Hidden Order : Economics of Everyday Life, The

Rating:
Summary: Must Read For the Economics Student
Review: As the title indicates, David Friedman's Hidden Order is a great supplement to any microeconomics course. Although many of the books' analogies will amuse most readers, a casual reader who does not understand microeconomics will be lost by Friedman's indifference curves and budget constraints. It seems that he has taken a typical microeconomics book and tried to make it more exciting with fun and interesting examples.

If you are an economic's student, the book will help to add to the learning involved in thinking about economic issues since it uses an "economic naturalist" approach. Economic naturalism attempts to help students to "see" the principles of economics at work in every day life. Friedman uses numerous examples like babies, dating and rush hour traffic to help explain human behavior through the lens of economic thought. His analogies are often humorous and well-supported by basic theory learned in micro 101, but I found myself bored with many of the graphs that he uses to support his examples (and I have taught economics for two years to college sophomores). The book would have been much more fun if Friedman dispensed with the charts and micro jargon, assuming that the reader understands the theory. If you don't understand it, don't waste your time with this book. The analogies will be interesting, but the supporting theory will seem tedious.

But, if you are a student of economics or a professor looking for a compendium of great examples to use in class (or a supplement to the text you are using), this book holds much potential. If you have never taken an economics course, I would look for another book.

Rating:
Summary: Admirable (And Limited) In Its Simplicity
Review: David Friedman's gift is making some of the more complicated concepts of economics simple. In _Hidden Order_, he does this with his trademark wit and ingenuity. The most esoteric yet essential aspects of modern economic thought - marginal utility, indifference curves, opportunity costs, Nash equilibria, rent-seeking, etc - all come to life in this modest paperback.

Unfortunately, it is Friedman's penchant for simple explanations that leads to some of his odder conclusions (for instance, check out his explanation on why movie theatres charge so much for popcorn). This is a nagging trend in "Chicago school" economics: reasoning outwards from a textbook principle in order to rationalize the evidence, rather than collecting evidence and reasoning backwards.

Even with that aside, Friedman's _Hidden Order_ is an introductory primer of rare quality.

PRO:
+ Clear, concise, and clever.
+ Graphs and charts to illustrate the trickier points.
+ Bibliography at the end of each chapter. Further reading for a more detailed look into each topic.
+ Assumes almost no knowledge of economics; starts from the beginning (the motivation for action) and continues from there.

CON:
+ Friedman's odder theories about behavior may strike the reader as "quaint."
+ Tends to give examples rather than definitions. For instance, he never comes out and says, "Rent-seeking is any kind of behavior X ...", but he gives very thorough examples of what rent-seeking is.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent second-stage primer
Review: Like Steven Landsburg's "Armchair Economist," David Friedman's "Hidden Order" is an excellent primer in basic economics. Any book that helps bring real economics (as opposed to pseudo talk-show/pundit/political speech "economics") to an understandable level is good in my book, even if occasionally flawed.

"Armchair" did a good-to-excellent job of boiling down complex economic questions and answers. "Hidden Order" does so as well, but note that it's not for the light-hearted; plenty of graphs are available, and one not versed in Econ 101 may become temporarily lost. Thankfully, Friedman shores up his chapters by proving the theory with graphs, then stating "Here it is in English..." This allows readers who are not graphically inclined to skip over it without losing much understanding, while readers more interested in finding the proof behind the claim can peruse the mathematics at their leisure.

Still, it's not all perfect. There's some issues that he goes into great length, but others are touched on and left hanging. In part this is to reduce the down time for an already-sluggish topic, but the length for each issue varies quite a bit. And I have no idea why a parking meter is on the cover.

Rating:
Summary: Welcome to Chicago
Review: On p. 174 and 175, David Friedman talks about misguided ways of "conserving" renewable resources, such as trees and elephants. He points out that if you ban the use of ivory, you reduce the incentive for people to raise elephants, and you could end up reducing the supply of elephants.

I xeroxed those pages and gave them to my 5th-grader to give to her teacher. That teacher was happily indoctrinating her students into the politically correct view that banning the use of ivory is good policy.

This is economics at its best--showing the fallacy of a common viewpoint with simple logic. There is much of that in this book.

This book is "Chicago economics" through and through. You get the pragmatic justification for the assumption that people maximize their well being. You get the invasions of other territory, such as politics and marriage. And you get everything presented on diagrams with lines and curves.

It's the diagrams that make me hesitant to recommend this book to a casual reader. I can see their usefulness in a classroom, where you draw them in front of a captive audience. But I think that Friedman should try a different approach if he wants to make the book accessible to someone who is not in an economics class.

