Tim Harford

Profile: Full name: Tim Harford Area of interest: Economics Journals/Organisation: Financial Times Email: undercovereconomist@gmail.com | FT/Tim Harford Personal website: http://timharford.com/ Website:http://www.ft.com/life-arts/undercover-economist Blog: 'Undercover Economist' (FT.com) | PSD Blog (co-founder, with Pablo Halkyard) Representation: Sally Holloway | Knight Ayton | Leigh Bureau | J.L.A. Networks: https://twitter.com/#!/timharford | Facebook

Biography: About: http://timharford.com/etc/biography Education: Brasenose College, Oxford University: MPhil Economics, 1998 Career: International Finance Corporation (World Bank); scenario expert at Shell Oil; tutor at Oxford University; speechwriter for Stanley Fischer (Governor of Israel's Central Bank) see Biography (Tim Harford.com) Joined FT in 2003 on a Peter Martin fellowship Current position/role: Economics leader writer and writes the “Undercover Economist” columns also writes/has written for: Forbes, Slate, New York Times Other roles/Main role: Author Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Authors@Google: Tim Harford (VIDEO) (28 January, 2008) Videos (Tim Harford.com) YouTube videos Broadcast media: Video: Presenter of BBC2 Series 'Trust me, I'm an economist' (AUDIO/VIDEO) New presenter of the Radio 4 series, More or Less ("More or Less takes you on a journey through the often abused but ever ubiquitous world of numbers.") Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Scoops: Other:

Books & Debate: The market for aid OCLC 60558739, 2005 (with Michael Klein) The Undercover Economist: exposing why the rich are rich, the poor are poor--and why you can never buy a decent used car! OCLC 59098699, 2006 The logic of life : the rational economics of an irrational world OCLC 159822206 , 2008 (see info at Tim Harford.com) Dear Undercover Economist ISBN 978039121543, Abacus, June 2010 Latest work: Adapt: why success always starts with failure OCLC 712927033. Read a review here Speaking/Appearances: Events schedule Debate:

Financial Times: 'Undercover Economist' Column name: Remit/Info: Revealing the economic theories at work behind our everyday experiences Section: FT Weekend Magazine Role: Commentator Pen-name: Email: undercovereconomist@gmail.com Website: FT.Com / Tim Harford Commissioning Editor: Day published: Saturday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length: 600 words

Articles: 2012 All articles A questionable move by Starbucks - Big organisations should test out their new policies whenever they can - 19th May The weighty problem of road and fat taxes - A levy on unhealthy food has happiness implications - 19th May Leaders do not need to milk price of pint - Financial returns of lacto-economics seem to be limited - 12th May That’s a lot of Wonga for a business loan! - An annual rate may not be the best way to gauge the cost of short-term credit - 12th May Rules of trading in a POW camp - An economist who was taken prisoner during the second world war observed that market institutions were universal and spontaneous - 12th May Time to bring in the crash investigators - The NTSB is capable of providing a clear and authoritative narrative, explanations and conclusions about the crisis - 5th May Queues at Heathrow: a numbers game - Airport waiting time data doesn’t add up - 5th May Valuable advice on investment advisers - Be careful whose interests the expert is serving... - 28th April Our growth fixation is positively baffling - Economic data is not a black/white, pass/fail affair - 28th April The one-night stand gets a digital makeover - Collaborative consumption websites and microlabour services may lower transaction costs but they raise the issue of internet-based trust - 21st April A first-class reason to stockpile stamps - The secondary market is going to be limited - 21st April The difficult question of happiness - A new paper suggests that respondents to surveys on well-being are affected by the way they are asked - 14th April Enough whingeing about price gouging - The ‘just price’ idea has a long history but little economic basis - 14th April The ban on hosepipes does not hold water - Rationing reduces supply and misallocates resources - 7th April Capital ways to survive the worst - The results of an experiment in Sri Lanka show the impact of financing on small businesses in communities shattered by natural disasters - 31st March VAT reform would keep our pasties hot - The tax rise has been blown out of all proportion - 31st March Forensic finance under the microscope - The trend of economists functioning as detectives may ultimately be good for the profession - 24th March At last: a nice surprise from the taxman - Tax statement may struggle to meet its aims - 24th March Mr Speaker, let an economist speak sense! - My Budget: short-term stimulus; long-term fiscal consolidation; and tax reform - 21st March Charity begins… in the back office - One handy way to size up a charity is to pay attention to how much it spends on overheads, rather than frontline do-gooding - 17th March Who’s impressed with Osborne’s big bond? - Good politics, bad economics or a clever PR? - 17th March The not-so-sweet smell of odious debt - A proposal that declares obligations of a particular regime non-transferable frees innocent people from indenture not of their making - 10th March Sex, shopping and the statistics of happiness - A new ONS survey seems unlikely to yield any insightful results - 10th March Boomtime for trying to fathom the bust - Economists from MIT and Yale attempt to untangle a crisis that has already lasted longer than the first world war - 3rd March Certainty over tax rules is overrated - Retroactively taxing Barclays compares to eating oysters - 3rd March In the long run, there’s logic to Liam Fox - The former defence secretary’s economic cure is examined by Tim Harford - 25th February Love is blind, unless you’re an economist - Schumpeter is not the only economist who is a romance expert - 18th February Could we live without cash? - Like euthanasia, proposals to do away with physical currency could remain controversial for a long time to come - 18th February How do you strip down the state? - Government cuts are shrinking the state, but gauging its size in the first place is hardly straightforward - 11th February Five steps to an organised inbox - Tim Harford hands out tips on the important practical task of getting your email under control - 4th February Everyone’s a critic now – or are they? - A substandard romantic novel is trivial, whereas a ruined weekend tryst in Paris is a minor tragedy - 4th February The tricky business of measuring growth - Two experts offer a new approach to weighing economic strength, posing many good questions about the practice - 28th January Are you saying John Lewis isn’t perfect? - The logic of employee share ownership isn’t clear - 21st January Can the minimum wage create jobs? - If one cannot produce enough of value to justify being paid a living wage, nothing we do to the minimum wage will help - 14th January The unlikely boons of longer train journeys - A saving of 40 minutes on a journey from London to Birmingham . . .  is HS2 really worth it - 14th January To tweet or not to tweet? - Justin Wolfers’ controlled experiment, which tests how Twitter affects productivity, inspires an unexpected insight - 6th January Pocket money will endure even in 2012 - But families with children to suffer most of all - 7th January 2012

