Economics and Common Sense

A review of Steven E. Landsburg's book More Sex is Safer Sex, the Unconventional Wisdom of Economics. The surprise 2005 best seller Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner launched a small genre of books by economists applying economic reasoning to everyday life and finding counterintuitive results. Mathematician and economist Steven Landsburg, whose online Slate column ``Everyday Economics'' predates the Levitt and Dubner volume, has now collected and expanded some of those columns to form the basis of his new book. In his book, Landsburg uses the ``weapons of evidence and logic, especially the logic of economics'' to draw surprising conclusions which run against common sense. ``If your common sense tells you otherwise,'' says Landsburg, ``remember that common sense also tells you the Earth is flat.'' In this review, scheduled to appear in the June/July 2008 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, we describe and discuss some of the issues and claims raised in Landsburg's book.