1
The Tyranny of Spreadsheets
Early last October my phone rang. On the line was a researcher calling from Today, the BBC’s agenda-setting morning radio programme. She told me that something strange had happened, and she hoped I…
Tim Harford
The Undercover Economist
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Visit timharford.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Sep 2011 – Aug 2026
Society, Policy & Culture 27Tech Industry & Business 17Life, Learning & Writing 4Career & Management 4Math & Algorithms 1Design & UX 1
2
The case for ending Amazon’s dominance
It should not be difficult to love Amazon. To consumers, it offers choice and convenience. Countless internet ventures have relied on its cheap, flexible cloud computing services to start and scale…
3
A universal income is not such a silly idea
The concept of paying people to sit around has an upside, writes Tim Harford ‘Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult.” Reuters, 4 October 2013 How much is that? It’s about £1,700…
4
What We Get Wrong About Technology
Blade Runner (1982) is a magnificent film, but there’s something odd about it. The heroine, Rachael, seems to be a beautiful young woman. In reality, she’s a piece of technology — an organic robot …
5
Too many people are buying cars using financial products they do not understand
It was free!” announces Bob the Dinosaur, an adorable moron from the Dilbert cartoon. Bob is driving a bright red convertible. “They just make you sign papers!”, he elaborates. That cartoon is a qu…
6
Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic
Readers with long memories may recall the brief, inglorious UK fuel shortage of a few weeks ago, which was mostly caused by the rush to refuel for fear the pumps would run dry. Some petrol stations…
7
What makes the perfect office?
In 1923, the father of modern architecture, Le Corbusier, was commissioned by a French industrialist to design some homes for workers in his factory near Bordeaux. Le Corbusier duly delivered brigh…
8
The value of institutional memory
In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an …
9
The curious economics of being ripped off on holiday
I once wrote that there are two types of charges: the ones you see coming and the ones you don’t. Perhaps I was too reductive. There’s a third category: the fees that you know are looming, but the …
10
Microsoft Office could be a bigger productivity drain than Candy Crush
A few weeks before Christmas, an impish chart appeared on the Bank of England’s unofficial blog. It compared plunging productivity with the soaring shipments of smartphones. Typical productivity gr…
11
The high price we pay for social media
Sitting exams is unpleasant at the best of times, but my daughter believes she has extra cause to complain. Two of her A-level papers are scheduled for the same time, so she must take a break betwe…
12
What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
It is hard not to be impressed — and perhaps a little alarmed — by the progression. In 1997, IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue beat the world’s greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov. It was a hugely ex…
13
Fossil fuels could have been left in the dust 25 years ago
Gordon Moore’s famous prediction about computing power must count as one of the most astonishingly accurate forecasts in history. But it may also have been badly misunderstood — in a way that now l…
14
A billion prices can’t be wrong
‘A “big data” approach to inflation is helping us understand the fundamental question of why recessions happen’ In the dying days of 2015 came news to set any geek’s pulse racing: the declaration o…
15
The meaning of trust in the age of Airbnb
I am on holiday in Bavaria, where, in between the beer and schnitzels, I have been contemplating the nature of trust. A rather old-fashioned guest house happily took our reservation and let us run …
16
Why we fall for cons
There may be times and places where it’s a good idea to talk back to a military officer — but Germany in 1906 wasn’t one of them. So the young corporal didn’t. The corporal — let’s call him Muller …
17
Look out for No. 1
In the late 1990s, eurozone wannabes squeezed and stretched to meet the criteria for accession, including low inflation and government deficits, and moderate levels of debt. The criteria were somew…