Author Archives: Diane Coyle

Indians, Turks and Homo Economicus

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There are still a few of my holiday reads I’ve not yet posted about. One was Amit Chaudhuri’s [amazon_link id=”1908526181″ target=”_blank” ]Calcutta: Two Years in the City[/amazon_link], the author’s reflections on moving back to a city he had known well as a child, his conversations with people he met in the streets and in other ways, on Bengali culture (virtually unknown to me save for a couple of Satyajit Ray films and what bits I’ve picked up from reading Amartya Sen, for example in [amazon_link id=”0141012110″ target=”_blank” ]The Argumentative Indian[/amazon_link]). There is little about the economy in it, although plenty of observation. Chaudhuri writes:

“Will someone in the social sciences write a dissertation on how the rise of individualism in Bengal (in contrast to the West) destroyed rather than energised entrepreneurship, at least on home ground; how, in India, caste and community drive capital and the free market?”

I presume somebody has but don’t know – maybe a reader can give some pointers?

[amazon_image id=”1908526181″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Calcutta: Two Years in the City[/amazon_image]

I read, too, Orhan Pamuk’s early novel [amazon_link id=”0571275958″ target=”_blank” ]Silent House[/amazon_link] – out in a new English paperback, although it was his 2nd novel, written in 1983. I’m a huge fan of his work. This one is set at a time 30 years ago of political and social tension between modern, affluent, urban young people and their poor, rural, unsuccessful counterparts – so well worth reading now. Like [amazon_link id=”0571218318″ target=”_blank” ]Snow[/amazon_link], it achieves the great imaginative accomplishment of helping the reader completely understand how some people come to hold such different, and unappealing, views.

[amazon_image id=”0571275958″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Silent House[/amazon_image]

I thought both books were great – good reads and able to give the reader a real sense of another world, where people think and behave differently. A reminder of the importance of culture to social science, and an antidote to the (sometimes useful) assumption of homo economicus.

What every traveller wants

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We were away at a wedding in Somerset this weekend and stayed at a wonderful bed & breakfast, The Manor House in West Compton. (The website is down – I’ll add a link later.) Apart from the lovely 15th century house in quiet countryside, kind hosts, comfortable room, beautiful paintings and furnishings, excellent full English breakfast and tea-making facilities with chocolate digestives on the side, this was on the landing outside our room:

Bookshelves

The internet of stuff

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Andrew Blum’s [amazon_link id=”0670918989″ target=”_blank” ]Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet[/amazon_link] was another holiday book. It was a decent enough on the terrace with a cool drink in between swims, but I was somewhat disappointed in it. The book starts with the author’s home internet connection being lost due to a squirrel chewing through a cable in his yard, and this sets off a quest to track down the physical infrastructure delivering what we all now consider to be more or less a human right, namely broadband internet access.

[amazon_image id=”0670918989″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet[/amazon_image]

This subject fascinates me, at least since I first read about the new tunnel for fibre-optic cable being driven through the Allegheny Mountains to speed the connection between the Chicago and New York financial markets by a few nanoseconds. Also the question of where the internet servers on which ‘the cloud’ sits are located and what that implies for, say, the balance of payments, or privacy for that matter. Not to mention who owns all the cables and infrastructure, how they interconnect, where the value sits in the value chain, and all that jazz.

So Tubes starts out well and has a number of interesting sections in which the author visits various key locations such as the London Internet Exchange, or the Google and Facebook data centres in Oregon, or the seaside spots in Cornwall and Portugal joined by a new undersea cable. Still, I felt he didn’t tell me enough about these places – fantastic access without enough detail or analysis. Maybe that has something to do with the terms on which he was allowed to visit, although that’s never stated.

Interestingly, Facebook emerges as a far more open company than Google when it comes to Blum’s visits to the data centres – he isn’t even allowed in through the door at their data center – which is also obscured on Google Maps. I wonder if Facebook has changed its approach since the visit?

So I would recommend reading Tubes, which is entertaining and well-written. But I’m still looking for something more analytical about the physical reality of the internet and the intangible economy it is creating.

Walking, thinking and writing

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One of my holiday reads was Robert Macfarlane’s [amazon_link id=”0141030585″ target=”_blank” ]The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot[/amazon_link], a very enjoyable collection of essays on his various walks, some by sea. Like Rebecca Solnit in her wonderful book [amazon_link id=”1844675580″ target=”_blank” ]Wanderlust: A History of Walking[/amazon_link], Macfarlane says the rhythm of walking helps him think.

[amazon_image id=”0141030585″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot[/amazon_image]

I agree, although often for me it’s my stately (ie. slow) jog around the park with the dog each morning. Perhaps the physical motion actually jiggles one’s brainwaves into a different state? The other mechanism I have for thinking is writing. It’s almost impossible to structure thoughts without getting words onto paper or screen, and sometimes the words seem to bypass consciousness.

The hardest thing of all is just sitting and thinking. Hence the productivity paradox: one is least likely to have good ideas by sitting at a desk trying to have good ideas, and much more likely to do so when in motion.

Not walking but running

Where to start learning about economics?

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A Twitter correspondent (thank you @alaninbelfast!) has alerted me to the decision by the Cite des Sciences (@citedessciences) to cover economics in a year-long exhibition. He asks, what are the best introductory books for somebody who knows nothing about economics?

There are lots and lots of introductory books available, so where to start is a good question. I’m a huge fan of Tim Harford’s [amazon_link id=”1408704242″ target=”_blank” ]The Undercover Economist[/amazon_link], which demonstrates how microeconomics (covering individuals, businesses, and specific markets) is used in a range of everyday contexts, not least because it turned my economics-refusnik teenage son into an economist when he grew up. Tim’s new book, [amazon_link id=”1408704242″ target=”_blank” ]The Undercover Economist Strikes Back [/amazon_link]is about macroeconomics (the economy as a whole, GDP, inflation and all that jazz). I’ve not read it yet – I’m sure it’s excellent, but macroeconomics itself is in a less solid state than microeconomics.

[amazon_image id=”1408704242″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run or Ruin an Economy[/amazon_image]

David Smith’s books are all clear and accessible and there is a newish edition of his [amazon_link id=”1781250111″ target=”_blank” ]Free Lunch[/amazon_link]. John Kay looks more at markets and business – [amazon_link id=”0140296727″ target=”_blank” ]The Truth About Markets[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”0954809300″ target=”_blank” ]Everlasting Lightbulbs[/amazon_link] would be good ones to start with. I quite liked too [amazon_link id=”0857081144″ target=”_blank” ]What You Need to Know About Economics[/amazon_link] by George Buckley and Sumeet Desai. I have to recommend my own [amazon_link id=”0691143161″ target=”_blank” ]The Soulful Science[/amazon_link], which is more about the frontiers of economics, the exciting newer developments like behavioural economics.The classic on the history of economic thought is Robert Heilbronner’s [amazon_link id=”068486214X” target=”_blank” ]The Worldly Philosophers[/amazon_link], and it hasn’t yet been bettered for the general or new reader.

[amazon_image id=”0691143161″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters (Revised Edition)[/amazon_image]

Geoff Riley of tutor2u provides a long list of recommendations that range from introductions to economics to recent, accessible books that will reward students and newbies.

My recommendations overlap substantially with others I’ve found online- such as this one from Kingsmead Academy for A/AS students, but it also gives the leading textbook titles for anybody who becomes sufficiently interested. And the great new(ish) (non-book) online resource is MR University, terrific stuff there.