El economista camuflado

THE
UNDERCOVER
ECONOMIST
Exposing Why The Rich Are Rich,
The Poor Are Poor—
And Why You Can Never Buy
A Decent Used Car!



Tim Harford2006

Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that
further Oxford University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education.Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy JapanPoland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright ｩ 2006 by Tim Harford

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016
www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University PressAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHarford, Tim, 1973–
The undercover economist / Tim Harford.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-518977-3
ISBN-10: 0-19-518977-9
1. Economic history, 1990–
2. Economics.
3. Consumer education.
I. Title.
HC59.15.H35 2005 330.9'0511—dc22
20050102971 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

To Deborah Harford,Fran Monks, and Stella Harford—family
. . . past, present, and future.

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments








Peter Sinclair got me into economics; Tony Courakis, Simon
Cowan, Stan Fischer, Bob Garhart, Paul Klemperer, Brendan
McElroy, Elinor Ostrom, Hyun Shin, Bill Sjostrom, and many
others helped mealong the way. I am grateful to them all.
At Shell, Ged Davis let me work part-time while I produced
the first draft of the book. I was flattered by his reluctance and
grateful for his support. Other colleagues at Shell were inspira-
tional, especially Betty-Sue Flowers, Anupam Khanna, Cho
Khong, Michael Klein, Doug McKay, and John Robinson.
At the Financial Times, Pilita Clark,Andy Davis, Chris Giles,
Andrew Gowers, John Kay, John Willman, and Martin Wolf gave
me opportunities and then made sure I didn’t waste them.
At the World Bank, Michael Klein and Suzanne Smith are
wonderful colleagues and every day with them is an education.
David Bodanis, Felicity Bryan, Penny Dablin, Moore Flannery,
Juri Gabriel, Mark Henstridge, Diana Jackson, Oliver...