ART AIMS TO REVEAL THE HUMAN condition, but there is no better way to understand human behaviour than through the tools of economics. After all, we live in a world of scarcity, none more so than that of time, and are buffetted constantly by incentives of various kinds to do various things. Thinking like an economist helps us to understand the complex web of inter-actions that exist between us, and to make clear choices.

For decades, though, economics has been regarded as a ‘dismal science’, an arcane sub-ject with no relevance to common life. But that is a mistaken belief, and just as popular science books gave science a wider audience from the 1970s onwards, a series of books and websites are performing the same ser-vice for economics. Blogs like Marginal Revo-lution, Cafe Hayek, Assymetrical Information and EconLog have made econo-junkies out of tens of thousands of people in the online world, an audience reflected in meatspace by the success of Freakonomics last year. The lat-est in that list is The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, a book that turns the jargon of economics into the lingo of cool kids, and is enlightening and fun at the same time. About how many books can you say that?

If you head out to your local outlet of Barista, you will notice that a Cappucino costs Rs 33 while a Cafe Mocha costs Rs 47. Both cost approximately the same to make, so why this difference in price?

Why are economy lounges in airports across the world so uniformly shabby? Why are books first released in hardcover and later in paperback? Why is popcorn so expensive in movie halls?

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