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Tim Harford

Senior Columnist

Tim Harford writes the Undercover Economist column, and was previously an economics leader writer for the FT. He first joined the newspaper as Peter Martin Fellow in 2003.

Tim is the author of ten books, including the million-selling The Undercover Economist and most recently How To Make The World Add Up and The Truth Detective. He hosts the Cautionary Tales podcast and presents More or Less on BBC Radio.

Tim is the winner of the Royal Statistical Society award for journalistic excellence, the Wincott Prize, the Bastiat Prize, the Rybczynski Prize and several other awards. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He was made an OBE in the 2019 new year honours list “for services to improving economic understanding”.

Email Tim Harford @TimHarford  on Twitter (link opens in a new browser window)
  • Friday, 20 December, 2024
    Undercover EconomistCurrencies
    What if DogeCoin becomes the US currency? And more of your wild proposals answered

    What if Bitcoin got adopted as the only way of paying for coffee?

  • Friday, 13 December, 2024
    Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
    A kidney could be the perfect Christmas gift

    The emergence of kidney exchanges is an intriguing development 

    Mock up of a Christmas card, featuring a biological diagram of the human kidneys on the front
  • Friday, 29 November, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    Keep vaccines out of politics

    This is a time for treating people as individuals rather than as members of a tribe

  • Friday, 22 November, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    High growth doesn’t tell the story of the US economy

    Impressive headline figures didn’t help the Democrats

  • Friday, 15 November, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    Why are governments so bad at problem solving?

    Politicians everywhere seem doomed to repeat their mistakes. There is another way

    Illustration of a laboratory flask filled with green liquid, showing various people partially submerged or floating, with one individual near the top reaching out
  • Friday, 8 November, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    What can we learn from fraud and folly?

    A new starting point for economic analysis

  • Saturday, 2 November, 2024
    FT Magazine
    Tim Harford’s epic, 40-year Dungeons & Dragons odyssey

    How the world’s most influential roleplaying game changed my life and millions of others’

  • Friday, 1 November, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    ‘Known unknowns’, or how to plug the gaps in public research

    Medical research has benefited greatly from systematic reviews but in other fields the picture is less rosy

  • Friday, 25 October, 2024
    Undercover EconomistManaging yourself
    How to give a good speech

    Before you begin, what is it that you really want to say?

    A trash bin with four microphones in front of it stands as a podium on a wooden stage, set against a dark blue curtain background, giving the impression of a satirical press event
  • Friday, 18 October, 2024
    Undercover EconomistUK tax
    Beard taxes and other lessons for Rachel Reeves

    The chancellor could find new ways to raise money — or she could just broaden the tax base

  • Friday, 11 October, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    If I want to get fitter, should I wear a fitness watch?

    My every movement is being quantified, and I am obsessed

  • Friday, 4 October, 2024
    Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
    First instincts vs second thoughts, which side are you on?

    Studying the way we stumble into cognitive traps could be key to understanding how to beat misinformation

  • Friday, 27 September, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    Should everyone earn their pay rise?

    In a flourishing economy, what counts as a competitive wage is always increasing

    An illustration of a conductor leading an orchestra on top of a speeding train, set against a bold red background. The conductor stands at the front, while the musicians behind play instruments
  • Friday, 20 September, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    My biggest productivity mistake

    I often write about how to get things done but that doesn’t mean I always succeed

    Two wooden mannequin hands reaching upward, appearing to juggle three crumpled white paper balls, set against a solid yellow background
  • Friday, 6 September, 2024
    FT MagazineThe marvellous money machine
    How a mind-boggling device changed economic history

    In 1949, a little-known engineer astonished the academic world with the first ever computer model of a national economy — made of Perspex and water

  • Friday, 6 September, 2024
    Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
    What we can and can’t say about what we do and don’t know

    Sometimes trying to think through the probabilities is a clarifying exercise, and sometimes it offers nothing more than false reassurance

  • Friday, 30 August, 2024
    Undercover EconomistMisinformation
    Misinformed about misinformation

    Are ordinary citizens really helpless to distinguish truth from lies, and is misinformation as prevalent as we have been led to believe?

  • Friday, 23 August, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    How to stay curious while avoiding distraction

    Unexpected answers from the masters of focus

  • Friday, 16 August, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    The real questions posed by counterfeit clobber

    Who’s being ripped off by a fake designer baseball cap?

  • Friday, 9 August, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    What geeks can learn from sport

    It’s been a vintage summer for social scientists interested in how individuals and teams can perform

  • Friday, 26 July, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    Gamification — it’s like fun but more hellish

    Smartphone points, streaks and pseudo-rewards engender excitement but have no value

  • Friday, 19 July, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    UK inequality is getting worse, right? But what if it isn’t?

    The problem is not that economic growth has been too narrow, but that it has barely happened at all

  • Friday, 12 July, 2024
    Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
    Counting the cost of my ‘major keying error’

    When a system requires perfection from operators, the consequences can be troubling

    The image displays the word ‘Money’ with the letter ‘e’ replaced by the British pound symbol (£) and a zigzag red line below it, set against a black background
  • Friday, 5 July, 2024
    Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
    AI has all the answers. Even the wrong ones

    ChatGPT has the appearance of a brilliant logician and that’s a problem

  • Friday, 28 June, 2024
    Undercover EconomistUK economy
    How to fix the UK? Let me count the ways

    After a revolving cast of prime ministers, less uncertainty will be a good start

    A photo montage shows houses of parliament in Westminster, with a spanner hovering over Big Ben
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