I just finished "Undercover Economist" and "The logic of life". Compelling reads. Tim Harford, along with Dan Ariely (and Steve Dubner is one of new breed of economists who try to see an economic angle in all human activity. Some interesting examples are about how Starbucks prices its coffee (and how people decide what to pay for that coffee); the core reason why healthcare system in US is failing (misaligned incentives of insurance companies and healthcare providers); and why some countries stay poor.
I was surprised to learn from "The logic of life" that von-Neuman who is the mind behind the basic computer architecture - CPU+memory - that has been around forever and even now - is the father of game theory as well. I always knew that Economics and Computer Engineering had something in common and now I know that they are brothers born of the same father !
The key thing about the logic of game theory is that it takes into account the social angle of logic. It is certain that logically, each person will take an action that is most beneficial to himself. However, the explanation for widely seen sub-optimal actions that humans take all the time is that, each human will also weigh in the beneficial actions that others might take. Whenever there are limited resources and there is a scope for conflict among various stakeholders, each stakeholder will weigh in actions of others and only then will he decide what action he may take.
The source of stealth or privacy in society stems from exactly this - because whoever is able to hide ones strengths or weaknesses is able to fool the other stakeholders into making a misjudgement about their action and hence benefit from it. Quite profound - this game theory. And no surprise that it came from a mathematician whose specific expertise was mathematical logic and hence computers.
I think computer scientists would make ideal economists - people who practice marketing and strategy roles.
