"Trust me, I'm an Economist"

Coming soom, to a station near you - Economics TV! Hamish McRae informs us in the Sunday Independent that Tim Harford's new book The undercover Economist is being turned into a television programme: The dismal science gets into our heads

"Trust me, I'm an economist." Really? Well, yes.

One of the great things that has been happening to the study of economics in recent years has been the focus on the micro rather than the macro. We used to worry mainly about the big issues: GDP growth, interest rates, inflation and so on. We still do, of course. But beside that has been a new interest in what economics can tell us about the small things. Why do people behave as they do? What makes people happy? How do we fix the NHS? Actually those do not sound small at all, but they are concerned with the detail of the behaviour of millions of people, rather than the mass of an economy.

The subject has been moving along steadily but two best-selling books have suddenly brought this sort of work to public notice. One is Freakonomics, written by two Americans, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. The other is The Undercover Economist by a British author, Tim Harford. In rather different ways, the two books relate economics to how people behave - from drug dealers in Chicago (Freakonomics) to supermarket shoppers or coffee drinkers at Starbucks in London (The Undercover Economist).

And now there is a treat in store for British TV viewers interested in this area, for the latter book has been transformed into a TV series called Trust me, I'm an Economist, which starts on BBC2 on 18 August. And the first programme is about love.

No, it will not tell you how to capture the heart of the man or woman of your dreams (though it does show some things you clearly should not do). It will, though, help explain the extent to which we are rational economic beings and the extent to which we are not. And it will explain how the market can be harnessed to all sorts of socially beneficial aims.

With a bit of luck, it might also help economically illiterate policy makers to understand why their policies so often fail. We could do with a bit more of that.

Comments

[Arthur Eckart]

In recent years, "behavior economics" has been popularized, which seems to be somewhat derived from the old utilitarianism. When I was in grad econ, game theory was popularized and was taken with the "core" fields of macro, micro, econometrics, math econ, international trade, money & banking, history of econ thought, etc. I'm sure there are interesting insights in new branches of economics, because often "theories" fall out of empirical and mathematical models that are the complete opposite of conventional wisdom. It's somewhat of a paradox that economics has become a broader field, while economists have become more specialized. Nonetheless, about everything in economics is interrelated.

[John Bynum]

Book Review
The Philosopher Kings Of Hedging
Robert Lenzner, 07.29.06, 12:35 PM ET

Steven Drobny's inside look at hedge funds couldn't come at a more appropriate time. Everyone should know what makes these private investment partnerships tick, where they are putting their gobs of money and how they see the markets going forward. Hedge funds, after all, are believed to account for up to half of all stock trading and are the controversial focus of a debate and legal fracas over their regulation.

Drobny's Inside The House of Money ($30, John Wiley & Sons, 2006) sheds more light than ever on the minds behind the largest global macro hedge funds, those giant pools of money that see the whole world as their oyster (unless they've gone short on shellfish). They make big bets on crude oil, Eurodollars, gold, Japanese bonds, Brazilian soybeans, sugar, cotton, you name it--investments that most ordinary investors would likely avoid.

Drobny humanizes his hedge fund operators, showing them as global thinkers out to exploit any opportunity in inefficient markets, but not as a force out to destroy the financial system. It is a welcome relief from the harping of a skeptical crowd of onlookers who seem to see the forces of darkness lurking behind every one of these partnerships.

The book reveals the intricacies of thinking like a hedge fund manager. Marko Dimitrijevic of Miami's Everest Capital liked Argentinean banks, went short with Japanese government bonds when they were yielding only 0.45% (very clever, because interest rates were bound to rise and depress the bonds) and was also playing the markets in Cyprus, Mongolia and Uruguay. He also recommended YUM Brands, owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, as the best American stock to play the growth in China.

There's some brilliant common sense here, valuable to us mere mortals. Dr. John Porter of Barclay's Capital believes that momentum trading is the flavor of the month and that "people who are indexed are going to get killed." Porter anticipated the knee-jerk response of the U.S. Federal Reserve to loosen money when tech stocks sold off in 2000. He loaded up on two-year Treasuries at 6.75%, which was a bet that interest rates were headed down and the value of the notes were headed up. It was a highly profitable play when the cost of money dropped to 1%.

Drobny also shows how managers have learned from past hedge fund failures. Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital in San Francisco refuses to become the next Long Term Capital Management. He places stop-loss orders on every trade-- a very tough discipline--but one that limits disastrous losses.

One shortcoming of the book is that since hedge fund operators are so nimble, they may well be long out of the positions they revealed to Drobny in 2005. That's the nature of hedge funds; they don't have investment committees and can dump a position in five minutes and get back in it the next day. What's compelling among these money managers is their intensity in educating themselves about nations and bottom-up individual investment opportunities.

Many years ago, Dwight Anderson, then with Tiger Management, now with Ospraie Management in New York, explored palladium mines in Siberia to ascertain the true world shortage of that precious metal. Tiger made a killing when Palladium soared from $120 an ounce to more than $1,000 an ounce.

An underlying theme of the work is that macro traders "thrive on dislocation and economic upsets. Macro traders always do better when the world economy is tanking," says one of the managers. So, unlike the proverbial market optimists, macro operators like disasters such as currency crises or political upheaval, because they produce the panic selling and market bottoms that provide the biggest upsides.

Running through these interviews is an uneasy sense that we're on the cusp of dangerous times. Scott Bessent of Bessent Capital says, "At some point we will have had The Big One. It's out there. I don't know if it's a financial asset depression or a real depression."

Dr. Sushil Wadhwani, of Wadhwani Asset Management in London, says, "What you've got now is huge asset-market distortions, and one of these days, the chickens will come home to roost, and when they do, there'll be huge opportunity."

So, for the wealthy investors in hedge funds, these are prospective opportunities. For the ordinary investors, these are warning signals to be prudent and protect your assets.

Want to buy The House of Money at a Forbes.com members' discount? Click here.

[A. PERLA]

"But beside that has been a new interest in what economics can tell us about the small things. Why do people behave as they do? What makes people happy? How do we fix the NHS?"

Maybe Economists should take a graduate degree in psychology? Because regression analysis is NOT going to answer these questions adequately.

Fixing the NHS has nothing whatsoever to do with economic analysis. Attribute to the NHS management rules-of-performance metrics - i.e. even if it is to be a non-profit organization, it must learn to break even at a given level of quality-services. The NHS is a management mess, which is why it is exporting patients to neighbouring countries such as France, Belgium and Holland. (Tony should have fixed Health Services before he went off crusading in Iraq. Whatever got into him?)

Microeconomics versus Macroeconomics? It is a matter of fad. The former is (perhaps) in fashion. That too will pass, like all fashions.

In a world of "globalization", that is generating enormous wealth, I submit that the Holy Grail of Economics is the study of wealth distribution or, if you like, the concentration of affluence - which some consider to be a serious dysfunction of any economic system.

The subject is not as attractive as "happiness" ... but neither is it that far off relationally.

[Arthur Eckart]

The scientific method of neoclassical economics evolved as a branch of moral philosophy. A moral choice can be defined when benefits exceed consequences. Making everyone more equal tends to generate immorality, because benefits are increased and consequences are decreased for immoral choices, while benefits are decreased and consequences are increased for moral choices. It's better to provide opportunities for individuals to utilize their unique abilities, to contribute value to society. Private and public policies could be better. Also, there's a great deal of psychology inherent in economics. Moreover, properly and well done regressions tend to be unbiased.

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