SYNOPSIS OF DEAR UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST

INTRODUCTION
The book offers witty, charming and at times caustic answers to our most pressing concerns all through the lens of economics. Does money buy happiness? Is the one really out there? Can cities be greener than farms? Can you really dress for success? When’s the best time to settle down? The book provides brilliant, hilarious, unexpected and wise answers to these and other questions. It lends an outrageous, compassionate and indispensable perspective on anything that may ail a book well worth the investment.
The author delivers an informative book, accomplished through the fluid use of economic principle to dissect everyday problems, as seen from Tim Harford’s “Dear Economist” column in the Financial Times newspaper of London. He uses fictional type questions that effortlessly lend themselves to his dry English humor, and both the questions and the answers he provides are quite interesting. Harford commonly employs sophisticated economic principles alongside everyday rules, and makes us entertained by his instructive empirical evidence.

SUMMARY

In this book, one of the letters is from a man who can’t decide whether to propose to his girlfriend on the upcoming Valentine’s Day, or wait until next year. The Undercover Economist discusses and applies the principle of value creation to the situation. He advises that value creating moves should be applied sooner rather than later, because of the limitation of time. However, some decisions are worth delaying in order to acquire more information, or improve upon a situation or thing. In analyzing a decision, the cost of delay needs to be weighed against the value of waiting. Additionally, the decision maker should also strongly bear in mind that the window of opportunity can slam shut, bringing the option value to zero. These principles of value creating decisions can be applied to new product development and introduction. Companies should not be in a rush to market with new product developments if the value of waiting is greater than the cost of delay. In such a scenario, valuables in waiting could include investing more time in applying further research and analysis to the planned distribution methods, investing more time and resources in fine-tuning the products positioning strategy, or further examination and improvement of the products, features, benefits and price point.

SUBMITTED BY:-
NEHA JHA
PGDM FT (2ND YEAR)