Tim Harford’s The Underground Economist

by Liberty and Power

Last spring Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics grabbed the headlines and generated its authors fat royalty checks. I was less taken by the book than some of my colleagues and acquaintances.

Then late last year Tim Harford’s The Underground Economist (Oxford University Press) rolled off the press—and to far less hype. This Thursday the book is finally published by Little, Brown in Britain. Judging by the review in today’s Financial Times, for whom Harford writes a weekly column in the Weekend section, his book is a well written introduction to the economic way of thinking for anyone who wishes to get a handle on how markets work. This morning I had a quick look at a copy in Border’s and later read extracts online at Amazon.com. It strikes me as a much better book than Freakonomics to hand someone who asks what economics is all about. I invite those readers who are familiar with the book to share their thoughts online.

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Mark Brady - 4/2/2006

Thank you, Steven. I was most interested to read your comments that confirm my guess that Harford is mildly classical liberal.

Steven Horwitz - 4/2/2006

I think you're right Mark. Harford's book is a very cute and clever introduction to the economic way of thinking, with very good applications to policy issues that will interest the general reader. *Freakonomics* is fun, but really is more "social science" than Economics per se. Levitt is a brilliantly clever thinker, and designer of statisical tests, but there's not really a lot of economics in there. It's a really fun, easy read, and very enlightening in some ways, but is like a really good chocolate chip cookie, compared to Harford's more complex and rich economics.

I should add that neither book is especially classical liberal. Freakonomics has no real politics to it that I could see, but Harford's is what I would call "weakly" classical liberal.