What are the most irrational human behaviors? If you ask me, love, drug addiction, and overpaying CEOs would be on the top of my list.
However, according to “The Logic of Life” by Tim Harford, these and a number of other “human nature” behaviors actually have rational motivations. This book explores human rational calculations at individual and societal levels with the eyes of an economist.
Just saying a behavior is rational is like a cheap version of the evolutionary theory. Just any biological traits can be explained by the survival advantage it brings to the table, any human behavior can be explained by some reasoning behind it. If that were what the book was about, it would not be very interesting. Fortunately, this book is more than that. It tells stories and researches that show the connections between rational reasoning and behavior with intricate experiments and data analyses. While the book focuses on rationality, the author is ready to admit that many (perhaps more) human behaviors are irrational. The author also goes out of his way to address possible objections. Some of the objections were conceded, others were fended off with more research and data. All of such deliberations make the book an enjoyable read.
The topics impressing me the most are rational reactions of the disadvantaged. The author pointed out that racial discrimination can be irrational (hate) or rational (stereotype). However, the effect on the victim group is the same. They lose motivation to improve their qualification and even resent their members who actually want to improve. Another counter-intuitive (although well known) fact is that the lack of trust mechanism hurts not only the party who need to trust but also the party who need to be trusted. In a totalitarian society, there is no credible way to check and balance the behavior of the ruler. Therefore, people cannot trust the rulers will keep any promise of compromise. Their only rational option is overthrowing the rule through revolution, although revolution incurs a high cost to the people as well.
When started the book, I thought it was a knockout of “Freakonomics.” But I was pleasantly surprised. It covers different topics and covers better. The author also wrote the famous book “The Undercover Economist,” which I read many years ago. I was not that impressed then. Maybe it’s time to reread that book.
プライム無料体験をお試しいただけます
プライム無料体験で、この注文から無料配送特典をご利用いただけます。
非会員 | プライム会員 | |
---|---|---|
通常配送 | ¥410 - ¥450* | 無料 |
お急ぎ便 | ¥510 - ¥550 | |
お届け日時指定便 | ¥510 - ¥650 |
*Amazon.co.jp発送商品の注文額 ¥3,500以上は非会員も無料
無料体験はいつでもキャンセルできます。30日のプライム無料体験をぜひお試しください。
¥4,288¥4,288 税込
発送元: Amazon.co.jp 販売者: Amazon.co.jp
¥4,288¥4,288 税込
発送元: Amazon.co.jp
販売者: Amazon.co.jp
¥2,321¥2,321 税込
ポイント: 23pt
(1%)
配送料 ¥430 6月21日-7月2日にお届け
発送元: worldbooksjapan 販売者: worldbooksjapan
¥2,321¥2,321 税込
ポイント: 23pt
(1%)
配送料 ¥430 6月21日-7月2日にお届け
発送元: worldbooksjapan
販売者: worldbooksjapan
無料のKindleアプリをダウンロードして、スマートフォン、タブレット、またはコンピューターで今すぐKindle本を読むことができます。Kindleデバイスは必要ありません。
ウェブ版Kindleなら、お使いのブラウザですぐにお読みいただけます。
携帯電話のカメラを使用する - 以下のコードをスキャンし、Kindleアプリをダウンロードしてください。
The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World ハードカバー – 2008/1/15
英語版
Tim Harford
(著)
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"¥4,288","priceAmount":4288.00,"currencySymbol":"¥","integerValue":"4,288","decimalSeparator":null,"fractionalValue":null,"symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"rTh7RpmrDTOD0hkY2kGcDHxSUjSjCHK5XljBfSv6YnV7OdZResdhE5RTEKLgjQvuj7X4lSCNvEyJYIi98gqhta7d0%2BpAbZDDQCT0h5llLiBKW101MImEIabM3WW6mPcO","locale":"ja-JP","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"¥2,321","priceAmount":2321.00,"currencySymbol":"¥","integerValue":"2,321","decimalSeparator":null,"fractionalValue":null,"symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"rTh7RpmrDTOD0hkY2kGcDHxSUjSjCHK5bkP0Kk8C5uAl0q3ifb7uPSqYA5Sg7oymigJj0uqd4IK57TYhUxfrp9n8P%2F62hpShitwauPDvCqoMT2%2F2uSwzJAkgAN9NzWY4bH2%2ByvnuzgXoMfks%2BuQIKpoozbTnSTawK%2BNTQjC7k6VonecfiTIuTA%3D%3D","locale":"ja-JP","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}
購入オプションとあわせ買い
Life sometimes seems illogical. Individuals do strange things: take drugs, have unprotected sex, mug each other. Love seems irrational, and so does divorce. On a larger scale, life seems no fairer or easier to fathom: Why do some neighborhoods thrive and others become ghettos? Why is racism so persistent? Why is your idiot boss paid a fortune for sitting behind a mahogany altar? Thorny questions–and you might be surprised to hear the answers coming from an economist.
