On the Soapbox

I went through two books this past week, which is why I have been neglecting this blog somewhat. Titled Freakonomics, the first is a book about "economics" that talks about things that people generally do not associate with economics. Those who know me in real life will know that I am enamored with economics because it deals with human nature in a rational fashion and is in a way a bit like psychology. I am fond of looking at everyday behavior and decision-making--especially my own--in terms of marginal costs and marginal benefits. For people familiar with economics, this is not anything terribly new: about half of the papers that were required reading for the Advanced Microeconomic Analysis class that I took had nothing to do with money or production and instead were more about human behavior. Well, in a nutshell, that is exactly what this book was about. The author tries to introduce to the average person the non-monetary, non-production side of economics that most people are not aware of.

I would categorize this book as light and fun reading. The author looks at an odd assortment of topics from wrestling to parenting to online dating to even the social effects of abortion through the lens of economics, each case meticulously supported by data. My one minor complaint is that there are times when the author segues so far that I often found myself saying "Um, we stopped looking at this economically about three paragraphs ago," but the subject was interesting enough that this did not really bother me. Being already familiar with this dimension of economics, this book offered me no new insights into economics, but because I have never thought about the specific topics discussed from this particular perspective, I still enjoyed the book on a gee-I-didn't-know-that-before level. It is definitely worth a read for non-economists, and for the economist, I would still recommend it just for the interesting data and findings that are presented.