Tim Harford
Not All Economists Have Neat Bookshelves
Intro
Tim Harford, although now a famous economist, doesn’t like to think in discrete terms. He is a disruptor—someone who lives outside the box—and has made a name for himself through his famous research and writing on economic and psychological concepts. Since starting “The Undercover Economist,” a weekly column in the Financial Times in which he explains the economic concepts behind our day-to-day tasks, Harford has written ten books, spoken three times for TED, and hosted multiple podcasts. These include “More or Less” and “50 Things that Made the Modern Economy” on BBC, as well as his latest hit from Pushkin Industries, entitled “Cautionary Tales.” Harford’s early writing focuses on making economic concepts accessible to everyday readers. His work has expanded into the fields of behavioral science and psychology, as he examines concepts like attention, rationality, creativity, and decision making.
Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, now commonly applied to economists.
– Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
