Accessibility helpSkip to navigationSkip to contentSkip to footer

Cookies on FT Sites

We use cookies and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to analyse how our Sites are used.

Accept cookies
Manage cookies
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe
Open side navigation menuOpen search bar
Financial Times
SubscribeSign InmyFT
  • Home
  • World
    Sections
    • World Home
    • Israel-Hamas war
    • Global Economy
    • UK
    • US
    • China
    • Africa
    • Asia Pacific
    • Emerging Markets
    • Europe
    • War in Ukraine
    • Americas
    • Middle East & North Africa
    Most Read
    • Israeli intelligence ‘dismissed’ detailed warning of Hamas raid
    • Argentina’s Javier Milei backs away from dollarisation as central bank pick rejects role
    • Geert Wilders faces early setback in Dutch coalition talks
    • Hamas releases 24 hostages as Israel truce takes hold
    • Cathay Pacific offers cheap flights to help Hong Kong’s ‘patriots only’ vote
  • US
    Sections
    • US Home
    • US Economy
    • US Companies
    • US Politics & Policy
    Most Read
    • Companies
      Sections
      • Companies Home
      • Energy
      • Financials
      • Health
      • Industrials
      • Media
      • Professional Services
      • Retail & Consumer
      • Tech Sector
      • Telecoms
      • Transport
      Most Read
      • KPMG extends pay freeze to 12,000 UK staff
      • Tesla strikes in Sweden are ‘insane’, says Elon Musk
      • How BP’s ‘Sun King’ court enabled the rise and fall of Bernard Looney
      • Jeff Zucker hits out at rival Telegraph bidders for ‘slinging mud’
      • Boots offloads £4.8bn pension scheme to Legal & General
    • Tech
    • Markets
      Sections
      • Markets Home
      • Alphaville
      • Markets Data
      • Cryptofinance
      • Capital Markets
      • Commodities
      • Currencies
      • Equities
      • Fund Management
      • Wealth Management
      • Trading
      • Moral Money
      • ETF Hub
      Most Read
      • Argentina’s Javier Milei backs away from dollarisation as central bank pick rejects role
      • News updates from November 24: Hamas releases hostages as Israel truce begins, Netherlands’ VVD party deals blow to Geert Wilders’ government hopes
      • How BP’s ‘Sun King’ court enabled the rise and fall of Bernard Looney
      • Investors dump dollar in bet that US rates have peaked
      • Montenegro court clears crypto chief Do Kwon for extradition
    • Climate
    • Opinion
      Sections
      • Opinion Home
      • Columnists
      • The FT View
      • Lex
      • Obituaries
      • Letters
      Most Read
      • OpenAI has just fused its corporate ‘kill switch’
      • Europe’s problem? It’s too attractive
      • Crypto power struggle enters new stage with Binance settlement
      • Slaying the worklessness monster is a thankless but crucial task
      • A much-needed truce between Israel and Hamas
    • Work & Careers
      Sections
      • Work & Careers Home
      • Business School Rankings
      • Business Education
      • Entrepreneurship
      • Recruitment
      • Business Books
      • Business Travel
      • Working It
      Most Read
      • Business Books: What to read this month
      • Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier: ‘The EU is not the same one the UK left’
      • In search of chief executives who never grow ‘old’
      • Start-ups challenge culture of the Japanese salaryman
      • The inescapable tyranny of the bad boss
    • Life & Arts
      Sections
      • Life & Arts Home
      • Arts
      • Books
      • Food & Drink
      • FT Magazine
      • House & Home
      • Style
      • Travel
      • FT Globetrotter
      Most Read
      • Tom Hanks: ‘I was a pretty lucky guy’
      • Why the breakdown of the 9-to-5 job is making us lonelier
      • Leon Black’s downfall confounds the legacy of #MeToo on Wall Street
      • The most decorated mountaineer ever (and why you’ve never heard of him)
      • Could younger homebuyers turn Belgravia from staid to ‘buzzy’?
    • HTSI
    MenuSearch
    • Home
    • World
    • US
    • Companies
    • Tech
    • Markets
    • Climate
    • Opinion
    • Work & Careers
    • Life & Arts
    • HTSI
    Financial Times
    SubscribeSign In

    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)

    Add to myFT Digest

    Add this topic to your myFT Digest for news straight to your inbox

    • Friday, 24 November, 2023
      Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
      Why the breakdown of the 9-to-5 job is making us lonelier

      Desynchronised working makes sense, as long as you don’t think too hard about real people

    • Friday, 17 November, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The rights and wrongs of copying

      When it comes to plagiarism do we fuss too much?

    • Friday, 10 November, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The data confirms we’re stuck in a ‘doom loop’

      Most Britons have their own stories about crumbling public services. Research shows how deep the problem is

    • Friday, 3 November, 2023
      Undercover EconomistBehavioural economics
      The simple maths puzzle that shows us how to separate fact from fiction

      Are you reflective, careless or hopeless? The answer might affect your ability to spot fake news

    • Friday, 27 October, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Policy lessons from the Official Monster Raving Loony party

      Their former leader Lord Sutch was a record-breaking electoral loser, but he had an enviable record in seeing his policies embraced by the establishment

    • Friday, 20 October, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Why are some jobs so ‘greedy’?

      Economist Claudia Goldin has helped narrow the gender pay gap. But working practices are still an obstacle to progress

    • Friday, 13 October, 2023
      Undercover EconomistPersonal productivity
      Why we can’t quit email, even though we all hate it

      Our inboxes contain news that ranges from the trivial to the life-changing, which is why they’re so addictive

    • Friday, 6 October, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Netflix and bill — the high price of a subscription lifestyle

      Businesses have cashed in on our carelessness

    • Friday, 29 September, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Sometimes, a random solution is best

      We don’t usually draw lots to allocate duties or privileges, but what if we did?

