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WTF?! Peter T. Leeson

WTF?! By Peter T. Leeson

WTF?! by Peter T. Leeson


£23.39
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Summary

WTF?! is an interactive tour of the world's weirdest social practices that uses economic thinking to reveal the solid logic behind their seeming senselessness.

WTF?! Summary

WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird by Peter T. Leeson

Step right up! Get your tickets for WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird! This rollicking tour through a museum of the world's weirdest practices is guaranteed to make you say, WTF?! Did you know that preowned wives were sold at auction in nineteenth-century England? That today, in Liberia, accused criminals sometimes drink poison to determine their fate? How about the fact that, for 250 years, Italy criminally prosecuted cockroaches and crickets? Do you wonder why? Then this tour is just for you!

Join WTF?!'s cast of colorful characters as they navigate the museum, led by guide and economist Peter T. Leeson. From one exhibit to the next, you'll overhear Leeson's riotous exchanges with the patrons and learn how to use economic thinking to reveal the hidden sense behind seemingly senseless human behavior-including your own. Leeson shows that far from irrational or accidents of history, humanity's most outlandish rituals are ingenious solutions to pressing problems-developed by clever people, driven by incentives, and tailor-made for their time and place. Can you handle getting schooled by the strange? Better hurry, the tour is about to start!

WTF?! Reviews

Your initial reaction might be WTF!? How can medieval trials by ordeal, wife sales, and divine curses all boil down to rational economic behavior? But, Leeson will lead you deftly through the logic and history behind these seemingly senseless rituals. Keep an open mind and this book will surprise, teach, and entertain!-Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University
A fascinating tour of some of the world's strangest customs and behaviors, led by a brilliant, funny, and eccentric tour guide dedicated to the proposition that no matter how strange it looks, there's always a reason for it-and a lesson to be learned by discovering that reason. It's okay to gawk, says our tour guide, but it's even better to empathize and, armed with Leeson's insights, there's no reason why we can't do both. -- Steven E. Landsburg * University of Rochester, author of The Armchair Economist *
Peter Leeson's WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird is a brilliant and witty expedition into some of history's most unusual social institutions.... WTF?! is a rare and wonderful contribution to social science. It shows us the power of parsimonious thinking. It demonstrates the value of bringing rich, historical knowledge to the foreground. It is lively and accessible, and by the end of the book, readers will have learned much about social institutions, and more generally, how to analyze them. Highly recommended. -- David Skarbek * Public Choice *
Leeson makes a serious effort to find out the legal details, social norms, and institutional incentives that constrained the choices people faced in bygone times. He then applies economic theory creatively to understand why people facing those constraints benefited from the seemingly weird and outrageous practices....Detailed but very accessible analysis. -- Dwight R. Lee * Cato Journal *
[B]rilliant logic...this book is downright fun...enjoyable as much for entertainment as enlightenment...You don't need to care one bit about economics or social theory to enjoy this book. Conversely, if you hate fun and frivolity and care only for social science, you'll find serious economic theory in WTF?! If you don't find the world more fascinating and enjoyable, and people more ingenious and clever, after reading WTF?!, something might be wrong with you! -- Isaac Morehouse * Founder and CEO of Praxis *
This book is what happens when a professor of economics and law with a love of the curious examines what looks like irrational behaviour....Excellent. -- Fortean Times
This book has a surprise-not to mention a puckish joke-on every page. It's strange, it's fascinating, and it's one of the most original books I've ever read. -- Tim Harford * author of Messy and The Undercover Economist *
A very effective book within the Beckerian tradition. -- Tyler Cowen * Marginal Revolution *
WTF?! is the most interesting book I have read in years! Peter Leeson displays his unique talent: unearthing mankind's seemingly craziest behaviors, and then showing that these behaviors, against all odds, ultimately make perfect sense. WTF?! is like Freakonomics on steroids. -- Steven D. Levitt * co-author of the bestselling Freakonomics book series *
Pete Leeson is not your everyday economist. And WTF is not an ordinary economics bookan excellent primer on institutional analysis and an important addition to the literature on cultural beliefs, institutions, and economic analysis. -- Mark Koyama * Review of Austrian Economics *

About Peter T. Leeson

Peter T. Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. He is the author of the award-winning The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (2009) and Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think (2014). He can be reached via his website peterleeson.com.

Table of Contents

Contents and Abstracts1Your Favorite Acronym chapter abstract

This chapter introduces the concepts of rational choice theory: incentives, rules, and constraints. It defines them and explains the connections between them, drawing on examples from everyday life. These concepts are identified as the key to finding the sense in seemingly senseless social practices.

2Burn, Baby, Burn chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand judicial ordeals-trials by fire and water-in medieval Europe. It explains how judges leveraged citizens' superstition through ordeals to find fact in criminal cases. This enabled judges to accurately determine defendants' guilt or innocence where ordinary evidence was absent.

3FSBO: Like-New, Preowned Wife chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand the sale of wives at public auctions in Industrial Revolution England. It explains how unhappy wives used wife sales to exit marriage where the law effectively gave husbands the right to their wives' marital status and denied wives property rights. This enabled spouses to forge Coasean divorce bargains indirectly when they couldn't do so directly.

4Public Uses for Private Parts chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand Vlax Gypsy superstitions: belief in ritual pollution, belief that pollution is contagious, and belief that non-Gypsies are dangerously polluted. It explains how Gypsies use these superstitions to support social ostracism as a means of governing their societies. This enables Gypsies to secure public order in their communities despite their inability to rely on government or ostracism alone for this purpose.

5God Damn chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand monastic maledictions-divine curses-in tenth- through twelfth-century Francia. It explains how clerics used maledictions to protect their communities' property rights against plunder. This enabled clerics to secure their property rights despite government's absence and their inability to rely on physical self-help for this purpose.

6Chicken, Please; Hold the Poison chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand oracles among the Azande people of Africa. It explains how the Azande leveraged their superstition through a poisoned-chicken oracle-benge-to peacefully resolve petty conflicts with their neighbors. This enabled the Azande to address cooperation-threatening animus that couldn't be addressed through formal legal institutions.

7Jiminy Cricket's Journey to Hell chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand the criminal prosecution of insects and rodents by ecclesiastic courts in Renaissance France, Italy, and Switzerland. It explains how ecclesiastics used vermin trials to bolster citizens' waning belief in the validity of ecclesiastics' supernatural sanctions. This enabled ecclesiastics to improve tithe compliance where heretics threatened their tithe revenue.

8Fighting Solves Everything chapter abstract

This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand trial by battle in land disputes in Norman England. It explains how judges used judicial combats as violent auctions to allocate contested property rights to the litigants who valued them more when judges were unable to identify those rights' true owners. This enabled judges to efficiently allocate contested property rights where a high cost of trading land prevented the Coase theorem from doing so.

Additional information

NGR9781503600911
9781503600911
1503600912
WTF?!: An Economic Tour of the Weird by Peter T. Leeson
New
Hardback
Stanford University Press
20171017
264
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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