Articles: 2011 All articles Of foxes, hedgehogs and the art of financial forecasting - Professional pundits are not usually paid to make correct forecasts. They are paid to sound convincing - 24th December Christmas on credit - Presents for one’s children do not seem like an optional extra though many families may struggle during this holiday - 17th December 2011 Can Spam ever be better than gold? - You can’t eat gold so there appears to be some logic to promoting canned goods in the worst of economic times - 17th December Screening: It’s all in the numbers - Bayesian analysis questions how we understand the notion of ‘probability’ and how we update our beliefs amid new information - 10th December Is payday lending really wrong? - Payday loans may be controversial but, as Tim Harford points out, they can be less expensive than an unauthorised overdraft - 10th December Screening: It’s all in the numbers - Bayesian analysis questions how we understand the notion of ‘probability’ and how we update our beliefs amid new information - 10th December ‘Tis not the season to be shopping - Would it be better for retailers if extra revenue received during the Christmas spending rush was spread across the year - 3rd December When the Christmas stocking shrank - Autumn statement and growth review 2011: Even Santa Claus has failed to rescue the UK from economic gloom - 29th November How to stop the bogus bonus - Successful oversight will require more transparency about what trades are being made. But transparency is a scarce commodity - 26th November Back to the glory days of Northern Rock - Tim Harford is sceptical of David Cameron’s latest housing policy - 26th November Music for love not money - There seems no objective justification for the idea that good music has simply dried up since file-sharing took off - 19th November The real cost of keeping warm - If we are to deal with climate change, the price of carbon-intensive energy is going to have to rise - 12th November Taxing my music can’t be good, can it? - how taxes can affect human behaviour - 12th November Eeyore and the euro crisis - For those who, like Tim Harford, believe the quest for better regulations is not a hopeless one, the search is on for better ways to measure risk - 5th November Capitalism can’t just be about money - The most successful companies have a sense of pride in a job well done - 5th November Can you be a little less specific? - Game theorists are beginning to produce rational models of deliberate vagueness - 29th October Malthus’s ghost and baby number 7bn - UN projects world population will hit 8bn then fall - 29th October Wolfson’s prize is impossible to win - Lord Wolfson, a prominent eurosceptic, is offering £250,000 to the person who comes up with the best plan for winding up the euro in an orderly way - 22nd October Innovation works in mysterious ways - ‘I’m surrounded by technology that looks good and works well because others followed where Apple led,’ - 15th October Debt crisis? Let’s just call it quits - Tim Harford expands on the eurozone debt crisis - 15th October Confusion at a price - The UK energy secretary wants to change the way suppliers charge customers. But his plans seem unlikely to give a better deal - 8th October Mr Prime Minister, we like our credit cards - If Jonathan Ross or Simon Cowell had told us to stop shopping, that would have been a disaster - 6th October The honest truth about kickbacks - It may be better to get 10 per cent of a booming economy than 100 per cent of a stagnating one - 1st October A ‘Robin Hood’ tax is no way to redistribute - It’s not a tax on profits, it’s a tax on transactions – and we have no idea who will end up paying it - 1st October New ways with old numbers - Two recent commentators have shown examples of the unexpected bounties of pure mathematics - 24th September Patenting the Ponzi: the extraordinary growth of Ponzi schemes - A proper, classic, elegant Ponzi scheme pays investors high returns - 24th September Don’t fear the migrant - Should we seek to keep citizens of poor nations trapped in their countries of birth for the good of their fellow citizens - 17th September Rogue accidents, and banging more shins - Preventing disaster often means changing the system - 17th September Laffer curves and the logic of the 50p rate - The government needs money – if not from the richest, then from somebody less able to pay - 10th September Green lights for red-light districts - When men are in transit, and so less likely to be interested in marriage, sex takes off in the spot market - 3rd September Beware online confessions - Why do we reveal so much about ourselves on the web, especially since we also claim to be worried about privacy - 27th August Taming the patent troll - Could a market for intellectual property ever work smoothly - 20th August Dubious data cut down to size - A doctoral student has found that national income is correlated with the average length of the erect penis in a country - 6th August Darkest Peru? It’s a beacon for business - For most countries included in the Doing Business project, case studies bear little resemblance to what companies actually report - 30th July What now for newspapers? - It is foolish to expect that competition alone can guarantee that readers get access to information they need - 30th July A handbag away from our debt ceiling - Tim Harford discusses the negotiations behind the desire to raise the family debt ceiling during lean times - 23rd July What now for newspapers? - It is foolish to expect that competition alone can guarantee that readers get access to information they need - 23rd July Why social marketing doesn’t work - We notice viral hits simply because they are successful, and overestimate the likelihood of their success - 16th July Why there will never be another Da Vinci - The artist was able to achieve so much, so broadly, because so little was known. Those times are long gone - 9th July More equity, less risk - Tim Harford on the simplest way to reduce the risk of a future banking crisis and make lenders safe for shareholders - 2nd July No, statistics are