It’s this Wednesday at the London School fo Economics. Here’s more about "The Logic of Life"; Hamish McRae will be in the chair.. All are welcome, the details are here.

Date: Wednesday 6 February 2008
Time: 6:30-8pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Tim Harford
Chair: Hamish McRae

From teenage sex to the scourge of racism, Tim Harford explains why economics can provide the answers other disciplines cannot reach.

Tim Harford is the author of The Undercover Economist, is a member of the Financial Times editorial board and writes a regular column for the FT magazine.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. If you are planning to attend this event and would like details on how to get here and what time to arrive, please refer to Coming to an event at LSE

Yesterday saw my date with destiny - and very nearly a date with Stephen Colbert, the charismatic right-wing loon who hosts The Colbert Report. I hope I am not breaking any confidences when I say that out of character, Stephen is charming and very empathetic. That said, he stays in character a lot - backstage is a pretty nerve-wracking experience. During our interview he managed to get me to urge the nation’s children to start smoking, compare oral sex to Pepsi, and announce that our brain is our gut. Not bad for four minutes - for the remaining 8 seconds I kept my dignity very well.
Earlier in the week I spoke to the Googlers; forty minutes instead of four and gentle but intelligent questioning. I’d like to tell you more about Google but they zapped me with a special mind ray and I can’t recall a thing, except bright lights and soft voices.
Links to both Colbert and Google are here.

While I’ve been out of the country, my British publishers decided to publish "The Logic of Life" early and not tell me. So, all you Brits, please buy a copy!

From The Onion, "I’ve Got a Lot of Love to Barter":

Relationships are a two-way street, and you can’t expect to make them work unless you’re willing to get out there and risk being hurt. Took me a long time to learn that, but now that I’m ready to open my heart to another person, it’s only a matter of time before I find my soulmate. So look out, world, because I’ve got a whole lot of love to give to the first person who can match that love with a similar offer or its equivalent in luxury items, birthday and anniversary presents, or cash.

The writer is female; unlucky. Chapter three of "The Logic of Life" points out that women in most cities in the developed world open their bartering from a weak positiion because there are not enough men to go around.

I apologise. This blog seems to be mutating from "Tim Harford talks about everyone else" to "everyone else talks about Tim Harford". It is just a passing phase, I assure you. I almost didn’t link to this nice profile by David Smith, economics editor of the Sunday Times, but perhaps readers of this blog might be interested:

Tim Harford, despite his jacket, jeans and baseball boots, still looks like the Oxford economics tutor he used to be. But now he has become a bestselling author, and he has done it by applying the economics he used to teach his students to real life…
His second book, The Logic of Life, is published next week by Little, Brown. Harford is one of life’s nice guys, so it is a bit of a shock to open the new book and go straight into oral sex, apparently the rational choice of American teenagers worried about Aids or abortion. But like its predecessor it is never short of interest.

Update: While we’re at on the subject of The Logic of Life, a nice long piece by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit in the New York Post, entitled "Milton Friedman explains Mr Big". And Marginal Revolution’s book forum continues.

Marginal Revolution is hosting a book forum on "The Logic of Life". The last such forum - on Greg Clark’s "Farewell to Alms" - was superb. I have high hopes for this one. The first expert reviewer is Bryan Caplan of George Mason University. Comments are closed in order to realise economies of scale - if you’d like to join in the discussion, Marginal Revolution is the place.

In the comments, "Lee" asks:

1. Why the US edition of The Logic of Life is published first;
2. Why the covers and subtitles are different;
3. Is there a significant difference between the two books?

Fair enough, and a few emails suggest other people are wondering the same thing. The answers are not mysterious:

1. The US edition is first because somebody had to be first (I cannot promote the book in two places at once). The US is first, probably because they were first to publish "Undercover Economist", which in turn was because the US publisher bought it first. Last time the gap was five months; this time it is just three weeks.
2. Why the different covers and subtitles? Different publishers come to different conclusions about what will sell in different markets. Are they right? We’ll never know, I suspect.
3. No, there is barely any difference between the two editions, but do feel free to collect the set.

You can compare the two covers here.

Okay, I admit it. Adam Smith did visit a pin factory. David Warsh has the details; I reviewed his excellent book here. Thanks to Gavin Kennedy for pointing out the error, for which I am sorry.

Ray Fisman explores the question in Slate:

A few years ago, Bill Cosby set off a firestorm with a speech excoriating his fellow African-Americans for, among other things, buying $500 sneakers instead of educational toys for their children…But notably absent from the Cosby affair have been the underlying economic facts. Do blacks actually spend more on consumerist indulgences than whites? And if so, what, exactly, makes black Americans more vulnerable to the allure of these luxury goods?

The truth, says Fisman, is yes, but that the effect is a statistical artefact. Many people, black and white, conspicuously consume in an attempt to win status. But what if (as is true) African-American households tend to be poorer than white households? And what if (as is likely) African-American households tend to compare themselves to other African-American households?
In that case, a poor white household will tend to be surrounded by richer households and will opt out of the status game, while a poor African-American household will tend to be surrounded by similarly poor households, meaning that the status game is worth playing.
That’s the intuition behind the argument, which comes from:

Economists Kerwin Charles, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov have taken up this rather sensitive question in a recent unpublished study, "Conspicuous Consumption and Race.

Kerwin Charles is one of the most interesting economists around at the moment, and features in The Logic of Life. Here’s an article I wrote about Dr Charles’s work on marriage markets; here’s one about car-pooling and social capital.

I am delighted that the London School of Economics is hosting my public lecture on "The Logic of Life", with the excellent Hamish McRae in the chair.. All are welcome, the details are here.

Date: Wednesday 6 February 2008
Time: 6:30-8pm
Venue: Old Theatre, Old Building
Speaker: Tim Harford
Chair: Hamish McRae

From teenage sex to the scourge of racism, Tim Harford explains why economics can provide the answers other disciplines cannot reach.

Tim Harford is the author of The Undercover Economist, is a member of the Financial Times editorial board and writes a regular column for the FT magazine.

This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Entry is on a first come, first served basis. If you are planning to attend this event and would like details on how to get here and what time to arrive, please refer to Coming to an event at LSE