But Tim Harford, award-winning journalist and author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist, likes to spring surprises. In this deftly reasoned book, Harford argues that life is logical after all. Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most unlikely places.
Using tools ranging from animal experiments to supercomputer simulations, an ambitious new breed of economist is trying to unlock the secrets of society. The Logic of Lifeis the first book to map out the astonishing insights and frustrating blind spots of this new economics in a way that anyone can enjoy.
The Logic of Lifepresents an X-ray image of human life, stripping away the surface to show us a picture that is revealing, enthralling, and sometimes disturbing. The stories that emerge are not about data or equations but about people: the athlete who survived a shocking murder attempt, the computer geek who beat the hard-bitten poker pros, the economist who defied Henry Kissinger and faked an invasion of Berlin, the king who tried to buy off a revolution.
Once you’ve read this quotable and addictive book, life will never look the same again.
But Tim Harford, award-winning journalist and author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist, likes to spring surprises. In this deftly reasoned book, Harford argues that life is logical after all. Under the surface of everyday insanity, hidden incentives are at work, and Harford shows these incentives emerging in the most unlikely places.
Using tools ranging from animal experiments to supercomputer simulations, an ambitious new breed of economist is trying to unlock the secrets of society. The Logic of Lifeis the first book to map out the astonishing insights and frustrating blind spots of this new economics in a way that anyone can enjoy.
The Logic of Lifepresents an X-ray image of human life, stripping away the surface to show us a picture that is revealing, enthralling, and sometimes disturbing. The stories that emerge are not about data or equations but about people: the athlete who survived a shocking murder attempt, the computer geek who beat the hard-bitten poker pros, the economist who defied Henry Kissinger and faked an invasion of Berlin, the king who tried to buy off a revolution.
Once you’ve read this quotable and addictive book, life will never look the same again.
- 本の長さ272ページ
- 言語英語
- 出版社Random House
- 発売日2008/1/15
- 寸法16.13 x 2.46 x 24.23 cm
- ISBN-101400066425
- ISBN-13978-1400066421
商品の説明
レビュー
“Highly readable, funny and daringly contentious . . . a whopping good time.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
“[Tim] Harford sets off on an enormously entertaining yarn backed by the findings of expert economists. He spins playfully, but smartly, across matters of sex, crime, gambling, addiction, marriage, racism, ghettos and politics, and he makes it all, well, titillating at times. Really.”
–USA Today
“Harford has a knack for explaining economic principles and problems in plain language and, even better, for making them fun.”
–The New York Times
“[Harford] is an amiable guide for the non-specialist reader . . . but his command of the subject is such that even a well-schooled economist will discover much that is new.”
–The Economist
“Highly engaging . . . entertaining and provocative.”
–Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating work with many ‘aha’ moments.”
–Booklist
“Smart, charming, penetrating, and wise.”
–Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics
“Chock-full of numbers and money talk, but oddly entertaining.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“Charming and informative.”
–Newsday
“Like Harford’s earlier book, The Undercover Economist–if you haven’t got it, get it–this book uses the basic theory of rational choice to make transparent the logic behind common but important puzzling phenomena. Even a trained economist can enjoy discovering what he didn’t realize he already knew. I did.”
–Thomas C. Schelling, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics
“This witty, intelligent book will help you see the entire world in a new light.”
–Tyler Cowen, author of Discover Your Inner Economist
From the Trade Paperback edition.
