Over-optimistic on data

Tim Harford thinks human beings are rational and that the proof of their rationality can be found in data about how they respond to incentives. In the first book, a hugely popular one called The Undercover Economist, he had dwelt on the charms of data mining and how economists were digging out new truths about human behaviour from data. This book is of a piece of that and you will not miss much if you skip it.

But it must also be said that Harford makes up for his weaknesses in theory with an excellent writing style and the ability to persuade at least the less-informed that economists, if not economics, are worth the bother. After all, what he describes with so many examples is nothing but Paul Samuelson's revealed preference theory