Harford tries to generate will seem a little forced. Indeed, quite a few of Harford's central pieces have already appeared in the popular press -- e.g., the material on pacific islands and economic growth as a function of when they were colonized.

There is a real "factoid" quality to the book. The various chapters, on sexual behavior and AIDS, game theory and poker, racial discrimination, CEO pay, and the role of cities and legal systems (I think I got them all) seems strung together with no overriding theme beyond the kind of "gee-whiz" factor of applying economics to social issues. The weakest parts come near the end, where the summaries of research begin to be overwhelmed by anecdote and story. I was left without a clear idea, for example, why Harford considered it self-evident that cities would remain centers of the information economy.

Since "Freakonomics", the bar has been set a little higher for these kinds of books. Vague popularizations of other people's research studies are fine for a New York Times article or blog post, but really can't sustain a book. If you look -- as I do -- for the author to make some kind of larger point, you'll do so in vain; what larger points he does make are a bit evident (everyone behaving rationally can lead to horrible social consequences -- tragedy of the commons or the voter's paradox, anyone? These are hardly new discoveries!)

One interesting avenue to examine -- looking at the arguments of those who consider the field to be a bit overblown in its claims, or putting the field in a larger context -- goes mostly untouched. Discussion of Malthus is pretty bare, and what Harford marshals in response is really thin and poorly argued; in general, this really is another "random walk" through the literature.

I'm sure the book will sell well; it's a good airplane read (but it won't last you longer than a four-hour flight at most.) The market for these books is new and there are still plenty of people who will be amused and surprised to see what Harford has to report from the "field." But those looking for a more sustained performance, with deeper intellectual engagement with the fascinating issues that economics raises for the social and human sciences, will have to look elsewhere.

A valuable reminder that economics is a means not an end
A lively and thought-provoking follow-up to Harford's debut book The Undercover Economist, which used textbook economics to throw new light on everyday life. In this second book Harford moves well beyond the textbook to take us on a tour of some cutting edge research and thinking that's emerging from what he calls a "new breed of economists". Among them is Steve Levitt, whose Freakonomics popularized the notion that economists can have interesting things to say about areas you wouldn't normally expect them to be poking their noses into - but Levitt is only one of many academic researchers who are cheerfully roaming over other people's turf from their economics labs, so Harford's book serves as a timely overview of a newly sexy subject.

The result is a startlingly diverse collection of insights and anecdotes which are all held together by one central premise - that you can explain a lot about life by starting from the simple assumption that people are fundamentally rational. This is not an uncontroversial assertion - among the "new breed of economists" are those melding economics with psychology into a fledgeling discipline of behavioral economics, which focuses on our irrational quirks. Harford's view is not to dismiss these human foibles, but to argue persuasively that they shouldn't be overstated, and that in most important situations we behave rationally - that is, subconsciously evaluating costs and benefits and responding to incentives - to a remarkable extent.

Harford's writing is a joy to read, especially when he's impishly puncturing pomposity - my favorite is the "why your boss is overpaid" chapter, which discusses several theories that could rationally explain the obscenely high wages commanded by modern CEOs (hint: none of them are "because they're worth it"). One great lesson made clear by this book is that individually rational decisions can lead to socially horrible outcomes, a conclusion never clearer than in the discomfiting chapter on "rational racism". It's a valuable reminder that economics is a means not an end - rational choice theory doesn't dictate what society should be like, rather it teaches how we can harness rationality by changing incentives to shape the society we want.

How small, rational decisions can produce big problems
This book works because it takes a simple concept,that rational choice underlies much of human behavior, and that many of our seemingly intractable problems have been produced by fairly mild and even rational individual decisions. I urge you to begin the book by reading the section on "rational racism," which I found in many ways the most compelling (and disturbing) part of the book. Harford actually begins the book with a discussion of apparently worrying teenage sexuality that turns out to be more encouraging than you might think possible. In doing so he reminds us that many of the things about which we worry,and about which commentators with big audiences shout shrilly, can be explained in a much clearer way by looking carefully at the rational decisions that produce them.

A great book and a fun read.