–San Francisco Chronicle
“[Tim] Harford sets off on an enormously entertaining yarn backed by the findings of expert economists. He spins playfully, but smartly, across matters of sex, crime, gambling, addiction, marriage, racism, ghettos and politics, and he makes it all, well, titillating at times. Really.”
–USA Today
“Harford has a knack for explaining economic principles and problems in plain language and, even better, for making them fun.”
–The New York Times
“[Harford] is an amiable guide for the non-specialist reader . . . but his command of the subject is such that even a well-schooled economist will discover much that is new.”
–The Economist
“Highly engaging . . . entertaining and provocative.”
–Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating work with many ‘aha’ moments.”
–Booklist
“Smart, charming, penetrating, and wise.”
–Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics
“Chock-full of numbers and money talk, but oddly entertaining.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“Charming and informative.”
–Newsday
“Like Harford’s earlier book, The Undercover Economist–if you haven’t got it, get it–this book uses the basic theory of rational choice to make transparent the logic behind common but important puzzling phenomena. Even a trained economist can enjoy discovering what he didn’t realize he already knew. I did.”
–Thomas C. Schelling, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics
“This witty, intelligent book will help you see the entire world in a new light.”
–Tyler Cowen, author of Discover Your Inner Economist
From the Trade Paperback edition.
抜粋
Chapter One
Introducing the Logic of Life
The Economics of Sex, Crime, and Minnie Mouse
Harpo Studios, Chicago
Parents, brace yourselves." With those words, Oprah Winfrey introduced America to the shocking news of the teenage oral sex craze. In The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan wrote, "The moms in my set are convinced-they're certain; they know for a fact-that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can." Flanagan poked a bit of fun, but she wasn't really laughing: She was convinced that the fears were largely justified. Indeed, the American "blow job epidemic" has now been addressed everywhere from PBS documentaries to the editorial page of The New York Times, sometimes with giddy and slightly voyeuristic horror, sometimes with calm reassurance that the epidemic is simply a myth.
The so-called epidemic is often exaggerated, but it's no myth. One recent study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, found that between 1994 and 2004, young people between ages twelve and twenty-four became more than twice as likely to report that they'd recently had oral sex. (For boys the rate climbed from 16 percent to 32 percent; for girls, from 14 percent to 38 percent.) Anecdotal evidence from experts suggests that the true increase may be even higher. I sought advice from Professor Jonathan Zenilman, an expert at Johns Hopkins University on sexually transmitted diseases. He explained to me that in 1990, perhaps half the women and a quarter of the men who came to his clinic (both teenagers and adults) sometimes performed oral sex on their partners. He believes that oral sex is now much more common: "Now it's seventy-five to eighty percent." And while it's the blow jobs that predictably have caused the panic, oral sex is now much more equitably distributed between boys and girls than in 1990. "Epidemic" might be putting it too strongly, but oral sex is definitely in vogue.
The question few people seem to have asked is "Why?" Are kids really becoming more depraved-or are they just being smart? Might there not be such a thing as a rational blow job? I'll say more about exactly what rational means later in this chapter, after we've dealt with those libidinous teenagers. But the basic idea is not complicated: Rational people respond to trade-offs and to incentives. When the costs or benefits of something change, people change their behavior. Rational people think-not always consciously-about the future as well as the present as they try to anticipate likely consequences of their actions in an uncertain world.
Armed with this basic definition of rationality, then, we can ask: What are the costs, benefits, and likely consequences of a blow job? Okay, perhaps the benefits are too obvious to be stated, particularly for the recipient. But it should also be obvious that the cost of a close relative of oral sex has risen: Regular sex is more costly than it used to be because of the spread of HIV/AIDS. HIV is much more likely to be spread by regular sex than oral sex. Many teenagers know that: One recent study of sex education concluded that it was more common for U.S. kids to be taught about HIV/AIDS than about preventing pregnancy. Teenagers may also know of other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, an infection that might make a girl infertile if transmitted through penetrative sex, but when transmitted by oral sex may have much milder symptoms, such as a sore throat. The costs of oral sex are, quite simply, lower than the costs of regular sex.
If teenage girls really do weigh those costs and benefits before going down on their boyfriends, this is a straightforward explanation for the growing popularity of oral sex. Since regular sex is riskier than it used to be, and since teenagers are unlikely to have given up on the idea of having sex, the rest is basic economics. When the price of Coca-Cola rises, rational people drink more Pepsi. When the price of an apartment in the city goes up, rational people move out to the suburbs. And when the price of penetrative sex rises, rational teenagers have more oral sex instead.
