One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. If Stalin ever said such a thing, he wasn’t the first — but the ghoulish claim has stuck to him because he is one of very few politicia…| Tim Harford
You’re not imagining it. There is something shallow about modern life — a sense that traditional virtues, from craftsmanship to professionalism to loyalty, have somehow been hollowed out. Don’t get…| Tim Harford
A good columnist is never unintentionally tedious, but this week’s effort is about obsolete telephone directories, binary counter overflow, and the alternating current waveform. The boredom is the …| Tim Harford
Who really makes money from fair trade coffee? Why is it impossible to buy a decent second hand car? How do the Mafia make money from laundries when street gangs pushing drugs don’t? Who really benefits from immigration? Looking at familiar situations in unfamiliar ways, The Undercover Economist is a fresh explanation of the fundamental principles of the modern economy, illuminated by examples from the booming skyscrapers of Shanghai to the sleepy canals of Bruges.| Tim Harford
Do good teams make fewer mistakes? It seems a reasonable hypothesis. But in the early 1990s, when a young researcher looked at evidence from medical teams at two Massachusetts hospitals, the number…| Tim Harford
In between summer holidays and the arrival of a new prime minister, few people will have noticed that, by dithering for a decade, the government has quietly wasted nearly £200mn. Even fewer will ha…| Tim Harford
