Tim Harford
Tim Harford
Tim Harfordis an English economist and journalist who lives in London. He is the author of four economics books and writes his longrunning Financial Times column, "The Undercover Economist", syndicated in Slate magazine, which reveals the economic ideas behind everyday experiences. His new column, "Since you asked", offers a sceptical look at the news of the week...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEconomist
struggle mean errors
Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.
design trying world
We should not try to design a better world. We should make better feedback loops.
motivation inspiration years
Ten percent of American businesses disappear every year. ... It's far higher than the failure rate of, say, Americans. Ten percent of Americans don't disappear every year. Which leads us to conclude American businesses fail faster than Americans, and therefore American businesses are evolving faster than Americans.
unions company european-union
A lot of international companies invest in the U.K. as a base for doing business with the rest of the European Union.
thinking enemy firsts
There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).
real mean emotional
If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that's not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it... that's a real problem.
economy inevitable happens
Failure is inevitable; it happens all the time in a complex economy.
party scotland government
We now have political chaos. We've got parties in Ireland saying they want to merge with Northern Ireland. You've got parties in Scotland saying you want to leave the U.K. You've got the Spanish government saying it would like to take ownership of Gibraltar which is a British overseas territory. So that - just the politics of this is a mess.
real book player
Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.
book economics backgrounds
I am aiming my books at anybody with no economics background.
innovation
Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying.
country people pay
Norway has a relationship with the EU which is very close. It has to accept most EU rules. It has to pay EU membership fees. It has free movement of people just like other EU countries, but it's not actually in the EU.
phones cells ideas
How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.
thinking giving advice
Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.