by Tim Harford | Jul 31, 2010 | Undercover Economist
Provoked, perhaps, by my recent column mentioning that we didn’t know enough of our neighbours, my wife decided to try to organise a street party under the auspices of The Big Lunch. This is an attempt by the Eden Project (best known for gigantic greenhouses in...
by Tim Harford | Jul 31, 2010 | Dear Economist
Dear Economist, I live in a place where polygamy is allowed, but generally avoided. One of my friends has two wives. When asked why, he once quipped “more suppliers means more competition and better service for the customer”. Now I know, both intuitively and through...
by Tim Harford | Jul 24, 2010 | Dear Economist
Dear Economist, You may be surprised to receive a question from a 13-year-old reader of the FT, but I always steal the weekend paper from my father, who is an economics professor. Everyone in my family is well educated, which is why simple dinner chit-chat usually...
by Tim Harford | Jul 24, 2010 | Undercover Economist
On New Year’s Eve 2007, the Financial Times, in its customary look at the year ahead, declared that “the US will skate along the brink of recession in early 2008, but should avoid tipping over the brink”. In retrospect, we can ruefully enjoy that forecast not because...
by Tim Harford | Jul 21, 2010 | Highlights, Other Writing
Illustration by Ingram Pinn It says a lot about the talents of John Maynard Keynes – and just as much about the shortcomings of modern macroeconomics – that when the financial crisis struck, policymakers instinctively reached not for their fancy models, but for the...
