In honour of Darwin's 200th birthday yesterday, this week I've been reading Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish (out now in Penguin paperback, the title a reference to his discovery of our semi-fishy fossil ancestor Tiktaalik). It's a terrifically good read for all economists who are, like me, evolutionary biology junkies. While writing my last book, The Soulful Science, I read a lot of the work of evolutionary economists, dating all the way back to Marx, Veblen and Schumpeter, who to varying degrees saw the parallels between their thinking about the economy and evolution – and of course Darwin himself had been prompted by Malthus. The interweaving has continued with the importance of the idea of game theoretic equilibrium in modern evolutionary biology. Paul Krugman gave a talk in 1996 about why evolutionary biology interests many economists, setting out several reasons for the important parallels. Of these, the idea of purposeful self-interest seems the most significant to me. Behavioural economics gives us many examples of non-rational decision-making due to the characteristics of our brain and psychology, but nevertheless there is a deep biological truth in the claim made by economics that people act in a self-interested manner. The overlap between discoveries in evolutionary biology and psychology, cognitive science and economic modelling is an incredibly exciting area.

Coming tomorrow for Valentine's Day, an interview with the Romantic Economist himself.

In the midst of one of those weeks in which far too many meetings interrupt the real business of life, and even work, it's very comforting to pause for a moment, look up my desk, and see the towers of books gathered around. The piles: review copies and proofs/manuscripts sent by publishers; new books I couldn't resist after reading a review, and doesn't Amazon's Prime make it very hard not to buy; a pile already read to think about/take notes on; a growing tower relevant to the book on public value I'm co-authoring for the BBC Trust, with some notes on publishing on demand which is the route we might go with that one; and the new tower of books I'm gathering for research on my own new book if only the anonymous referees give it the thumbs up. It does remind me of a line I once read that said books were the dominant species on the planet, as every library seeds multiple new libraries. Ah well, on with the meetings.

A very exciting arrival in the post today – 'Animal Spirits', the new book by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller. Akerlof is of course best known for his 'Market for Lemons' model about how asymmetric information can shut down markets, so apt in the financial crisis. Shiller is the friendly public face of behavioral finance, and warned us all so clearly about 'Irrational Exuberance' that we (and the financial regulators) should really have known better.

The title of their new book refers to the famous phrase Keynes applied to investment decisions, which is another timely reminder as we economists contemplate how to extract our respective countries from this mess. The chapters in the first part of the book take a broader sweep, however, over the range of psychological characteristics which affect decisions. This includes, for example, fairness and greed as well as over-confidence and the absence of calculating rationality in financial markets. The second part applies psychological insight to eight specific economic questions. Several cover issues relevant to the financial crisis including averting depression, tackling unemployment and real estate cycles. Akerlof and Shiller include policy recommendations. For example, they support Keynesian fiscal policies to target a return to full employment but argue that this needs to be supplemented with a second target, for credit growth.

There are also subjects not connected to financial markets and today's conjuncture. One chapter explores the psychological and emotional reasons, embedded in economics and social structures, for persistent poverty in minority groups; and draws policy conclusions. One is that although the contracting out of lower-level government jobs has saved some taxpayer dollars, it has also removed a source of non-discriminatory job opportunities which provided African Americans with a ladder into the middle and professional classes.

I read the book in proof so can assert confidently that it's a good read – and another in the growing array of titles which are revealing modern economics in all its humanity and depth to a wider audience. Love the cover too!

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8967.html

In 2006 I was a member of a Competition Commission inquiry which cleared the takeover of the UK bookstore chain Ottakars by HMV, owners of the bigger chain Waterstones. It was a controversial decision in the publishing and bookselling world. Publishers, authors, and many readers argued that the merger of two of the three large chains of bricks and mortar book retailers would reduce choice for consumers and would reduce innovation and risk-taking by publishers, because between them Ottakars and Waterstones controlled the majority of the prime display spots on high streets in which new titles are displayed. The inquiry group ultimately disagreed. The number of titles published, and sales volumes, had grown strongly, although perhaps with some trend towards fewer blockbuster titles with enormous sales volumes (a 'superstar' effect). We identified many routes by which publishers could get their titles to market, including reviews, TV shows, direct advertising, online retailers, and supermarkets. We also concluded that the number of titles displayed in any store was a choice variable which could rise or fall for many reasons. The publishers made much of the fact that independent bookstores,one of the main rivals to the merging chains in the high street, were declining in number. We were puzzled as to why all publishers seemed to insist on the same profit margin from the independents as from the supermarkets. Of course it is cheaper to supply to one distribution centre for a large supermarket than to many independent stores, but if the independents are as vital as publishers claimed for new authors and titles and for surprise success stories, then surely it would make sense for publishers to accept a lower profit margin for supplying them?
I'm reminded of all this by the source of my second hand copy of Rawls Theory of Justice, which is sitting on my desk now. It came via Amazon's Marketplace from Eric T Moore Books of Hitchin, Hertfordshire. It's a secondhand store which will order new books, and clearly has found Amazon to be a useful outlet for its stock. I also order from O'Donoghue Books in Hay, and use Abe as well as Marketplace. So as a reader there seems to be as much variety as ever in choice of outlet, although as with other areas of retailing quite a lot of activity has moved online. This includes second hand books – which we treated nearly three years ago as a separate market. On the other hand, the newspapers are carrying fewer book reviews and some had shed their Literary Editors, and in the UK the Richard & Judy Book Club on TV is no more. There seem to be opposite views about the likely impact of the recession on book sales – that it will reduce sales because it's discretionary spending, or that it will increase sales because books are a cheap form of entertainment. On top of this we get online self-publishing, the various new bits of kit for e-book readers and the trend towards online publishing for reference works (described in previous posts), so still more technology-driven secular trends on top of the cyclical effects.
It leaves me wanting to know, as well as changes in sales volumes and new titles published, whether second hand sales account for a rising proportion of total sales (value and volumes), developments in the fortunes of independent booksellers, and what's happening to publishers' margins via the various outlets. I think the emergence of an online-enabled second hand economy more broadly is an absolutely fascinating phenomenon. Buyers of economics books are presumable heavier-than-average users of online outlets – rare is the bookstore which will carry a wide range of titles in our subject!

There are various texts I read as a student 30 years ago (how can it be so long?) which I've turned to again recently. I'm planning my next book, which will be about social welfare, more or less, so those classics in philosophy and political economy seemed worth checking out again. Am I remembering correctly what they say, given the passing of the decades? Earlier I posted about Daniel Bell being out of print. The latest book I struggled to get hold of is John Rawls's Theory of Justice, which is out of print in the UK and seems extraordinarily expensive second hand. It's on its way now, but I was surprised to find that it has been reissued in the US (by Belknap Press in 2005), just not on my side of the Atlantic. I suppose works like these are too old for today's students (but what do they read?) and too new to be permanently in print as classics. Anyway, if anybody has suggestions for me on must-read books on justice and social welfare, please let me know.