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The Economic Naturalist: Why Economics Explains Almost Everything [Paperback]

Robert H Frank (Author)
2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 3 April 2008

Have you ever wondered why there is a light in your fridge but not in your freezer? Or why 24-hour shops bother having locks on their doors? Or why soft drink cans are cylindrical, but milk cartons are square? The answer is simple: economics.

For years, economist Robert Frank has been encouraging his students to ask questions about the conundrums and strange occurrences they encounter in everyday life and to try to explain them using economics. Now in this bestselling book, he shares the most intriguing - and bizarre - questions and the economic principles that answer them to reveal why many of the most puzzling parts of everyday life actually make perfect (economic) sense.

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The Economic Naturalist: Why Economics Explains Almost Everything + The Undercover Economist + Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Virgin Books; Reprint edition (3 April 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0753513382
  • ISBN-13: 978-0753513385
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.6 x 19.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 81,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Fascinating ... provides the answers to some of life's quirkiest conundrums (Daily Mail )

Explains how cold, hard cash really does make our world go round (Independent 20080328)

Can be returned to again and again like one of those all-you-can-eat buffets (New York Times )

Don't miss this addictive book. As Robert Frank and his students figured out dozens of everyday puzzles together, they produced ideas that are charming, curious, educational and lots of fun. Wonderful stuff. (Tim Harford, author of 'The Undercover Economist' and 'The Logic of Life' )

Fascinating, mind-expanding, and lots of fun (Steven Pinker, author of The Blank Slate )

Book Description

DISCOVER THE SECRETS BEHIND MANY EVERYDAY ENIGMAS
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for its down-to-earth lack of pretensions 16 Jun 2008
By Gareth Greenwood
Format:Paperback
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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55 of 61 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Some good questions, but generally weak answers 27 May 2008
By Pete VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
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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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointingly poor example of the popular science genre 30 May 2008
By M. Wynde
Format:Paperback
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Perseverance
This book started off simple and a little dull but as it developed and more complicated issues arose it became very interesting and educational.
Published 12 days ago by Allyi02
4.0 out of 5 stars Good enough
Quite a good book. Not all questions need an economist to explain them, some are plain common sense. Recommended read.
Published 18 months ago by V. Georgios
3.0 out of 5 stars An overall okay book
A good book, starts as a light mood pop-economics, and gets more serious after the half.

I find many reviews here too harsh, so decided to try adding my 2 cents. Read more
Published 19 months ago by econ
2.0 out of 5 stars Why economics offers incomplete or false explanations.
For anyone who is genuinely puzzled as to why their fridge, but not their freezer, contains an internal light; this book will doubtless be a godsend. Read more
Published 20 months ago by skeptictank
1.0 out of 5 stars Poor choice
This book epitomizes what I believe the worst of modern economics. It rationalizes the status quo, and generate explanations of why the current practice is the best behaviour.
Published on 15 Mar 2011 by Jason Li
2.0 out of 5 stars Avoid
There are several profound, engaging and well researched books on popular economics out there at the moment but this really isn't one of them. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2010 by Bemischen
2.0 out of 5 stars Generally Disapointing
The field of "Behavioral Economics" has grown quite significantly in the last few years. The premise is quite interesting, are we in control of our decisions or are there some... Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2010 by Mr. P. M. Sharpe
5.0 out of 5 stars Who would have thought it?
Robert's excellent book takes economics to the real world.

Ever wondered why CD's work everywhere but DVD's are regionally controlled, why hotel minibars cost so much... Read more
Published on 26 Nov 2009 by Jonathan Kettleborough
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not overly great
This book is alright, but it's not fantastic. The questions are a collection of questions set by the author to his students and the replies are what his students came up with. Read more
Published on 28 Sep 2009 by Mr. James Higham
2.0 out of 5 stars Mostly the bleedin' obvious....
Very disappointing. I don't claim to be an economic genius, or any other type of genius for that matter, but the answers to most of the questions are pretty much what you'd expect... Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by Michael Bolton
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