Rating:
Summary: A Useful Tool
Review: The title of this book alone sparked intrigue for me. I am not a business savvy student and sometimes I fail to remain interested in what we read in our textbooks. So when I saw that a book could explain the relevance to everyday life, I was ready to read.
The great thing about this book is that every idea, every thought, every lesson is backed up by an example. The examples are not fabricated situations that seem impossible in real life. They are applicable to our daily lives. David Friedman uses everything from the grocery store lines to traffic jams to help explain concepts such as economic equilibrium. By using real examples that pertain to my life, I am able to see economics more clearly.
Reading this book along with an economic textbook is a great idea. It gives a different perspective on important lessons to help give complete understanding. It's not a particularly easy read, but if it is taken seriously, it is a great tool to help understand economics. I would recommend it to anyone striving to learn more.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent second-stage primer
Review: This book can best be summarized as "An Introductory MicroEconomics class, explained simply, without much math."
The cover picture and subtitle greatly enticed me into reading this book. As I look back, I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, something along the lines of, "Here's what happens in our world today, and here's why it's wrong (or right) from an economics point of view. Isn't it funny that noone realizes that?" From one angle, that is sort of what this book is. However, I took a Microeconomics class in college. Because of that, I would more accurately describe it using my summary statement above.
There are some very interesting parts of the book, but they're only interesting if you don't already know anything about economics. I had a bit of a hard time enjoying the book because most everything I had learned before; I knew where the author was going with his explanations. Keep in mind though that that was my personal drawback -- if you haven't taken (or understood) economics, you probably won't have that problem.
Otherwise, this book could be quite enjoyable and engaging for anyone without economics experience who is willing to think. You cannot simply fly through this book -- there are diagrams, and logical verbal proofs. However, it is light on the math, so that shouldn't scare you away.

Rating:
Summary: Hidden Order: An AP Microeconomics Student's Perspective
Review: This book was easy to read, helpful, and gave interesting and unique examples for common economic theories. This is a great book to use in an AP class! Paired with our economics textbook, this reading explained the phenomena that we read about in the textbook.

Rating:
Summary: Hidden Agenda
Review: This is one of those books I thought I was really going to like. It has that attitude--you know--where you think you're going to end up knowing true stuff about interesting aspects of everyday economic life that ordinary people are always misinformed about. Not!

I had to stop reading after three chapters, well four actually, as I skipped to Chapter 17 which was supposedly going to make the potato subsidy analysis more realistic (a promise unfulfilled as far as I could tell).

This may be the worst book on economics, or the worst book period, I have attempted to read in a while. Why is it so bad? Let me count the ways.

For starters, the writing is terrible. Try this "sentence": "SO if 10% more income is enough to let me buy what I bought last year, THEN 10% more income would make me better off than I was last year, SO some smaller increase in income would make me as well off as I was last year, SO prices have increased by less than 10%." [capitalizations not in original] If that resonates with you, you may like the book.

Blatant errors come quickly: in the very first pair of graphs, one is wrong.

Perhaps there is an clue early on that the reader should be wary of taking any of this book seriously. When discussing the economics of reselling textbooks in Chapter 2, Friedman says, "In more realistic cases the answer is more complicated." That should be a label tacked on every analysis I've looked at in the book.

The analyses are often misleading at best and completely in error at worst. If you get this book, make sure you first understand indifference curves, as the book relies on them but does not explain them. One is tempted to think the lack of explanation is purposeful, as the measure they represent is an imaginary quantity: utils; and the difference between two sets of utils (i.e., two indifference curves) in any given analysis could be inconsequential (or not). Secondly, and very importantly, make sure you precisely label and put representative numbers on each graph's axes--again something that Friedman does not do (one wonders why). Finally, don't buy into any results unless you're pretty sure all relevant factors are considered.

Chapter 3 begins the graphical analyses and muddled methodology is soon apparent as Friedman purports to prove changes in house prices in either direction always make you better off! Label the axes appropriately, assign representative numbers along each, apply a percentage for selling costs for the sell-and-buy-another-house option budget lines, draw everything correctly, and you will see that his analysis and conclusion are erroneous.

This book is probably a good read for zealous adherents of conservative/libertarian economic philosophy who will find ammunition for preconceived notions and not care if the quality of analysis is good or bad--it sounds good. I don't know who else might want to slog through this. Instead, if you are somewhat literate in economic theory, try Keen's Debunking Economics for better logic, deeper insight, and more realistic economics.