Words matter. These are the best Tim Harford Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I don’t think Brian Cox does ‘The Wonders of the Solar System’ because he believes the world would be a better place if people understood about the rings of Saturn; I just think he finds physics extremely interesting. It brings him joy, and he wants to spread the love. I feel the same about economics.
Failure is inevitable; it happens all the time in a complex economy.
In certain businesses, I would say 10 failures to one success is a perfectly acceptable ratio. Because the failures die pretty quickly, they’re not that expensive, and the successes can be really huge.
Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can.
If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that’s not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it… that’s a real problem.
I am aiming my books at anybody with no economics background.
I never understand why ‘economist makes forecast’ is ever a headline. Whether the economist in question is from the International Monetary Fund, a City forecasting group or the Treasury – a forecast is still not news.
Funnily enough, the Federal Reserve produced comics about monetary policy, and there is a good comic book guide to microeconomics and macroeconomics out there. But it is not really appropriate for younger readers; it is really aimed at economics students.
Cory Doctorow should be too busy for lunch. He’s co-editor of, and a prolific contributor to, one of the most influential blogs in the world, Boing Boing. Over the past decade the Canadian-born writer has published 16 books, mostly science fiction novels. He campaigns vigorously on the politics of the digital age.
I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank’s name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.
Our society is intertwined with the economy that we’ve built, which is a fantastically complex system. I hope that my writing about it might do some good, but that’s not why I do it.