Certainly, the evidence suggests that teenagers are moving toward less risky sexual behavior. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that since the beginning of the 1990s, the number of teenage virgins has risen by over 15 percent. There are still a few million teenagers who haven't given up on sex, of course, but since the early 1990s they've switched to using birth control methods that will also protect them from sexually transmitted infections. Use of the contraceptive pill is down by nearly a fifth, but use of condoms is up by more than a third.
Perhaps Oprah shouldn't be quite so worried. Oral sex isn't a symptom of more promiscuous teenagers. In fact, it's a sign that teenagers are behaving more responsibly, in enthusiastically-and rationally-choosing an alternative to riskier sex.
This is all very cute-or horrifying, depending on your tastes. But it is also a glib explanation. Before blithely claiming that oral sex is more popular because rational teenagers know that regular sex is riskier, a real economist would want a tighter hypothesis and serious data to back it up.
That real economist might well be Thomas Stratmann, who with the law professor Jonathan Klick has pinned down the rationality of the teenage sex drive rather precisely. Rational teenagers would have less- risky sex if the cost of risky sex went up, so the question is how to work out whether that is how teenagers behave. That requires some precisely measurable source of increased cost, something more quantifiable than a general increase in the amount of education about AIDS.
The U.S. Constitution has duly obliged, by providing a federal structure that allows states to determine their rules governing teenage abortion; some permit teenagers to have abortions without the notification or consent of their parents, and some do not. Such laws provide plenty of fodder for political controversy, but they also provide a natural experiment for researchers. Since abortion notification laws make it more difficult for teenagers-but not for adults-to get an abortion, they should discourage risky sex among teens, relative to adults. If, that is, teenagers are in fact rational.
It is not hard to see that abortion notification laws raise the cost of getting pregnant, at least for those teenagers who, given the choice, would have terminated an accidental pregnancy without telling their parents. If teenagers look ahead and work all this out, they should also take extra steps to prevent that accidental pregnancy-steps which, besides that of choosing oral sex over regular sex, are likely to include more use of condoms, or perhaps no sexual activity at all.
Sex is not a calculated act, and so that degree of foresight may sound implausible, but Klick and Stratmann found persuasive evidence that abortion notification laws really do discourage teenagers from having risky sex. Looking at statistics from sexual health clinics, they found that wherever and whenever parental notification laws are passed, gonorrhea rates start to fall in the teenage population relative to the adult population-to whom, of course, the new laws do not apply. The only explanation for this would seem to be that an abortion notification law significantly raises the risk of unprotected sex, and that the teenagers rationally respond to that risk.
Sex, then, has a cost. The risk of AIDS-along with intensive education about that risk-has probably encouraged teenagers to switch to a lower-cost substitute, oral sex. The threat to careless or unlucky girls that they will have to tell Mom or Dad that they accidentally got pregnant has done something similar.
A young economist named Andrew Francis has gone still further. If oral sex is a substitute for regular sex, he reasoned, isn't it at least possible that heterosexual sex is a substitute for homosexual sex? The rise of AIDS has made it more risky than it used to be to have sex with men, making homosexuality more dangerous for men and heterosexuality more dangerous for women. If the cost of one's sexual orientation is perceived to have gone up, wouldn't we expect rational people to respond to that?
Andrew Francis stumbled upon the possibility-it remains speculative-while trawling through a survey from the early 1990s in which nearly 3,500 people were asked intimate questions about their sexual preference and sexual history. The survey also asked people whether they knew anyone with AIDS. Francis then concentrated on people whose relatives suffered from AIDS, because you can choose your friends but not your relatives: It would not be surprising, or informative, to discover that gay men knew more people with AIDS than straight men.
Francis discovered that both men and women with a relative who had AIDS were less likely to have sex with men, and less likely to say they were attracted to men. At first, that didn't seem to make much sense-the unfortunate relatives were quite likely to be gay men, but if anything, genetic theories suggest that people with gay relatives should be more likely to be gay, not less. Then he realized what was going on: "Oh my God, they were scared of AIDS!" he told Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt for The New York Times Magazine.
