Category: Books

Playboy reviews Discover Your Inner Economist.  Excerpt:

In the self-conscious style of a seasoned blogger, Cowen’s best moments
come when he riffs on the "Me Factor," his term for ego-driven
consumerism. As an avid art and food lover, Cowen’s advice on
broadening your taste focuses on transcending your own Me Factor, to
trick yourself into paying greater attention to your life. Cowen offers
this tidbit for not getting bored in an art museum: "In every room ask
yourself which picture
you would take home — and why." Focusing attention, not letting it
grow scarce, produces economic rewards just as much as investing in
your portfolio.

The link is reasonably safe for work, though one of the ads may make your attention more scarce.  Here is also an NYT and Reuters piece from today on the book.

I’d like to soon start the MR BookForum on Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.  I hear you’re all getting your copies now.  Ideally I’d put up the first post within 5-10 days, noting that the first session will be setting and overview.  You won’t need to have started the book by then.  Are you in fact all getting your copies from Amazon or elsewhere?

Here is David Warsh attacking the book.  Don’t discuss book content in the comments (save that for the BookForum), just let me know if the copies are coming through…

‘Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wizard,’ he replied.   ‘That was announced yesterday.  It’s a change because it was never obligatory before.  Of course, nearly every witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but their parents had the right teach them at home or send them abroad if they preferred.  This way, Voldemort will have the whole wizarding population under his eye from a young age.’

Damn, that Voldemort is eeeeevil.

Economics usually assumes rational behaviour, and so the very idea of a
self-help book or a problem page such as “Dear Economist” is subversive
to economic orthodoxy.  Rational economic agents don’t need self-help
books, and they don’t write to problem pages either.  If we admit that
people need advice, we chip away at the foundations of most economic
thought.  That is strangely reassuring.

Here is Tim’s FT review of Discover Your Inner Economist.

Here is the link.  The chat covered how economists should think about incentives, the proper scope of libertarianism, my book as "economics for the emotional," whether I have ever visited a prostitute, Natasha’s biggest self-deception about me, underrated and overrated economists, and why New Jersey has produced so many libertarians.

Here is one excerpt:

reason (8:40:58 AM): …what’s the inner economist’s most important message to congress (briefly)?

Cowen (8:42:17 AM): Humility would be a good start. Cut spending is another. Worry about nuclear proliferation. Institute greater accountability.

That’s the title of Laurie Viera Rigler’s new and fun book.  The basic premise is that a pouty L.A. girl "wakes up" in the body of a character in a Jane Austen novel; here is the book’s website.  She also finds herself courted by an ardent suitor, Edgeworth, who wants an answer to his marriage proposal and soon.  My wonderings were skewed as usual:

1. Would I, at first, have to act sick and crazy so as to cover up what are in fact more systematic lapses from accepted codes of social behavior?

2. If I am a rational Bayesian, what percentage of "transported people" should I expect to find in my new world?  (It is indicative that our heroine thinks she is very special and isn’t much concerned with this question.)  Would such people be natural allies or enemies?

3. If I met another transported person, could I figure this fact out?  How long would it take and what are the best hints to drop?  Should I just mention "the Boston Red Sox" and see what happens?

4. Living in such a world, how useful is it to know how the novel ends?  (This is a theme in the story.)  Could such knowledge compensate for not understanding the non-articulated rules of this world very well?  What rate of interest should I pay on borrowed money, given the presence of speculative opportunities?

5. Being a rational Bayesian, how should I revise upwards my estimates that the world is ruled by an evil Demi-Urge, and what does this imply for the optimal degree of ethical behavior?

It is a sad commentary on our educational system that Courtney, the heroine of the novel, never ponders such a question.

6. At what percentage of "transported people" would we expect to see an impact on real GDP, and would this impact be positive or negative?

Readers, what other questions should I be asking?

You may recall that we are having the first MarginalRevolution BookForum on Greg Clark’s A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.  Here is my previous post on the book and how the forum will work.  It’s a great book and I recommend it highly.

