economic naturalist

Robert H Frank presents a collection of reworked student essays on economics applied to real life situations. Each is short, perhaps a page or more, with titles such as ‘Why do women endure the discomfort of high heels?' or ‘Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?'

Good introduction to the way that economists think about some problems. Breaks down many issues in an analytical way, outlining the apparent discrepancy and attempting to explain it. I think it falls down in that it gets repetitive very quickly, and also due to the sometimes speculative nature of the explanations. For example, one question dealing with the varying popularity of text messaging from one country to another resorted to ‘national character' as an unsatisfactory answer.

Useful for those new to economics, perhaps, but may overextend the applicability of economic concepts in some areas. While such uses are plausible, often they are unnecessary and overcomplicate where a simple common sense answer would suffice.