With that insight, everything fits. People with a relative who had AIDS were more likely to be aware of how terrible it is, especially back in the early 1990s, when treatments for AIDS were very limited and the disease killed many people within two years. Then what? Men who had a relative with AIDS were less likely to say that they found the idea of sex with men appeali...
Introducing the Logic of Life
The Economics of Sex, Crime, and Minnie Mouse
Harpo Studios, Chicago
Parents, brace yourselves." With those words, Oprah Winfrey introduced America to the shocking news of the teenage oral sex craze. In The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan wrote, "The moms in my set are convinced-they're certain; they know for a fact-that all over the city, in the very best schools, in the nicest families, in the leafiest neighborhoods, twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are performing oral sex on as many boys as they can." Flanagan poked a bit of fun, but she wasn't really laughing: She was convinced that the fears were largely justified. Indeed, the American "blow job epidemic" has now been addressed everywhere from PBS documentaries to the editorial page of The New York Times, sometimes with giddy and slightly voyeuristic horror, sometimes with calm reassurance that the epidemic is simply a myth.
The so-called epidemic is often exaggerated, but it's no myth. One recent study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, found that between 1994 and 2004, young people between ages twelve and twenty-four became more than twice as likely to report that they'd recently had oral sex. (For boys the rate climbed from 16 percent to 32 percent; for girls, from 14 percent to 38 percent.) Anecdotal evidence from experts suggests that the true increase may be even higher. I sought advice from Professor Jonathan Zenilman, an expert at Johns Hopkins University on sexually transmitted diseases. He explained to me that in 1990, perhaps half the women and a quarter of the men who came to his clinic (both teenagers and adults) sometimes performed oral sex on their partners. He believes that oral sex is now much more common: "Now it's seventy-five to eighty percent." And while it's the blow jobs that predictably have caused the panic, oral sex is now much more equitably distributed between boys and girls than in 1990. "Epidemic" might be putting it too strongly, but oral sex is definitely in vogue.
The question few people seem to have asked is "Why?" Are kids really becoming more depraved-or are they just being smart? Might there not be such a thing as a rational blow job? I'll say more about exactly what rational means later in this chapter, after we've dealt with those libidinous teenagers. But the basic idea is not complicated: Rational people respond to trade-offs and to incentives. When the costs or benefits of something change, people change their behavior. Rational people think-not always consciously-about the future as well as the present as they try to anticipate likely consequences of their actions in an uncertain world.
Armed with this basic definition of rationality, then, we can ask: What are the costs, benefits, and likely consequences of a blow job? Okay, perhaps the benefits are too obvious to be stated, particularly for the recipient. But it should also be obvious that the cost of a close relative of oral sex has risen: Regular sex is more costly than it used to be because of the spread of HIV/AIDS. HIV is much more likely to be spread by regular sex than oral sex. Many teenagers know that: One recent study of sex education concluded that it was more common for U.S. kids to be taught about HIV/AIDS than about preventing pregnancy. Teenagers may also know of other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, an infection that might make a girl infertile if transmitted through penetrative sex, but when transmitted by oral sex may have much milder symptoms, such as a sore throat. The costs of oral sex are, quite simply, lower than the costs of regular sex.
If teenage girls really do weigh those costs and benefits before going down on their boyfriends, this is a straightforward explanation for the growing popularity of oral sex. Since regular sex is riskier than it used to be, and since teenagers are unlikely to have given up on the idea of having sex, the rest is basic economics. When the price of Coca-Cola rises, rational people drink more Pepsi. When the price of an apartment in the city goes up, rational people move out to the suburbs. And when the price of penetrative sex rises, rational teenagers have more oral sex instead.
Certainly, the evidence suggests that teenagers are moving toward less risky sexual behavior. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that since the beginning of the 1990s, the number of teenage virgins has risen by over 15 percent. There are still a few million teenagers who haven't given up on sex, of course, but since the early 1990s they've switched to using birth control methods that will also protect them from sexually transmitted infections. Use of the contraceptive pill is down by nearly a fifth, but use of condoms is up by more than a third.
Perhaps Oprah shouldn't be quite so worried. Oral sex isn't a symptom of more promiscuous teenagers. In fact, it's a sign that teenagers are behaving more responsibly, in enthusiastically-and rationally-choosing an alternative to riskier sex.