not silly, but their users . . . - Tim Harford finds that although statistics may produce some rather strange data, it is the way they are used and how people interpret them that makes them appear odd - 2nd July Smashing plates can’t rescue this taverna - Tim Hartford on the ECB association deciding to have a whip round - 25th June When experts argue - The world is simply too complicated for anyone to analyse with much success - 19th June On A.C. Grayling, odium and the Stasi - Comment: There is the chance that NCH might experiment with all kinds of new ideas, though, and discover something useful about providing a good education - 11th June Banks, bills and bail-outs - The banking crisis did appalling damage to the economy, but how much of the deficit is the result of bailing out the banks? - 11th June There’s safety in small numbers - The world often admires those who bet against a Taleb distribution: you may enjoy lots of small gains but you also risk disaster - 4th June But I can only afford a doll’s house - For many people today, home ownership is more a dream than a reality - 4th June The great iPhone trade-off - Globalisation produces a curious paradox, says Tim Harford. The more pervasive it becomes, the less we understand it by looking at trade statistics - 28th May Only Mervyn King and the tooth fairy... - Mum buys groceries from Ocado. You buy Belgian beers. Do we have a different rate of inflation? - 21st May How China boomed by trial and error - What is China’s recipe for growth? While it is far from being a free-market economy, it has long encouraged pragmatic and diverse economic experiments - 14th May Commissar Osborne grits his teeth - A reform programme is being pushed through like a Soviet five-year plan - 13th May The devil is in the detail ... - While revising the book that inspired this column, Tim Harford took the opportunity to reflect on how the economics of half a decade ago looks from the vantage point of today - 7th May A spoonful of medicine... - The symbiotic relationship between academic evidence and everyday practice is less than perfect in the real world - 30th April Why we’re all far too sure of ourselves - Politicians, analysts and media love certitude and prefer conclusions that are very precise rather than littered with doubts - 23rd April Outside Edge: Don’t get cold feet at lavish weddings - Even if most of us are untroubled by bills for carriage rides from the palace and the hiring of Westminster Abbey, the rising cost of getting hitched appears to be a global issue - 23rd April Don’t blame the (mostly) efficient markets hypothesis - Tim Harford defends a theory often blamed for the credit crunch, clarifies its true nature, and asserts its importance as a lodestar for ordinary investors - 16th April Why banks are going to auction - A new innovation allows lenders to bid different interest rates to borrow money from the Bank of England, and offer either higher- or lower-quality collateral - 9th April Is it time to outsource cities? - Building ‘charter cities’ might be a radical solution to the problem of poverty but it could also become a business in its own right - 2nd April Pension reform: just the job? - Should we attract the best people into public service, or prefer they favoured the private sector? The question, says Tim Harford, is about where smart people generate more value - 26th March Tale of Osborne as an unlikely Robin Hood - The chancellor tries to tap deeper into the national psyche - 24th March Some notes on a cash crisis - Tim Harford recalls one alarming scenario that was discussed at the height of the financial meltdown: what would happen if a bank had to shut down its cash machines? - 19th March Outside Edge: Date tips for the lovelorn stats nerd - Internet dating is YouTube to conventional dating’s three-channel TV - 19th March Qualifications that still count - Is a degree in economics necessary to become a good financial journalist? Tim Harford says perhaps good journalism has nothing to do with formal academic achievement - 12th March Outside Edge: A bonus in his fingertips - Tim Harford on the star performance and antics of another Charlie Sheen, the ‘total freakin’ rock star’ who is also a hotshot investment banker - 12th March Revolutionary roads - A fresh constitution, civil rights, and credible elections are all ways of safeguarding gains made through revolt. And protesters are right to insist on them - 5th March Illiteracy rules - The sophistication of financial products has increased dramatically; the sophistication of consumers has not. Are financial education programmes the answer? - 26th February Spend now, squeeze later - Keynesians would argue that now is not the time for fiscal tightening, and perhaps they would be right - 19th February Bye, bye easy money - Our economic problems have been far longer in the making and would have caught up with us sooner or later - 12th February How much should we have to disclose? - An economist can wear many hats while also collecting income from gigs in the financial services industry. Do we have a right to know about such links - 5th February Why we do what we do - Behavioural economics has never been hotter, but two experts argue that it is not nearly as realistic as its boosters claim - 29th January Welcome to boss-onomics - A recent study concludes that management quality can be measured and does make a difference to the performance of a country’s economy - 22nd January Outside Edge: Priced out of an alcoholic stupor - Tim Harford‘s alter ego is worried about UK government plans to put a floor under the price of supermarket alcoho - 21st January What we can learn from a nuclear reactor - On a strange mission, Tim Harford visits Hinkley Point B, an ageing power plant overlooking the Bristol Channel, and discovers lessons about the safety of the financial system - 15th January When aid doesn’t help - Effective disaster relief may indeed win hearts and minds, but if its recipients begin to suspect they are pawns in a public relations game, it will be all the harder to provide - 15th January Outside Edge: Of turtle doves and inflation hawks - For those of us not living hand to mouth, there is something rather bracing about sharp price rises - 8th January Game on for the virtual sweatshop - Cataclysm, a new version of ‘World of Warcraft’, will make it more difficult for Chinese and Indian players to earn a living from the online computer game - 8th January

