I just finished reading The Elusive Quest For Growth and The Undercover Economist and I have to give a two thumbs up recommendation for both.
The Elusive Quest For Growth chronicles the attempts over the years to get poor countries to grow economically. It makes for depressing reading, but at leasts confirms my opinion that bad government is the number one problem for developing countries. Sadly, knowing that doesn’t make the problem easier, because how do you change the incentives that make everyone’s best interest to steal now to incentives that make everyone’s best interest to, well, obey property laws or put another way, to take money now versus to provide something in return for money later?
The Undercover Economist is an excellent primer in economic thinking and covers a lot of ground. Mr Harford provides clear explanations by first starting with familiar situations and then scaling them up to more general or important ones. My only sour note was in the brief discussion of used cars – the way I see dealers getting around the assymetric information problem is through warantees – by standing behind every car they sell — and not on spending money on buildings to indicate they will be around later (at least in the US).
If I had books like this to read back in my econ 101 days instead of dry academic textbooks, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long for me to discover the joys of economics.