This is all very cute-or horrifying, depending on your tastes. But it is also a glib explanation. Before blithely claiming that oral sex is more popular because rational teenagers know that regular sex is riskier, a real economist would want a tighter hypothesis and serious data to back it up.
That real economist might well be Thomas Stratmann, who with the law professor Jonathan Klick has pinned down the rationality of the teenage sex drive rather precisely. Rational teenagers would have less- risky sex if the cost of risky sex went up, so the question is how to work out whether that is how teenagers behave. That requires some precisely measurable source of increased cost, something more quantifiable than a general increase in the amount of education about AIDS.
The U.S. Constitution has duly obliged, by providing a federal structure that allows states to determine their rules governing teenage abortion; some permit teenagers to have abortions without the notification or consent of their parents, and some do not. Such laws provide plenty of fodder for political controversy, but they also provide a natural experiment for researchers. Since abortion notification laws make it more difficult for teenagers-but not for adults-to get an abortion, they should discourage risky sex among teens, relative to adults. If, that is, teenagers are in fact rational.
It is not hard to see that abortion notification laws raise the cost of getting pregnant, at least for those teenagers who, given the choice, would have terminated an accidental pregnancy without telling their parents. If teenagers look ahead and work all this out, they should also take extra steps to prevent that accidental pregnancy-steps which, besides that of choosing oral sex over regular sex, are likely to include more use of condoms, or perhaps no sexual activity at all.
Sex is not a calculated act, and so that degree of foresight may sound implausible, but Klick and Stratmann found persuasive evidence that abortion notification laws really do discourage teenagers from having risky sex. Looking at statistics from sexual health clinics, they found that wherever and whenever parental notification laws are passed, gonorrhea rates start to fall in the teenage population relative to the adult population-to whom, of course, the new laws do not apply. The only explanation for this would seem to be that an abortion notification law significantly raises the risk of unprotected sex, and that the teenagers rationally respond to that risk.
Sex, then, has a cost. The risk of AIDS-along with intensive education about that risk-has probably encouraged teenagers to switch to a lower-cost substitute, oral sex. The threat to careless or unlucky girls that they will have to tell Mom or Dad that they accidentally got pregnant has done something similar.
A young economist named Andrew Francis has gone still further. If oral sex is a substitute for regular sex, he reasoned, isn't it at least possible that heterosexual sex is a substitute for homosexual sex? The rise of AIDS has made it more risky than it used to be to have sex with men, making homosexuality more dangerous for men and heterosexuality more dangerous for women. If the cost of one's sexual orientation is perceived to have gone up, wouldn't we expect rational people to respond to that?
Andrew Francis stumbled upon the possibility-it remains speculative-while trawling through a survey from the early 1990s in which nearly 3,500 people were asked intimate questions about their sexual preference and sexual history. The survey also asked people whether they knew anyone with AIDS. Francis then concentrated on people whose relatives suffered from AIDS, because you can choose your friends but not your relatives: It would not be surprising, or informative, to discover that gay men knew more people with AIDS than straight men.
Francis discovered that both men and women with a relative who had AIDS were less likely to have sex with men, and less likely to say they were attracted to men. At first, that didn't seem to make much sense-the unfortunate relatives were quite likely to be gay men, but if anything, genetic theories suggest that people with gay relatives should be more likely to be gay, not less. Then he realized what was going on: "Oh my God, they were scared of AIDS!" he told Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt for The New York Times Magazine.
With that insight, everything fits. People with a relative who had AIDS were more likely to be aware of how terrible it is, especially back in the early 1990s, when treatments for AIDS were very limited and the disease killed many people within two years. Then what? Men who had a relative with AIDS were less likely to say that they found the idea of sex with men appeali...
