William McGonagall’s poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this ...

Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty ...

Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap – promising customers rewards so generous that to fulfil the promise ...

Why did audience members fail to flee a deadly fire… despite being told to escape? Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people ...

Dear Economist, Christmas cards are starting to drop through the letterbox and many contain infuriating round-robin newsletters from people I barely know. This is no substitute for real friendship.

My podcast, telling true stories about mistakes and what we should learn from them.

Panic has erupted in the cockpit of AirFrance Flight 447. The pilots are convinced they’ve lost control of the plane. It’s lurching violently. Then, it begins plummeting from the sky at breakneck s… ...

“Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic storytelling, you may not realize you’re getting an advanced course in how to understand the kinds of statistics we’re all faced with every day ...

I’m excited to announce that on 17 September, my new book was published in the UK and around the world by Bridge Street Press. How To Make The World Add Up is my effort to help you think clearly about ...

Claude Shannon was brilliant. He was the Einstein of computer science… only he loved “fritterin’ away” his time building machines to play chess, solve Rubik’s cubes and beat the house at roulette. If ...

Harford is smart. Scary smart. So smart he can illuminate, in clear, entertaining English, ideas and forces of mind-boggling complexity The Undercover Economist is a rare specimen: a book on economics ...