The Economic Naturalist by Robert H. Frank

The Eco­nom­ic Nat­u­ral­ist by Robert H. Frank was a fair­ly easy read and inter­est­ing to me from the stand­point of eco­nom­ic ethnog­ra­phy. I don’t know much about eco­nom­ics in an aca­d­e­m­ic sense, but after read­ing this book and reflect­ing it is obvi­ous that I use it on a dai­ly basis. In ret­ro­spect this makes sense because eco­nom­ics is a method of cod­i­fy­ing every­day behav­ior.

Although the vol­ume is slim it gets repet­i­tive fair­ly quick­ly. Every­thing seems to boil down to oppor­tu­ni­ty costs, which could very well be cor­rect, but is cer­tain­ly bor­ing. The premise is based on a method Dr. Frank used in his class­es where he would have his stu­dents come up with an inter­est­ing ques­tion and obser­va­tion about every­day life and then explain it in eco­nom­ic terms. One ques­tion I was hop­ing for, but which was­n’t there is “Why do spam­mers con­tin­ue to send out spam email when the emails no longer make any sense?” I could prob­a­bly try to exer­cise the lit­tle knowl­edge I picked up from the book to answer this myself, but I’m feel­ing a bit lazy today.

The book also reminds me of the triv­ia books I’d read when I was lit­tle; The Quin­tes­sen­tial Quiz Book, How Did They Do That?, Why Did They Do That?, et cetera. Although, as a point in Frank’s favor, it did man­age to teach a bit of actu­al method­ol­o­gy in addi­tion to the straight fact-lay­ing. It is a good book for light read­ing, or toi­let-sit­ting, many of the ques­tions and answers are brief, so the book can be read in small dos­es.