著者について
Tim Harford is the author of the bestseller The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life and a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times, where he also writes the “Dear Economist” column. He is a regular contributor to Slate, Forbes, and NPR’s Marketplace. He was the host of the BBC TV series Trust Me, I’m an Economist and now presents the BBC series More or Less. Harford has been an economist at the World Bank and an economics tutor at Oxford University. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
登録情報
- 出版社 : Random House; 第1版 (2008/1/15)
- 発売日 : 2008/1/15
- 言語 : 英語
- ハードカバー : 272ページ
- ISBN-10 : 1400066425
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400066421
- 寸法 : 16.13 x 2.46 x 24.23 cm
- カスタマーレビュー:
著者について
著者をフォローして、新作のアップデートや改善されたおすすめを入手してください。
著者の本をもっと発見したり、よく似た著者を見つけたり、著者のブログを読んだりしましょう
カスタマーレビュー
星5つ中4.2つ
5つのうち4.2つ
全体的な星の数と星別のパーセンテージの内訳を計算するにあたり、単純平均は使用されていません。当システムでは、レビューがどの程度新しいか、レビュー担当者がAmazonで購入したかどうかなど、特定の要素をより重視しています。 詳細はこちら
108グローバルレーティング
虚偽のレビューは一切容認しません
私たちの目標は、すべてのレビューを信頼性の高い、有益なものにすることです。だからこそ、私たちはテクノロジーと人間の調査員の両方を活用して、お客様が偽のレビューを見る前にブロックしています。 詳細はこちら
コミュニティガイドラインに違反するAmazonアカウントはブロックされます。また、レビューを購入した出品者をブロックし、そのようなレビューを投稿した当事者に対して法的措置を取ります。 報告方法について学ぶ
他の国からのトップレビュー
Frank O
5つ星のうち5.0
An excellent story about human rationality
2018年3月29日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Amazon Customer
5つ星のうち2.0
Waist of time
2017年7月2日にカナダでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
No valuable information or genuine thoughts.
200 pages of some vague description of experiments that shows in general that if Your don't have the money You don't have a good living.
200 pages of some vague description of experiments that shows in general that if Your don't have the money You don't have a good living.
Don Hallford
5つ星のうち4.0
Interesting Read
2017年12月19日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
A well thought out book. Interesting concepts surrounding the facts of modern life. Made me stop and think more than a few times. Well developed theories. Would recommend to a friend.
M. Strong
5つ星のうち5.0
Learn to go past knee-jerk explanations to a deeper understanding of our world
2008年2月14日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Increasingly, economics is being used to explain the actions people take outside of their financial lives and then turned into books that are readable and, dare I say, interesting for lay people. Harford's latest work is the best of this crop that I've read so far.
What Harford does so well is pick interesting everyday topics, some big and some small, explain the rationale typically used to explain why things are the way they are, and then paint a new picture of what is driving peoples' actions. Harford explains why people will pay more to live in cities and why new tele-commuting technology will make cities more attractive, not less. He digs into the sadly explainable roots of racial discrimination in hiring and why some students are making the rational choice when they conciously decide not to study. The reasons may surprise you, but you will enjoy his explanations and frequently end up nodding in agreement or shaking your head in frustration with the inescapable but lousy conclusions.
The greatest thing about Harford's book is how clearly it demonstrates the value that economics can deliver. Done right, economics is a powerful tool for identifying the root causes of both good and bad trends. If a trend is good (Harford explains historic growth in wealth) you can learn how to promote it further. If a trend is bad (the decline of a city like New Orleans or Detroit) you can figure out how best to deal with it. Economics gives its users a tool for objective, clear thinking that is tough to come by.
Highly recommended for anyone who wants to develop their thought process. You'll come away a smarter voter, wiser consumer of news and thinking more clearly all-around.
What Harford does so well is pick interesting everyday topics, some big and some small, explain the rationale typically used to explain why things are the way they are, and then paint a new picture of what is driving peoples' actions. Harford explains why people will pay more to live in cities and why new tele-commuting technology will make cities more attractive, not less. He digs into the sadly explainable roots of racial discrimination in hiring and why some students are making the rational choice when they conciously decide not to study. The reasons may surprise you, but you will enjoy his explanations and frequently end up nodding in agreement or shaking your head in frustration with the inescapable but lousy conclusions.
The greatest thing about Harford's book is how clearly it demonstrates the value that economics can deliver. Done right, economics is a powerful tool for identifying the root causes of both good and bad trends. If a trend is good (Harford explains historic growth in wealth) you can learn how to promote it further. If a trend is bad (the decline of a city like New Orleans or Detroit) you can figure out how best to deal with it. Economics gives its users a tool for objective, clear thinking that is tough to come by.