Articles: 2010 Analysis: 2010 in figures: what it all adds up to - Numbers have a curious power over us: orators, from high-school debaters to candidates for high office, know persuasive appeals gain credibility if seasoned with data - 30th December Analysis: A measure of cheer - It may be tricky to calibrate national wellbeing but that is a task being undertaken by a growing number of governments in search of indicators beyond economic progress - 29th December Outside Edge: Sleepless in Seoul in an age of jet lag - Jet-lag can have a serious effect on decision-makers - 13th November A sense of fair play does pay - After recently having to deal with a stubborn, selfish bully, Tim Harford speculates on an old question: do nice guys finish first, or last? - 6th November Age comes before austerity - Quite why prosperous pensioners deserve their special treatment is unclear to this economist, but no doubt perfectly obvious to the opinion pollsters - 23rd October Attested development - Tim Harford examines the evaluation of the Millennium Village project, which some economists argue has passed up a chance to advance our knowledge of what works when it comes to foreign aid - 16th October Dissent is a sterling asset - Tim Harford discusses the risks of committee thinking and the importance of having someone play the role of devil’s advocate at the Bank of England - 9th October Models for growth - One professor has been trying to puzzle out the relationship between the sophistication of a country’s economy and the kinds of products it makes - 2nd October How a nice cup of coffee worked wonders for a corner of Hackney - Successful businesses often operate in clusters. It may be a matter of tapping into local expertise or creating a destination for customers - 25th September Outside Edge: Robo-rage at the trading frontier - Just how hard can the robo-trading business be - 25th September Why does anyone bother contributing to Wikipedia? - Perhaps people are pure altruists or just enjoy the process of giving, whether or not it actually produces something of value - 18th September Finding the prime number in the seven ages of man - As his birthday approaches, Tim Harford observes that judgments are constantly made about whose creative or scientific endeavours are supported, and at what age - 11th September A sense of entitlement is all very well – but what about a pay rise? - A field experiment shows that trivial awards are effective in increasing productivity – perhaps even more so than symbolic senior titles - 4th September Outside Edge: The art of pricing no-balls - Corruption in cricket? The solution must lie in economics - 4th September You can’t afford to get signals crossed in the underworld - An Italian sociologist applies modern economics to study the mafia and understand how criminals distinguish undercover cops among their ranks - 28th August Illuminating advice on the dark art of ‘drip pricing’ - The OFT finds that there is no pricing scheme more pernicious than having buyers agree to pay a price, only to charge them extra later - 21st August Everyone wins in the postcode lottery - The discomfiting truth is that variation is an inescapable part of progress - 18th August Why we have got our work cut out creating jobs that matter - Economic growth leads to job destruction. But in a weak business climate, there are circumstances in which make-work schemes might make sense - 14th August Calculators away … life’s big choices call for gut instinct - Economists may tell you how to get what you choose, but not how to choose. When it comes to making serious decisions, one cannot rely on science - 7th August Confessions of an armchair economist - Tim Harford on what he got wrong about the crisis - 4th August Supply and demand, yes. But polygamy? - I know, both intuitively and through observation, that people with two wives seldom lead ‘peaceful’ lives. As an economist, how would you explain that? - 31st July Predict the future? We can’t even say what’s happening now - Economists continue to wrestle with the problem of having to wait for data from businesses just to see the current state of the economy - 24th July A sunlit Keynesian paradise awaits our grandchildren - When the crisis is over I hope we remember Keynes’s long-run forecast - 21st July So, are we all racists? Let’s play a little game and find out - Experiments suggest that people from the same ethnic group work together more effectively, but not because they harbour any distaste for others - 17th July When it comes to research, we live in interesting times - Many findings are never published because they just aren’t very intriguing. But it is dangerous to discard boring or disappointing evidence - 10th July A healthy dose of competition will help the NHS pull through - What the NHS is missing is not some elusive quality of the private sector, but the competitive pressure that businesses have to cope with every day - 3rd July Hard lessons, difficult choices: dilemmas of parent-run schools - The standards of state-funded charter schools depend on the demands of parents, but research shows that regulation is necessary to improve quality - 26th June China’s rise will change the nuts and bolts of British business - While doing business in China is not easy, the opportunities are there and they will grow - 19th June How I lost my head in the volcanic ash cloud - Stranded in Helsinki, Tim Harford muses on dismal scenarios involving years of eruptions and a shattering blow to the world economy - 12th June Why the NHS doesn’t know what it isn’t doing - Government data on patient waiting times remain a cautionary tale for Tim Harford, who has been trying for a year to get a cancer scan on the NHS - 5th June Everybody wants fair play – shame we can’t agree what it is - When it comes to income and taxes, it is not merely about equitable distribution and fair processes. Some are just born lucky - 29th May In search of hard facts about media bias - Political neutrality is admirable but in a world full of left- and right-leaning customers, impartiality is a luxury a commercial newspaper can ill-afford - 22nd May Is it worth trying to get a good degree? - I’m worried that in the middle of a recession, I’m going to graduate with a lousy degree in economics. Will reading ‘The Undercover Economist’ get me through? - 15th May Why small parties can punch above their weight - Two methods of calculating voting power show that there is no simple mapping between the size of a bloc and the power it commands in practice - 15th May Why anti-sweatshop campaigns might just do it after all - The obvious risk of protests is that workers are tossed out on to the street; economic growth is the only alternative. Yet Tim Harford finds research that shows otherwise - 8th May Vital, yet unrepresentative. That’s democracy for you - It may be that the outcome of the UK general election is now a foregone conclusion, but if not, the oddities of the British electoral system are to blame - 1st May Search for certainty in uncertain world - One person stranded by the no-fly edict imposed as a result of the volcanic ash cloud