> Steven Landsburg
Occasionally, I have naive bouts of optimism. Some days, I hope the precious legions who instruct us on how to Think Like An Economist so damage the credibility of their profession that economists are collectively forced to grow the fuck up. Call it a natural experiment in reputation effects.
Steve Poole's book review in the Guardian:
More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics, by Steven E Landsburg. (Free Press, £16.99)
Is there some critical mass of Freakonomics-style pop-econ book sales after which their "unconventional wisdom" becomes conventional wisdom and the new groovily maverick thing to do will be to write dense economic treatises full of equations? Well, this pop-econ book has a cute bunny on the front and some cute arguments inside. Monogamous folk should be encouraged to be a bit more promiscuous, because they would then divert partners from having sex with the really promiscuous people who spread disease. The author proposes to fix the world through "incentives" - defined exclusively as cash fines or rewards - which can be seen to magic up more rational juries and happier families. Much of the book is smoothly readable, if regularly annoying in the way it speaks of statistics as probabilities. Sometimes it is also a bit lazy. Wondering why shopping trolleys have got bigger, Landsburg writes: "You could always call a cart manufacturer and ask what's going on, but I doubt you'd learn much." OK, no need to bother then.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2109067,00.html
And more Steve Poole:
http://unspeak.net/a-natural-adjustment/
And still more former LBO-Talk alum Daniel Davies:
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/01/11/a-simple-coasian-test-for-some-kinds-of-economic-bollocks/
Shane