- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Dutton Books (2 Aug 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0525950257
- ISBN-13: 978-0525950257
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15.6 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 267,668 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Discover Your Inner Economist
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First Sentence
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
IS IT STILL possible to learn something new about falling in love? Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book is one of several I had the pleasure to read on the theme of economics principles applied to everyday life.
The book includes a number of interesting, fresh perspectives for applying economic principles, such as how to motivate your dentist / family doctor (or any subject matter expert for that matter) in doing a good job in spite of the possibility to perform below standard while remaining undetected. I found quite a few of Cowen's recommendations surprising and counterintuitive.
Cowen is also honest in stating the limits of the various approaches he proposes.
As I am not much of an art lover, I did not fully appreciate the choice of art collection and consumption as an area for discussion.
I don't think Coven's book has the freshness and wit of Freakonomics or Tim Harford's Undercover Economist. Still a very enjoyable and recommended reading for those interested in this theme.
The book includes a number of interesting, fresh perspectives for applying economic principles, such as how to motivate your dentist / family doctor (or any subject matter expert for that matter) in doing a good job in spite of the possibility to perform below standard while remaining undetected. I found quite a few of Cowen's recommendations surprising and counterintuitive.
Cowen is also honest in stating the limits of the various approaches he proposes.
As I am not much of an art lover, I did not fully appreciate the choice of art collection and consumption as an area for discussion.
I don't think Coven's book has the freshness and wit of Freakonomics or Tim Harford's Undercover Economist. Still a very enjoyable and recommended reading for those interested in this theme.
Format:Paperback
Some interesting stuff, but not really anything that either blows your socks off (e.g. "Freakonomics") or would make you change the way you live your life.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
57 reviews
72 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Sometimes, a bunch of appetizers does not make a meal
12 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Tyler Cowen is an economist, aptly self-described "curious intellectual nerd polymath," and a gifted blogger. His new book is the only one I've ever pre-purchased through Amazon. This in itself is a tribute to Cowen's capacity to mobilize appropriate incentives: He secreted a second blog, and advertised on Marginal Revolution that access was available only to those who wrote to say they'd pre-purchased a copy of DYIC. I spent this afternoon reading the book, and my overall impression is that "Sometimes, a bunch of appetizers does not make a meal." Because Cowen's brain brims with creative ways to approach life from an idiosyncratic angle, his blog has marvelous little jags, lists, apercus gleaned from his vast reading. This book is not quite a blook, but it would have greatly benefited from a co-author whose strength was more inclined to thoroughness. While he admits that his habit is to "stop writing just a bit before I have said everything I want to. I find it better to approach the next writing day 'hungry'..." (123), I was left hungry for more detail or resolution on almost every topic. As a troubling example, he introduces the concept of the "Me factor", and deploys it in several instances, but the only explanation provided was this very skimpy account, that focusing "our attention on ourselves ... is in fact our favorite topic. Me, me, me. ... [T]he 'Me factor', as I will call it." (52-3) There are tons of ideas broached here, and the chapters on Art and Food are particularly stimulating. The defense of self-deception felt self-indulgently sketchy, and the final account of how to deal with torture piffles into "Quite simply, it is hard to show other people, in a convincing manner, that we are telling the truth. In the meantime, file this problem under 'Difficult to Solve' and stay out of the wrong cities." (104). If truth in subtitles were enforced, it should be noted that Cowen offers very little to help survive your next meeting, nor do his thoughts on motivating your dentist inspire much confidence.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Lacking a Thesis
18 Sep 2007
Format:Hardcover
This book falls into a trap several recent best sellers have (Blink comes to mind): books that are just random collections of interesting ideas or stories. Like Blink, Cowen advertises a thesis that is supposed to run throughout the book. However, after the first couple of chapters the idea of discovering your Inner Economist is basically discarded. Instead, Cowen throws around interesting ideas that are of varying degrees of interest, shallow and short. The Inner Economist continues to make cameos, but only so Cowen can stroke the reader's ego with comments similar to "Of course, you and your Inner Economist already knew this."
The book is still worth reading. But go in understanding it will not change the way you think and is a compilation of observations more than anything else. Also understand it doesn't measure up to the leader in the collection-of-economic-observations genre: Freakonomics.
The book is still worth reading. But go in understanding it will not change the way you think and is a compilation of observations more than anything else. Also understand it doesn't measure up to the leader in the collection-of-economic-observations genre: Freakonomics.
31 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Ugh!
8 Nov 2007
Format:Hardcover
Cowen gives readers three principles for distinguishing good economics from bad:
1)The Postcard Test - It should be possible to take a good economics argument and write it out on the back of a moderate-sized postcard.
2)The Grandma Test - Most economic arguments ought to be intelligible to your grandmother.
3)The Aha Principle - If the basic concepts are presented well, economics should make sense.
Unfortunately, Cowen violates these less than stunning principles. The book rambles, communicates little if anything about economics, has no integrating thread, and is boring. My guess is that he simply decided to get on the "Freakonomics" bandwagon. If so, it's long past time to move onto another fad.
1)The Postcard Test - It should be possible to take a good economics argument and write it out on the back of a moderate-sized postcard.
2)The Grandma Test - Most economic arguments ought to be intelligible to your grandmother.
3)The Aha Principle - If the basic concepts are presented well, economics should make sense.
Unfortunately, Cowen violates these less than stunning principles. The book rambles, communicates little if anything about economics, has no integrating thread, and is boring. My guess is that he simply decided to get on the "Freakonomics" bandwagon. If so, it's long past time to move onto another fad.
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