considers the costs and benefits of various strategies for getting home - 24th April Why recessions aren’t all about job losses - When people get sacked during an economic downturn, the received wisdom is that it is because wages don’t adjust. But is ‘wage rigidity’ really to blame - 16th April The only thing worse than high taxes is noticing they’re high - A new strand of economic analysis reveals that visible reminders of taxes directly affect shoppers’ behaviour and purchasing decisions - 10th April Wanted: less exploitative ways to do more with less - The innovative reuse of waste materials is a good thing. But, asks Tim Harford, what do you do if in turn it squanders human potential? - 3rd April At last the con has been taken out of econometrics - The ‘identification problem’, which muddies data analysis, particularly plagues the statistical wing of the economics profession - 27th March Tried and tested ways to woo a half-hearted terrorist - A single defector can jeopardise a terrorist network, and defections are dependent on the ability of groups to cut off outside options - 20th March Political ideas need proper testing - Policymakers should produce evidence - 18th March The auction site that’s pure temptation - Commentators claim that Swoopo’s bidding rules are ‘evil’, but economic theory suggests that its model is not completely to blame - 13th March The hidden histories that shape the way we live now - Economists trace the causal link between climate, tropical diseases and colonisers to economic development - 6th March Why we should worry about spiralling public debt - As many wealthy governments continue to borrow with much enthusiasm, Tim Harford looks at the likely consequences of issuing too many IOUs - 27th February Listen to the bearers of bad news - Leaders need frank advice, however unwelcome it might seem - 25th February If that’s the Robin Hood tax, I’m the sheriff of Nottingham - The proposed tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change could be an opportunity for the world, but the idea leaves Tim Harford cold - 20th February Selfish, dishonest, mean … who are you calling an economist? - Does studying economics make you a bad person? Tim Harford offers a defence as studies suggest that students of the field are less likely to contribute to charities - 13th February A marginal victory for the well-meaning environmentalist - Tim Harford returns to the vexed question of carbon dioxide emissions and asks whether one can justify the double-standard of taking the bus but not the plane - 6th February Does the altruism theory help anyone at all? - Many policy wonks believe cash incentives are counterproductive but some studies show that the way to get results is to pay for them - 30th January Why US banks and taxpayers owe big thanks to Hank - Research carried out by the University of Chicago concludes that shareholders were about $130bn better off as a result of Paulson’s gift - 23rd January Lessons in complexity, from a field in Afghanistan - There is a tendency to treat the ‘hearts and minds’ aspect of counter-insurgency as a popularity contest. But the ‘voters’ are not casual spectators - 16th January Stimulus spending might not be as stimulating as we think - Government projects do enjoy a multiplier-related discount in straitened times, but it must be made sure that the jobs are worth the expenditure - 9th January Lights on – or off? Low-carbon living is anything but easy... - Environmentalists have been slow to realise that an eco-lifestyle is riddled with contradictions. Tim Harford thinks credible carbon pricing can help clear the muddle - 2nd January

Articles: 2009 It’s not what you know, but who you know and where they are - Tim Harford examines research that attempts to track knowledge spillovers and says that for all the wonders of the internet age, location is as important as ever - 19th December What the wealth of nations is really built upon - An accomplished economist attempts to answer the old question: why are some countries rich and others poor? His conclusions do not fully convince - 12th December Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all - A year ago Tim Harford warned of a backlash against microfinance. Now there is mounting evidence that the practice is not living up to its promises - 5th December Political ill wind blows a hole in the climate change debate - The trouble with cap-and-trade – which has long been regarded as the easier sell – is that countries must agree how to divide the allocation of permits - 28th November It’s not just Scrooge who wants Christmas abolished - Resources that go into Yuletide gifts often result in products that nobody wants, but these findings omit the warm glow we get from giving and receiving - 21st November Given the choice, how much choice would you like? - Having more options seems to be counterproductive under certain circumstances, but we don’t yet know much about what they are - 14th November How a celebrity chef turned into a social scientist - Jamie Oliver’s ‘school dinners’ campaign has been successful, but Tim Harford wonders why it had to take a TV company to carry out a proper policy experiment - 7th November Why feedback can be just so much noise - A comment-free environment is not conducive to learning new skills, but then again, honest appraisal can be confusing or demoralising - 31st October Want to help? Then make life harder for the aid agencies - Only a wild optimist would expect agencies to adopt a market-style focus on value for money, so economists suggest a different approach - 24th October A brilliant (and doomed) template for healthcare reform - Not only is it colossally wasteful to outsource medical decisions to bureaucrats, it is also infantilising for us as independent human beings - 17th October Can we stop football teams ‘buying’ wins? - Should the football authorities put a cap on the total value of players, based on their transfer cost, that can play for a Premier League team in any given match? - 10th October How an inconvenient economist upset the cool crowd - John List’s attention to the nuts and bolts of experimental method has demolished some of the most cherished results in behavioural economics - 10th October Dan Brown and the mystery of the lost profit margin - The unprecedented price war over the novelist’s latest book, ‘The Lost Symbol’, makes real an old joke: losing money on every sale, but making it up on volume - 3rd October Trust me – we have a serious carbon credibility problem - When it comes to climate change, few people are talking about time inconsistency. Why should we believe that words today will mean action tomorrow - 26th September To nudge is one thing, to nanny quite another - The human brain has evolved in the way it processes information by