So, one of the most entertaining books I’ve read of late has been James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds. Surowiecki examines ways in which people can tap into the collective knowledge of everyone. Some of the cool topics include prediction aggregations, how quickly markets are at getting to the right answer given individuals incomplete information, how hive type interactions occur (siting some fascinating studies on the foot traffic in NYC).

By far though my favorite topic is the emerging field of non-good based futures markets, known as decision markets or prediction markets. The most famous of which is the Iowa Electronic market.

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I think I must be channeling my grandfather, economist Robert Pettengill, as I’ve been reading a ton of economics lately. As I’ve been talking with a number of my friends and colleagues about my recent readings, I’m gonna try and profile most of the books I’ve read lately…

While never lacking for self confidence, Steven Landsburg has started to believe his own hype, and while it makes for an interesting read, its hard to take his arguments too seriously. In his latest More Sex is Safer Sex, there are definitely some interesting arguments, and its a book titled to fly off the shelf, but this is a far cry from his seminal work, The Armchair Economist. To give you a taste of Landsburg style, the argument that is the title of the book goes as follows…

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