    • Friday, 22 September, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      PowerPoint is widely reviled. How did it triumph?

      And what can we learn from its victory?

    • Friday, 15 September, 2023
      FT MagazineLife & Arts
      The art of making good mistakes

      Neither organisations nor people can learn from their errors if they deny mistakes ever happened

    • Friday, 8 September, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      A round of golf on a Wednesday afternoon? The new rules of WFH are up for debate

      Since the pandemic, work and leisure time are blurring for many former office workers

    • Friday, 1 September, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Behind the fraud drama rocking academia

      When it comes to academic papers, the line between fraud and substandard science can sometimes seem a little… academic

    • Friday, 18 August, 2023
      Undercover EconomistUK economy
      The UK is doing a shoddy job of keeping up with the neighbours

      In a more productive country, citizens could enjoy longer retirements, more consumption and a better class of rollercoaster

    • Friday, 11 August, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The UK is going about reclaiming city streets the wrong way

      Oxford has become a focal point for some unsettling protests. What can it learn from pleasant, walkable Freiburg?

    • Friday, 4 August, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The inconvenient truth about productivity

      You’ll never clear the decks. Just do the best you can with the time allotted to you

    • Friday, 14 July, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      What I’d put in my Museum of the Economy

      Museums often document economics in abstract. It doesn’t have to be that way

    • Friday, 7 July, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The eternal Google search for truth

      If we want to figure out what’s true, we need to get into the habit of presuming we might be wrong

    • Friday, 30 June, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      The 2024 elections will come under attack. We should get ready

      The next polls in western democracies will be a prime opportunity for bad actors

    • Friday, 23 June, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Is it even possible to prepare for a pandemic?

      Well-prepped countries have fared no better in the past. But there are ways to adapt

    • Friday, 16 June, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      What the price of an ancient Roman nail tells us about value

      About 2,000 years ago, Roman soldiers buried a million nails in a four-metre pit. Why?

    • Tuesday, 13 June, 2023
      Working It podcast17 min listen
      How to be more productive at work

      Productivity hacks to counter a world full of distraction

    • Friday, 9 June, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      What an amusement park can teach us about central banks

      Nobel laureate Robert Lucas used stories to explain how policymakers might engineer a recession — or cause shortages and inflation

    • Friday, 2 June, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      Will ChatGPT be Homer Simpson’s salvation?

      Not all transformative technologies destroy jobs. Some help to level the playing field

    • Friday, 26 May, 2023
      Undercover EconomistLife & Arts
      What neo-Luddites get right — and wrong — about Big Tech

      Is AI the latest threat to livelihoods? That depends on society

    Previous page You are on page 1 Next page

    Useful links

    Support

    View Site TipsHelp CentreContact UsAbout UsAccessibilitymyFT TourCareers

    Legal & Privacy

    Terms & ConditionsPrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyManage CookiesCopyrightSlavery Statement & Policies

    Services

    Share News Tips SecurelyIndividual SubscriptionsProfessional SubscriptionsRepublishingExecutive Job SearchAdvertise with the FTFollow the FT on XFT ChannelsFT Schools

    Tools

    PortfolioToday’s Newspaper (FT Digital Edition)Alerts HubBusiness School RankingsEnterprise ToolsNews feedNewslettersCurrency Converter

    Community & Events

    FT CommunityFT Live EventsFT ForumsFT Board DirectorBoard Director Programme

    More from the FT Group

    Markets data delayed by at least 15 minutes. © THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2023. FT and ‘Financial Times’ are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.
    The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.
    Financial Times

    International Edition

    Subscribe for full access
    • Switch to UK Edition

    Top sections

    • Home
    • World
      • Israel-Hamas war
      • Global Economy
      • UK
      • US
      • China
      • Africa
      • Asia Pacific
      • Emerging Markets
      • Europe
      • War in Ukraine
      • Americas
      • Middle East & North Africa
    • US
      • US Economy
      • US Companies
      • US Politics & Policy
    • Companies
      • Energy
      • Financials
      • Health
      • Industrials
      • Media
      • Professional Services
      • Retail & Consumer
      • Tech Sector
      • Telecoms
      • Transport
    • Tech
      • Artificial intelligence
      • Semiconductors
      • Cyber Security
      • Social Media
    • Markets
      • Alphaville
      • Markets Data
      • Cryptofinance
      • Capital Markets
      • Commodities
      • Currencies
      • Equities
      • Fund Management
      • Wealth Management
      • Trading
      • Moral Money
      • ETF Hub
    • Climate
    • Opinion
      • Columnists
      • The FT View
      • Lex
      • Obituaries
      • Letters
    • Work & Careers
      • Business School Rankings
      • Business Education
      • Entrepreneurship
      • Recruitment
      • Business Books
      • Business Travel
      • Working It
    • Life & Arts
      • Arts
      • Books
      • Food & Drink
      • FT Magazine
      • House & Home
      • Style
      • Travel
      • FT Globetrotter
    • Personal Finance
      • Property & Mortgages
      • Investments
      • Pensions
      • Tax
      • Banking & Savings
      • Advice & Comment
      • Next Act
    • HTSI
    • Special Reports

    FT recommends

    • Lex
    • Alphaville
    • Lunch with the FT
    • FT Globetrotter
    • #techAsia
    • Moral Money
    • Visual and data journalism
    • Newsletters
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • News feed
    • FT Live Events
    • FT Forums
    • Board Director Programme
    • myFT
    • Portfolio
    • Today’s Newspaper (FT Digital Edition)
    • Crossword
    • Our Apps
    • Help Centre
    • Subscribe
    • Sign In