taking short cuts that lead us astray. Tim Harford says we could use help towards the correct decision - 19th September How to measure economies (and not get lost in the woods) - It is not surprising that calculating economic statistics, such as inflation and unemployment rates, continues to generate heat as well as light - 12th September The price America paid for the September 11 attacks - Beyond the narrow economic impact of a mass murder, the additional costs to the country as a whole were largely psychological - 5th September The credit crunch: bad for your pocket, worse for your psyche - Studies show that recessions alter perceptions. This generation may spend future decades firmly convinced that success is a matter of luck - 29th August Why millions of the world’s poor still choose to go private - Government healthcare and education may be free, fee-paying customers are in an excellent position to hold schools and clinics to account - 22nd August Complexity is the mother of invention - Is Facebook symbolic of a new trend towards innovation by individuals or is it an exception to the tendency towards larger research efforts - 15th August A recession-proof career path? Only for the lucky ones - Research shows that those who have to look for a job during a downturn are forced into compromises whose effects can last years or even decades - 8th August Outside Edge: Learn to love that statistical feeling - Bean-counters of the world, unite! - 8th August How the humble train helps countries get on track - Research proves that railways profoundly improved the rural economies through which they passed - 1st August Look on this toaster, ye mighty, and despair! - The household staple is a symbol of the world’s sophistication and of the obstacles for those who want to change it, which is best done - 25th July Why giant technological leaps aren’t always the answer - As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, why can't governments put some serious effort behind more modern goals - 18th July Carbon footprinting: time to pick up the pace - A modest and credible price on carbon would give an incentive to everyone involved in the supply chain - 11th July Why getting complicated increases the wealth of nations - There are about 10 billion products and services in a modern economic environment, but Tim Harford cites a pattern that links this complexity to what makes countries rich - 4th July Why weather forecasts can affect your prosperity - A wide range of businesses, including supermarkets, electricity generators, and farming, could save money if given an accurate prediction - 27th June How can we tell incompetent from unlucky government? - Voters cannot distinguish how much of economic growth is due to luck and how much is due to a leader’s skill – and there is little incentive to do so - 20th June How social science ends up as urban myth - When put to the test, the results of some experiments accepted as conventional truth turn out to be just ‘glorified anecdotes’ and difficult to replicate - 13th June It’s a bubble’s effects that are hard to predict - Behavioural economists have identified bubbles even before they burst. But there is a difference between spotting them and foretelling the damage - 6th June It’s time to stop being shy about retiring – we can’t afford it - The statistics about an ageing population are starting to become familiar: people are living longer. But our institutions are adapting too slowly - 30th May Why print’s death throes deal democracy a body blow - Research shows that local politics suffered after the closure of The Cincinnati Post, with fewer candidates running for office and voter turnout falling - 23rd May Switch to renewable energy? If only it were that simple - Technological progress will be essential to power a modern country – but it will not lead to an energy system purged of fossil fuels - 16th May Promises, promises and why it pays not to break them - Alistair Darling broke his word by raising top rate income taxes to 50%. Tim Harford examines the value of government pledges and the cost of losing credibility - 9th May What smart truckers tell us about the road to success - A study of IQ, patience, risk-taking and interpersonal judgment in US truck drivers - 2nd May indicates that economic prosperity might be genetically transmitted, To profit, plump for an also-ran at the helm - New economic research suggests that shareholders should not celebrate awards given to CEOs. The correct response would be to feel sick - 25th April Even in a recession, charitable giving can go up as well as down - Genuine altruists are more likely to give to charity if forewarned. But people who give because they feel pressured might simply hide behind the sofa - 18th April Are those who sweat the big stuff in meltdown? - The crisis has macroeconomists soul-searching not because they failed to forecast the problem, but that they seem unable to provide answers - 11th April Who gets which room in a rented house? - What is the fairest way to split the total monthly rent for an eight-bedroom flat among seven friends? - 4th April Workplace inequality: it’s all down to the career breaks - The most convincing explanations of the gender pay gap focus on potential earnings lost by new mothers who are derailed from the fast track - 28th March A brilliant plan to rid sport of useless tossers - The idea of replacing a coin toss – a surrender to the gods of chance – with an auction may not be cricket. For Tim Harford, however, it is excellent economics - 21st March An easy answer to grade inflation - Outside Edge: True grade inflation would mean A grades superseded by AA, AAA and AAAA as new labels for superlative performance became necessary. As long as everyone understands the game, what harm if the typical student of tomorrow is awarded an AAAAA grade? - 21st March For malaria, we just can’t afford to use cheap drugs - As a combination therapy, the world’s most effective anti-malarial drug artemisinin is costly but efficient in discouraging resistance to the parasite - 14th March Six degrees of separation? We can only manage five - A theory suggests that our brain cannot gauge too many different levels of value. Instead, it can only rely on the comparison of one against another - 7th March When it comes to bonuses, the buck stops with Gordon - Politicians are beginning to take note of research showing that sensible incentive schemes for bankers may be feasible - 28th February Some recession experiences are more equal than others - Research on the downturn shows that the overall change in consumption is a blip for most people in the US, but a slump for those near the top - 21st February Does nobody want to take money from the poor? - In developing countries where income and expenses are