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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Some good questions, but generally weak answers, 27 May 2008
There's a rash of these things. This latest one, like Freakonomics, takes an "economic approach" (i.e. use of basic statistics and vague generalisations) to make a series of obvious or clearly incorrect assertions about the world. Still, the lack of hagiographies about the authors at least makes it easier to stomach than Freakonomics.
I got bored after two chapters of this. To take an example: there's a section on why milk comes in square cartons, while coke comes in cylinders. The answer seems to me to be almost entirely because coke needs to be pressurised. He says it's because it's drunk from the can and therefore needs to be easy to hold. I don't care either way because I can't see why either has anything whatsoever to do with economics. And anyway, what's so hard about drinking directly from a Tetrapak?
Get Tim Harford's "The Undercover Economist" instead, which addresses many of the same points (especially the ones about product features/costs) much more intelligently and in some cases directly contradicting this; Frank assumes that additional product features cost more to produce; Harford makes the point that often they don't, they're just excuses to have differentiated pricing. It's a much stronger case.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointingly poor example of the popular science genre, 30 May 2008
I bought this book expecting, on the basis of cover quotes, to find more of the type of incisive and analytical thinking that illuminates Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist. Against the standard sent by those, and other books, it is a **huge** disappointment. Peter Kennedy writes in his review that it uses "basic statistics and vague generalisations". From my reading I'd say that it weights itself heavily towards the vague generalisations side of this statement (I would also like to say that Freakonomics is rather more robust than its mention in Peter's review implies). I got bored very quickly.
This is a book that is cashing in on the popularity of a genre and falling short of the standard of that genre. Prospective purchasers should be aware that the source material for the book is short essays that were written by Robert H. Frank's students of an Introductory Economics course. Specifically, they were asked to 'use a principle, or principles, discussed in the course to pose and answer an interesting question about some pattern of events or behaviour that you personally have observed' in less than 500 words. So you are, in effect, reading a compendium of coursework that addresses this challenge. And, frankly, the lack of rigour that results is evident.
To be fair to Robert H. Frank (and his students), he does admit in his introduction that he doesn't expect all the answers to be correct and that they should be read with a critical eye. He states that the answers should be seen as 'intelligent hypotheses suitable for further refinement and testing'. And many of them do stand up to that measure. But I'd have been grateful for a bit of the refinement and testing coming from Professor Frank himself. For example the answer to the question of why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets (which is touted on the cover of the book) is historically inaccurate and doesn't even contain any economics.
Avoid.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent for its down-to-earth lack of pretensions, 16 Jun 2008
After reading Levitt's "Freakonomics" and Harford's "Undercover Economist" I was attracted to this book when I came across it. Yes, there's some overlap with both of them and yes, in some places either Levitt or Harford is better. Where this book scores, however, is that you can take it in small bites and have a good mull over what it says a bit at a time.
As another reviewer has noted, the book is based on questions that Frank's students have posed and answered, in varying degrees of depth, but always from the economist's perspective. The result is a collection of questions and answers, all relatively concise, and all showing economic thought at work. And the book pretends to be no more than that.
Criticism that it is too shallow or not based on empirical research IMO misses the point. The book's purpose is to demonstrate the application of economic thought to questions about everyday economic observations. The answers are cogently presented without any pretence that they are the last word - and this alone is welcome in a field whose more psychotic schools of thought have a hubristic track record of basing theories on patently false premises.
The important thing about this book is that it seeks to make its readers *think* about the things it discusses. IMO, it succeeds admirably (and it certainly made me think a lot). As a former student of economics, I'd confidently recommend it as a taster for students considering whether to take economics as a major subject.
More power to Frank and his students. I hope he writes a sequel ("More from the Economic Naturalist"?) that addresses topics not included in the original.
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