Orders from loyal MR readers have been very strong, and many (all?) of you are receiving emails from Amazon.com about publication delays for the book.  The publisher assures me that they are working hard to fill all orders in a timely fashion and the final delay is likely to be a slight one rather than a long one into October.  Early September is looking like the time we will start discussing the book.  But I’ll keep you posted as we hear more…

Yes my book is out today (B&N here) but you don’t need to buy it.  You can get it here for free.

How?

It is simple.  Just write in the comments section some reason why you should get my book for free.  I will mail free copies to the first fifteen commenters to meet the following conditions:

1. Your comment must offer a reason why you should get the book for free.

2. You must explain that reason in a moderately-sized paragraph or more.  "Just cuz" does not qualify.

3. Your paragraph must address why you should get the book and why you should get it for free.

4. You must believe your reason.

Then email me with your mailing address (to my normal gmu email, and so I know you are you please put your real name on your posted reason as well) and I will send you a copy, through Amazon, at my own expense.  You know, at first I thought I would get the publisher to put up copies for this but then I realized no, I ought to be paying for the books myself.  I’m not even using an author’s discount.

I wish I were a wealthier man, but I am offering only fifteen copies right now.  Any future copies will be offered abroad, not in the U.S.

I am very interested in the idea of what it means to have a reason.

Sadly, no matter how good your reason, I cannot send more than one copy to you.

Addendum: This offer is restricted to the United States and Canada.  I am worried that the first copies to go out otherwise would end up in the hands of a single Nigerian spammer, plus Amazon does not ship worldwide.  Nonetheless I hope to make a similar offer to the broader world in the future, with appropriate safeguards.

Second addendum: The first fifteen slots have now been awarded…

I read Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, by Gerard Prunier, and was quite impressed.  I thought "what a smart and unbiased introduction to such a difficult topic."  But why was I impressed?  I don’t know nearly enough about the topic to judge the material.

I was impressed because the author sounded so reasonable and so intelligent.  But I can’t cite any really good reason to believe this was more than a trick.  Prunier sure didn’t seem as if he were trying to talk me into a hidden agenda.

Bryan Caplan offers his heuristics for trusting a source or not; here’s Arnold Kling on the same.  Here’s David Henderson’s podcast on disagreement.

I tend to trust sources who use their intelligence to point out flaws in their own positions.  But is this more than an aesthetic preference on my part?  What’s so trustworthy about that?  Maybe I’m just looking for people who remind me of myself, and what’s so good about me anyway?

If my trust standard works, it is only because not so many people use it.  If more readers trusted on the basis of "using intelligence to publicly question one’s foundations," that standard might be too easily to manipulate.

In other words, it is the stupidity of much of the audience (they can be fooled by simple tricks, complex tricks are not needed) which makes it possible for the more sophisticated readers to read signs of intellectual dishonesty and get closer to the truth.

Let’s say you have a medium — call it a blog — which is read only by very smart people.  Simple, relatively discernible tricks won’t be used.  Should those readers then have a special distrust of the authors? 

Yet while crowds may be good at making predictions, they’re often lousy at recognizing their own self-interest.  That problem is explored in the best political book this year: “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.”

Here is the gated NYT link.

It is my mission to correctly re-shelve books to the appropriate section of the bookstore. 

For example, "Darwin’s Black Box", the famous psuedo-science book by the non-evolutionary non-scientist Michael Behe,
should not be in the "Evolutionary Biology" section, but something more
appropriate, such as "New Age", "Religion", "Christianity", or even
"Fiction".  You get the idea.

Here is more, and the pointer is from the newlywed Jacqueline Passey.

This book review has introduced me to a new enemy, the economist Tyler Cowen…

…”The critical economic problem is scarcity,” he says in his book.
Like all other capitalist economist, Cowen is ideologically welded to
this bad idea of lack and shortages as the key problem. However,
scarcity is rarely real but manufactured. There is an abundance of
energy in the world. The sun gives it to us daily for free. All this
talk about there being not enough energy, food, fuel has been
essentially false. And the wars that have been fought to protect the
little there is for survival have been false wars–wars whose only truth
is that they befitted those who in this or that period of history owned
the means of production.

If scarcity was an authentic problem (rather than a fabricated one) then Africa would not be poor.

Here is the full review, which is titled "Bad Economics."  The pointer is from a loyal MR reader.

1. Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert Frank (the economist Robert Frank).  The best statement of the Frankian world view; every book of his is full of ideas and there are very few authors you can say that about.

2. John Lanchester, A Family Romance.  Imagine finding out your mother was once a nun and then that she led a life of lies.  I would have liked this book much better had it not been fiction.  It felt so real and even has good photos but I am disappointed to keep on thinking it is only a story. 

3. Gunther Grass, Peeling the Onion.  Why oh why oh why do I let myself be fooled.  There is only one author I find flat out too obnoxious to read, and it is this guy.  And that was before I learned of the whole SS business.  I had heard this one is different, but it isn’t.  Or it is, but he’s still too far over the line for that to matter.

4. Elizabeth Currid, The Warhol Economy: How Fashion Art & Music Drive New York City.  The title says it all.

5. The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, by Christine Kenneally.  The early chapters have excellent material on the contributions of Chomsky and Pinker, but after that it bored me.

Lately I’ve been intrigued with the idea of individualized uses of mass communication technologies.  Imagine if they made an episode of Seinfeld tailored for your personal consumption.

So I’d l like to try an experiment. I will make a podcast — a personalized podcast — just for you.

You can ask me anything you want, and I’ll try my best to answer the question.

I believe this will be fun for me.  But to give it a chance of being fun, I need a principle of rationing.

So if you want the podcast, pre-order my Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.  The Amazon link is here, Barnes&Noble is here.

There are a few simple rules:

1. Write me at [email protected] that you have pre-ordered.  You must pre-order (and write me) before 8 p.m. (EST) on Thursday, July 26.

2. We again use the honor system.  Last time I was amazed how many people submitted proof of purchase voluntarily, without my even asking. 

3. When you write to me, include your question.  Only one question per purchase.

4. I’ll write you back with a link to the personalized podcast.  If I can’t answer or at least address your question (e.g., "Who is the mightiest tailor in the Ukraine, and why?"), I’ll let you know and you can try another question.

5. The offer of the secret blog has expired, you get only the podcast.

What if I’ve already pre-ordered?  Don’t worry. 

One option is to order another copy.  But I don’t wish to penalize lovers of secret blogs (I’m one myself).  A second and cheaper option is to review the book on either Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com.  If you have already pre-ordered and you write a review within three weeks of publication date (Aug.2, so that’s Aug.23), at the right time just send me a copy of the review along with your podcast question.  I’ll record these additional podcasts later in August.  That way you’ll have both a secret blog and a personalized podcast.

When will I get my podcast?  I have blocked off several days this week to do nothing but record your podcasts.  Call me crazy but I’m quite looking forward to it.  (Since I’ve blogged every day for four years, perhaps you’ll believe I am an outlier.)  We’ll see how long the process takes, but if you wish to be early in the queue, pre-order and write in now.  I’ll answer questions in the order I receive them.

How long will my podcast be?  That depends on your question.  But I envision my answers as roughly comparable to the answer I would give a good friend over dinner.

What can I do with my podcast?  You can link to it, send it to your friends, or disseminate it as you wish. 

I do want to receive your interesting questions and even your silly questions.  But impossible questions involving paradoxes of self-reference will be returned automatically.  And when it comes to the Newcomb problem, let me tell you right now, the cautious Tyler is taking only one box…

1. Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean.  My consumer surplus from this book was huge.  The author calls it an "economic history" of the graphic novel; he hasn’t read Bob Fogel but it remains one of the best introductions to any topic.

2. Martin Krause, La Economia Explicada a Mis Hijos, and Por el ojo de una aguja.  Economics, explained through the medium of literature and fables, from an Argentinian classical liberal.

3. Jennifer Michael Hecht, The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think is Right is Wrong.  The claim is that happiness follows from self-knowledge, self-control, self-realization, and awareness of death.  There is little consideration of what is the proper margin for each.

4. Alfredo Jose Estrada, Havana: Autobiography of a City.  One of the best city biographies, almost as good as the books on Cairo.

5. Ruth Rendell, The Water’s Lovely.  I used to think she was past her peak, but the first third of this is superb and the rest stays pretty good.