The Undercover Economist

Hoho finally finished reading this book. Thanks to my self-declared study week (so no work). Intend to read this book while taking a break or before sleep. But soon, it overtaken the time im supposed to be revising. Haha!

A brief scan through of his chapters:

1. Who Pays For Your Coffee
2. What Supermarket Dont Want You To Know
3. Prefect Markets and the 'World Of Truth'
4. Crosstown Traffic
5. The Inside Story
6. Rational Insanity
7. The Men Who Knew the Value of Nothing
8. Why Poor Countries Are Poor
9. Beer, Fries, and Globalization
10. How China Grow Rich

Not going to repeat the mistake i had with Buyology, which is to refer to the book and bring out some of its point. If do so, i will be another long post, dry and boring. So this time, my approach will be just to touch on "what i think/like about this book", a closed book review.

Concepts. This book came in while I'm in the mid of revising for my exams, which need to memorise key concepts of theories.. Was surprised to see keywords appearing in this book, but not from my economic module. From Marketing: Price Targeting, Game Theory.. Banking And Finance:
Adverse Selection, Moral Hazard. Typical Economic terms: Demand & Supply, Marginal cost/utility. But he had made it easy for readers to understand these terms.

There's more, but cant recall without referring which I'm not intend to do so. So this brings me to a point that, the theories which i learnt from PBF and PMKG could be brought over from economics to explain the situations/events in their related field.

Style of writing. Had read freakonomics (another similar book on economics). Find Freakonomics not as engaging as this writer. His opening for a new chapter can be as long as 3-4 pages before going into the main points. He illustrates some of his points using simple activities such as shopping in supermarket, the frustration from traffic jams and even just drinking of Starbucks coffee. Slowly adding in the economic concepts and elaborate his point further.

Perspective on Economic. Got to learn of economic from school. Always the DD and SS (demand and supply), Relationship between IR (interest rates) and P (Prices). GDP, GNP, blah blah blah.. So much of text books theories, figures and statistics. He wrote this topics within his Chapter, Crosstown Traffic, named "Epilogue: What is Economics really about". Stated in his sentences (ok~ i flipped the book) "Most economics has very little to do with GDP. Economics is about who gets what and why." Wah can see lights shining above me liao..

Whats next. Ya its going to be Microtrends.
But my last point isn't about what book im reading next. After finishing this book, it had a few other topics which I'm keen on reading about. Ageing Population, Globalisation..

I'm not good at choosing books. Hence only choose based on a few methods.
Interesting titles (buyology, freakonomics)
Topics they are covering, whether they can attach me when i just browse through them in bookshops (Microtrend, Undercover Economist).
Recommendation from others (robin cook's book)
Loyalty to the Author. Continue reading the author's other books
Recommended/Mentioned in other books/magazine. For them to be about to be mention, should be good. Although can subject to marketing plots


Why can't revision be easier
C Cube