I was in Singapore last week, promoting The Logic of Life. One feature of the book that some reviewers have picked up on is that the book contains a thoughtful, rigorous and (in my opinion) decorous few pages on the economics of oral sex. It was only as my interview schedule was nearly finished that the publicist said, “by the way, oral sex is illegal in Singapore“.

Hm. Fascinating. And it would have been nice to be told before commencing the tour of Singapore.

I was astonished when the enormous Old Theatre at the LSE was packed out at least fifteen minutes before I gave my talk on 6 Feb. Lots of people were turned away, including some for whom I’d reserved seats. I’m a bit embarassed about that, although obviously pleased that the event was popular.
But… there will be another chance to hear me talk about “The Logic of Life” at the Cass Business School on 12 March. Details are here - along with details of other talks in The Lake District, Glasgow, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Singapore, Wellington and several Australian cities too. Looks like we’ll arrange a couple more London events later in the spring, too.

The economist Lena Edlund (whose own greatest hits include an economic “Theory of Prostitution”) finds that wherever the men are rich, the women are plentiful. Women outnumber men in the cities of almost every developed country, which is why the girls from “Sex and the City” were always grumbling that all the good men are taken. In Edlund’s home country, Sweden, the towns with the highest average male income are the towns with the largest proportion of women aged 25-34. Still think that money doesn’t buy love?

That’s me writing here.

The latest round of the Marginal Revolution book forum on "The Logic of Life" has been outsourced to Megan McArdle at Atlantic Monthly - and I am way behind, apologies. The subject of the chapter is "Why Your Boss is Overpaid". Megan is focusing especially on CEO pay.

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

I have a piece up at Forbes.com trying to unravel why governments so unerringly back losers:

There’s a more sinister logic behind the pattern of government favoritism. Namely, firms in emerging, competitive industries have virtually no incentive to lobby for government hand-outs, while firms in aging, shrinking industries have the most to gain.
Here’s why: Firms in an open, competitive, growing young industry have little to gain from government support. More government funding for, say, biotechnology, is going to mean more biotechnology companies, more competition and (perhaps) more innovation. That might be good for America, but probably not much good for any single biotech company. Sure, they’ll all enjoy the government help, but each must weigh that assistance against the swarm of new competitors attracted by the handouts. No one firm would choose to hire top lobbyists and send them to D.C. to bring back the pork.
By contrast, firms in aging, shrinking, capital-intensive industries have everything to gain from government support. Because the industry is shrinking and it’s expensive to enter–think steel mills–the government subsidies and tax breaks are probably not going to attract new competitors. If there are no new competitors, the old guard gets to pocket all the money.

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.

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

I have a piece up in Wired:

As a columnist (which is fancy for "journalist in jammies"), I ought to personify the conventional wisdom that distance is dead: All I need to get my work done is a place to perch and a Wi-Fi signal. But if that’s true, why do I still live in London, the second-most expensive city in the world?
If distance really didn’t matter, rents in places like London, New York, Bangalore, and Shanghai would be converging with those in Hitchcock County, Nebraska (population 2,926 and falling). Yet, as far as we can tell through the noise of the real estate bust, they aren’t. Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko talks instead of "superstar cities," which have become the equivalent of luxury goods — highly coveted and ultra-expensive. If geography has died, nobody bothered to tell Hitchcock County.
Maybe it’s because society hasn’t wholeheartedly accepted the idea of working remotely. Or perhaps communications technology just isn’t all it’s hyped up to be. After all, the journalists and consultants who tell us that location is insignificant are biased. Like me, they’re the people whose lives have been most transformed by the Internet and cell phones.
But I think the truth is more profound than either of those glib explanations: Technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work…

The full piece is here, subscription-free. The research on Google I wrote about in Saturday’s FT Magazine was published after Wired went to press, but it strongly supports the argument, I think.