unpredictable, a basic, easy-access savings account would be invaluable - 14th February Enlightened research, fuelled by the dark stuff - The head brewer of Guinness beer also produced an important economic tool: the t-test, which determines an experiment’s statistical significance - 7th February How fingers burned today will forge tomorrow’s savers - Studies show that earlier experiences with economic booms and busts seem to shape a person’s subsequent investment behaviour - 31st January Why charity begins – and stays – at home - The true reason we do not give freely is because of an almost unlimited capacity to put out of our minds the suffering of people we will never meet - 24th January Why high-frequency traders are like rutting stags - Spikes in testosterone levels are both the cause and the consequence of a risky but profitable day on the trading floor - 17th January My advice to the US Treasury? Go back to Plan A - The original concept of having an auction to buy toxic assets from banks should be resurrected, suggests Tim Harford, to solve a problem that has not gone away - 10th January What lessons can schools learn from streaming by ability? - Given the choice between the best class in town and the best teacher in town, parents should choose the best teacher any day - 3rd January

Articles: 2008 Can the free market give you moral backbone? - An economic system where competition is key tends to reward hard work, risk-taking, applied creativity, amiability and honesty - 27th December 2008 Shock news? The media didn’t get us into this mess - The news is powerful enough to tip us into recession only if consumer and business spending is tied less to income and more to the front pages of the tabloids - 13th December 2008 Is unemployment benefit a good thing after all? - At its worst, jobseekers’ allowance pays people to watch daytime TV; it is pernicious if unemployment becomes unemployability. Yet, at its best, it is a life-saver - 6th December 2008 What will we buy to help us through hard times? - When spending falls, some products do well and others do badly. The jobless save on ‘small durables’, but once employed, replace their old socks - 29th November 2008 Africa’s route to prosperity is not just a rocky road - Extortion, trucking cartels, and the time and expense involved in securing permits and licences explain why the continent remains in economic isolation - 22nd November 2008 How to win the Nobel prize by a whisker - for example Avinash Dixit, without whom Paul Krugman might have abandoned economics 30 years ago and so never formulated his new trade theory - 15th November 2008 The stock-market generation game and how to win it - Here are the chief investment lessons of the financial crisis for today’s young people: they should be buying more shares and running up debts to do so - 8th November 2008 The future? Your guess is as good as mine - Claiming that the stock market is efficient is by far the most sensible way for an investor to look at the world - 1st November 2008 It might be a brainwave, but what on earth does it mean? - Trials aimed at understanding ‘neuroeconomics’ are hardly unlocking the deepest secrets of thought - 25th October 2008 Why extortion is a hard game to master - 18th October 2008 Why are some prizes more Nobel than others? - A long history and sharp public relations help in adding prestige. The winner must also beat an impressive field - 11th October 2008 Time to drop the baggage that comes with moral hazard - Bail-outs can save the innocent as well as the culpable. It is fantasy to expect governments to refrain from them - 4th October 2008 When it comes to foreign workers, some ideas aren’t so crazy - It is laughable for the British government to rely on a centrally planned list of what sort of work migrants should be allowed in to do - 27th September 2008 Will the price of oil put a brake on globalisation? - There is some anecdotal evidence that transportation costs are having an impact on trade: for example, some container ships are reported to be slowing down to save fuel - 20th September 2008 Why it’s dangerous to be a witch in a recession - Tough times may result in women – typically elderly widows – being blamed for bad weather or sacrificed to free resources - 13th September 2008 Houses cost more in the summer. Here’s why - Buyers prefer to shop in ‘thick’ markets, when lots of houses are for sale and a good fit is more likely to come up quickly - 6th September 2008 Logic tells us we’re Simpsons not Spocks - Economists are exploring different brands of irrational behaviour as products intended for the impulsive and self-destructive Homer Simpsons of the world are becoming more common - 30th August 2008 Nudges are for markets not nations - Rather than understand behavioural economics, the UK Conservative party has adopted nudging as a label for a jumble of gimmicks - 22nd August 2008 Harvesting the fruits of your labourers - For many business owners, getting the most out of staff is a perennial problem. In the case of fruit farmers, perhaps perennial is the wrong word - 16th August 2008 Never trust an economic forecast - When people discover that I am an economist, they rarely ask me for my views on subjects that economists know a bit about - 9th August 2008 Bankers are laughing all the way to the bank - Going overdrawn can be an expensive business. In the UK, unauthorised overdrafts averaged £680m on any given day in 2006 – just over £10 per bank account - 2nd August 2008 The cost of curbs on immigration - Humans don’t take kindly to outsiders: history is heaped with the corpses of those who were lynched, bayoneted or gassed because of their race, religion or nationality - 26th July 2008 At last, a sensible way to measure poverty - Seebohm Rowntree was the son of the wealthy Quaker businessman Joseph Rowntree, but acutely aware of the poverty that surrounded him in late-Victorian York - 19th July 2008 Why the world needs more speculators - When the economy is in turmoil, no one is demonised more than the speculator - 12th July 2008 Why small prizes make it easier to win - We’ve known for a century that laboratory rats choke under pressure - 5th July 2008 Why the rural idyll doesn’t come cheap - My mother-in-law’s favourite complaint is that the government ignores the interests of rural communities in favour of cities - 28th June 2008 The Profits Of Political Connections - In the early hours of november 8 2000, the vice-president of the united states, al gore, was travelling to Nashville to make his concession speech. But then the messages began to arrive on Gore's pager, suggesting that perhaps he wasn't behind. Having already conceded, informally and in private, Gore called Bush again to tell him that he'd changed his mind - 21st June 2008 How Can I Tell If