Highly recommended for anyone who wants to develop their thought process. You'll come away a smarter voter, wiser consumer of news and thinking more clearly all-around.
Timothy Griffin
5つ星のうち3.0
readable, decent, some great stuff, contrived ending
2011年9月22日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
The Logic of Life
Overall Assessment
This is an interesting enough discussion of everyday human action reflecting rational economic calculation--however counterintuitive it seems at first blush. From my armchair this looks like part of a trend of economics grounded who-woulda-thunk-it books cashing in on *Freakonomics*, although the specific examples (see below) are usually thought provoking. Definitely written for the self-styled "advanced layman", as I flatter myself as being, so it worked for me, generally.
Brief Content Summary:
Teens engaging in oral sex, third world prostitutes not using condoms, companies promoting crooks and boneheads to multimillion dollar executive positions, poker playing game theorists, are all acting, in a sense, rationally. There is an economic logic for divorce when women have better opportunities outside dysfunctional marriages; despite our romantic ideals, we are economic thinkers when mating.
More disturbing is that segregated housing and even racially influenced employment decisions have an economic logic "rational racism": Research shows that "black looking" names are a detriment in employment applications, all other things being equal. Other research shows that, in a reinforcing cycle, minorities learn they are more likely to be rejected, see no point in excelling, which in turn reinforces the half-truth that is the basis for rejection. (I found that part so compelling and interesting I'm assigning it in my race and crime class.)
Voters are rationally ignorant because their vote counts functionally for nothing, as are the victims of special interest lobbies like the subsidized sugar industry. Revolutions against corrupt and oppressive states are rare and hard to initiate because most individuals rationally and avoid direct conflict with the state.
It ends with a somewhat clumsy apologetic for defense of property rights and an optimistic appraisal of the human prospect that can occur when (I guess this is the point), we let people act in their own interests. People innovate and create wealth. If this addendum had its own "logic of life" I missed it, to be sure.
It's funny that I write this now that Chris Ferguson, the mathematics-game-theorist whiz kid who rocked the house in Vegas using game theory principles, is among those now being indicted by the state department for a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme from his gambling website. No doubt Harford would have a "rational actor" explanation. Maybe sometimes people just do stupid stuff because they have a warped *perceived* reality.
Overall Assessment
This is an interesting enough discussion of everyday human action reflecting rational economic calculation--however counterintuitive it seems at first blush. From my armchair this looks like part of a trend of economics grounded who-woulda-thunk-it books cashing in on *Freakonomics*, although the specific examples (see below) are usually thought provoking. Definitely written for the self-styled "advanced layman", as I flatter myself as being, so it worked for me, generally.
Brief Content Summary:
Teens engaging in oral sex, third world prostitutes not using condoms, companies promoting crooks and boneheads to multimillion dollar executive positions, poker playing game theorists, are all acting, in a sense, rationally. There is an economic logic for divorce when women have better opportunities outside dysfunctional marriages; despite our romantic ideals, we are economic thinkers when mating.
More disturbing is that segregated housing and even racially influenced employment decisions have an economic logic "rational racism": Research shows that "black looking" names are a detriment in employment applications, all other things being equal. Other research shows that, in a reinforcing cycle, minorities learn they are more likely to be rejected, see no point in excelling, which in turn reinforces the half-truth that is the basis for rejection. (I found that part so compelling and interesting I'm assigning it in my race and crime class.)
Voters are rationally ignorant because their vote counts functionally for nothing, as are the victims of special interest lobbies like the subsidized sugar industry. Revolutions against corrupt and oppressive states are rare and hard to initiate because most individuals rationally and avoid direct conflict with the state.
It ends with a somewhat clumsy apologetic for defense of property rights and an optimistic appraisal of the human prospect that can occur when (I guess this is the point), we let people act in their own interests. People innovate and create wealth. If this addendum had its own "logic of life" I missed it, to be sure.
It's funny that I write this now that Chris Ferguson, the mathematics-game-theorist whiz kid who rocked the house in Vegas using game theory principles, is among those now being indicted by the state department for a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme from his gambling website. No doubt Harford would have a "rational actor" explanation. Maybe sometimes people just do stupid stuff because they have a warped *perceived* reality.