Chart of the Day: The Everyday Economics Bubble

Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed is tired of the Freakonomics movement:

On a plane yesterday I read Dan Ariely's bestselling behavioral economics book Predictably Irrational. It is Yet Another Humans Don't Act Like Economists Think They Should (YAHDALETTS)book, up there with Freakonomics, Undercover Economist, and the rest of that sort of thing.
Was Ariely's book any good? It was fine. There were a few decent examples, and one or two things that got me going "huh" for a minute or so, but I found it more irritating than anything else. For starters, it was poorly written, like an editor had told Ariely to write informally, and the tenured MIT prof couldn't figure out what that meant, so he just tossed off mixed metaphors and dated colloquialisms as if that would get him street cred.

More broadly, however, I had a deeper problem, and it has to do with the whole subject. Because I just don't care anymore. I'm not interested in more freakonomo-clones about those nutty human satisficers. I've heard the stories. Over and over. And I've heard enough to make me wonder how all we supposedly idiotic humans manage to step off sidewalks without being killed if we're so dumb.

I'm really, really tired of carnie cognitive sideshows about stupid mind tricks. I get it. We're dumb. We're flawed. We take mental shortcuts. I get it. Really. Now stop telling me that, and tell me something how we idiots survive in our chaotic world.

I can't say I disagree. The following chart shows the number of behavioral economics/unconventional wisdom/everyday economics books on Amazon since 1993. (The list of the individual books are at the bottom of this post. Dates represent 1st editions.)

Between 1993 and 2006, there were 12 books published. In the last 1.5 years, there've been 14.

Still, it's worth pointing out that Ariely's book is in a different category than Freakonomics or The Undercover Economist. The latter two apply traditional, i.e. rational, economic theory to subjects that 10-15 years ago were under the purview of sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and anthropologists. Not surprisingly, there's a lot to cover. But Predictably Irrational attacks the whole idea of homo economicus. So, superficially and understandably most readers are likely to lump these two different takes on economics together, but in many ways they are at odds with one another.

Could the world rest easy with a few less books in the Intelli-Porn category? Absolutely, there are only so many ways you can rehash the same ideas for a popular audience. But the empirical research which many of these books are built upon (and which has taken over as the primary endeavors of many young economists across the nation) will continue to fascinate for a while longer.

Books used for chart:

Armchair Economist -- 1993
Economics of Life -- 1996
Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them: Lessons From The New Science Of Behavioral Economics -- 1999
Irrational Exuberance -- 2000
Sex, Drugs and Economics: An Unconventional Introduction to Economics -- 2002
Naked Economics -- 2002
Crimes Against Logic -- 2004
The Wisdom of Crowds -- 2004
Undercover Economist -- 2005
Freakonomics -- 2005
More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places -- 2006
Stumbling on Happiness -- 2006
Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich -- 2007
The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters -- 2007
The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics -- 2007
The Economic Naturalist -- 2007
Super Crunchers -- 2007
More Sex Is Safer Sex -- 2007
Inside the Investor's Brain: The Power of Mind Over Money -- 2007
Discover Your Inner Economics -- 2007
Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing -- 2007
The Logic of Life 2008
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives -- 2008
Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior -- 2008
Nudge 2008
Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies: And Other Pricing Puzzles -- 2008

And if you find yourself with too many of these on your shelf, you might consider throwing some out.

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