I'll Have A Decent Pension? - last week i mused about whether people in general were saving enough for retirement. (The answer: as far as we can tell, most people are.) This week I have decided to take on a far more important question: am I saving enough for retirement? - 14th June 2008 Maybe our pension worries are overdone - Here’s the conventional wisdom on pensions: you’re a weak-willed and short-sighted fool who isn’t saving enough, and as a result you will spend your retirement in poverty - 7th June 2008 Why a tax cut just isn't fair on teenagers - Alistair darling did something rather strange recently, to baffling applause from his own backbenchers, and cries of "bribery" from the opposition: he announced a tax on teenagers - 31st May 2008 The tax that might just save the world - The Financial Times has been calling for a credible price to be put on carbon emissions, either through a carbon tax or a serious cap-and-trade scheme. Most economists – including this one – would agree - 24th May 2008 Why economic forecasts are so hard to get right - Economic forecasting is a long-standing joke, but the laughter has turned harsh and bitter in the wake of the credit crisis. The conventional wisdom seems to be that economic forecasting is impossible, and that economic forecasters are charlatans - 17th May 2008 Happiness is a more expensive nicotine hit - Would smokers prefer that cigarettes be expensive? The Office of Fair Trading seems to think so, to judge by its recent announcement alleging that some supermarkets and tobacco companies had been fixing the price of tobacco - 10th May 2008 How markets keep abreast of the news - If markets are efficient, you will never make profitable trades as a result of reading the Financial Times - 26th April 2008 Of Income And Incomers - How do you compare the wealth of different nationalities? It isn't as easy as ABC - 19th April 2008 Cost of living - My family’s experience of the local hospital has been mixed. Sometimes it is impressive; at others it falls below the standard one would expect in the capital of a developed country. Our rule of thumb is that it’s much safer to get sick in Cumbria, where my wife’s parents live - 12th April 2008 Piracy’s hidden treasures - What should top record labels, software giants and other media companies do about digital piracy? There are two obvious options - 5th April 2008 Green lite - I recently discovered that I am entitled to an occasional tax-free breakfast, because I cycle to work - 28th March 2008 Eternal enigma - Friends of mine, husband and wife, once argued over the price of a branded packet of lemon slices bought at some convenient corner shop or petrol station - 22nd March 2008 Moments of truth - The three most familiar economic statistics are all measures of change: inflation, the growth of gross domestic product, and the daily rise or fall in the price of shares. Even so, they do not begin to capture the mad churn of the economy - 14th March 2008 Meltdown economics - So much hot air has been spouted over climate change it is a wonder the ice caps haven’t melted already - 8th March 2008 Tim Harford: Wealth generations - My father and my mother met at a venerable English university. I went to the same place, as did two of my sisters. Now that my stepbrother has followed in our footsteps, I am starting to think that there may be more than coincidence behind the whole business - 1st March 2008 It’s the way they sell ’em - Here’s what I like about insurance: you pay the insurers money when you do not desperately need it, and then the insurers pay you money just when you need it most - 23rd February 2008 Virtual virtues - Nurses leave Nigeria and come to the UK, hoping for a better career. Farmers leave Mexico to work in construction or catering in the US. Such migrants can have a profound impact on the economy, as well as the society and politics both of the country they leave and the country to which they move. Social scientists, naturally, take an interest - 16th February 2008 Start making sense - Family Harford has just put in an offer for the house next door, to hoots of scorn from my colleagues, who know me as a bear among bears. It is true that the London housing market seems (who knows?) to be in the final stages of its biggest-ever bubble. But there are special circumstances involved here, one of which is that no rational economic actor disobeys an order from his wife - 9th February 2008 A corporate own goal - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama notwithstanding, the world still seems to be ruled by white men. Is this the result of racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace? Or are other factors more important - for instance, that few black kids go to good schools, or that women usually interrupt their careers to have children? - 2nd February 2008 First things first - Running for president is a little like releasing a new DVD format - taking an early lead can really pay off - 26th January 2008 Cash for answers - In 1737, John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker from Yorkshire, stunned London’s scientific establishment by presenting an idiosyncratic solution to the most important and notorious technological problem of the 18th century - 25th January 2008 Table talk - Feng shui is all very well, but the next time you decide to redesign the layout of your office space you might consider calling an economist - 19th January 2008 Tape measure of success - Roughly five years after internet users caught on, the bookshops are suddenly full of books about the user-generated content that “Web 2.0” makes possible: the blogs, Wikipedia, Facebook and the rest. Well, you can forget them, because easily the world’s most profitable enabler of user-generated content opened the doors of its first superstore 50 years ago, in Almhult, Sweden - 12th January 2008 A measured approach - The aid industry faces a dilemma. On the one hand, countries are more likely to grow rich if their citizens are provided with some important basics, such as a legal system that works, or protection from corrupt officials. Such basics might seem the priority for aid money. On the other hand, it is much easier to measure success in simpler projects, such as building roads and laying pipes - 5th January 2008

Financial Times: 'Dear Economist' Column name: Remit/Info: Solving readers' problems using economics Section: Web / FT.Com Role: Commentator Pen-name: Email: economist@ft.com Website: FT.Com / Tim Harford Commissioning Editor: Day published: Saturday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Letter / response Average length: 300 words

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Links: Other Writing (Tim Harford.com) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Harford