20 years ago, a book called Freakonomics became an instant bestseller and worldwide sensation. Tim Harford got his hands on the first copy that Steve Levitt ever signed... and promptly sold it on eBay. In this Cautionary Conversation, the pair are reunited to discuss the Freakonomics phenomenon, why Levitt left the hostile world of academia,…

Tim Harford

18.04.2025

How to cure ‘premature enumeration’ | Tim Harford

John von Neumann — the man who created game theory, advanced many branches of mathematics and physics, and did more than anyone to design the modern computer — was someone who attracted a certain amount of mythology. One story about von Neumann has a colleague setting him a fun puzzle. In this puzzle, two trains,…

Tim Harford

25.04.2025

Elon Musk is wrong about GDP | Tim Harford

Of all the dubious claims uttered recently by Elon Musk, I have yet to see a more interesting one than his tweet asserting that “a more accurate measure of GDP would exclude government spending. Otherwise, you can scale GDP artificially high by spending money on things that don’t make people’s lives better.” Whether or not…

Tim Harford

26.04.2025

Cautionary Tales – Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic) | Tim Harford

Two of the greatest economists who ever lived, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes, thought they could predict the future and make a killing on the stock market. Both of them failed to see the Wall Street crash, the greatest financial disaster of the age – and arguably, of any age. Yet having made the same forecasting…

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Tim Harford

Economy

Cautionary Tales – “I love being the person who doesn’t know anything” | Tim Harford

How to cure ‘premature enumeration’ | Tim Harford

Elon Musk is wrong about GDP | Tim Harford

Cautionary Tales – Buried by the Wall Street Crash (Classic) | Tim Harford

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Tim Harford