The Price of Everything by Eduardo Porter

The Price of Everything by Eduardo Porter

Many of the prices we pay seem to make little sense. We shell out $2.29 for coffee at Starbucks when a nearly identical brew can be had at the corner deli for less than a dollar. We may be less willing to give blood for $25 than to donate it for free. And we pay someone to cart away trash that would be a valuable commodity in poorer parts of the world.

The Price of Everything starts with a simple premise: there is a price behind each choice, whether we're deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as motivating forces. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way. Eduardo Porter uncovers the true story behind the prices we pay and reveals what those prices are actually telling us.

Eduardo Porter has been covering economics for The New York Times since January 2004, and he joined the editorial board in July 2007. In 1990, he began his media career in Mexico City as a financial correspondent for Notimex, a Mexican news service. He worked as a correspondent in Tokyo from 1991 to 1992 and London from 1992 to 1996. Porter was named editor of América Economa, a business and economics journal published in São Paulo, in the Brazilian version in 1996. In 2000, he moved to Los Angeles to work as a senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal, covering the Hispanic population in the United States.

He graduated from Mexico's Universidad Nacional Autónoma. He graduated from Imperial College in London with a master's degree in quantum fields and basic forces.