I've just spent an interesting couple of days at an Erasmus University symposium on popular economics books – 'Economics Made Fun in the Face of the Crisis'.

My argument (in the opening talk) was that there is a paradox of popularity – both supply of and demand for popular economics books has increased despite the damage the crisis has done to the reputation of the subject. The paradox is resolved partly by the popularity currently focusing on behavioural and happiness economics, which although written by serious economists, appear in the popular mind to be anti-economics. But in addition, there are serious tastes for serious times, and a widespread desire to understand what's happening. Finally, I argued that the growth of the 'economics made fun' genre may be good for economists – if it encourages more to communicate well – and good for the public – if it improves at all the general understanding of economic principles.

Many of the other participants discussed Freakonomics specifically, a book which some other economists consider either too gimmicky or too 'imperialist' in tackling subject so far removed from the normal terrain of economics. The theme of a few simple principles being used to explain what's really happening in a wide range of everyday phenomena is common to quite a few books in the genre, however. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford and Robert Frank's The Economic Naturalist are both great examples.

Another sub-category concentrates instead on explaining economics – both my Sex, Drugs and Economics (download from here a pdf under a Creative Commons licence) and The Soulful Science try to do this. Yet another type brings the academic work of its author to a wider audience – say Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance.

Roger Backhouse posed a key question about all these books, though: do they oversimplify and even trivialise by making 'fun' a subject which is inherently both complicated and serious? I think it's a good question, but don't think such doubts will bring the phenomenon to an end just yet. There are even new 'popular economics' sections in a couple of bookstores I've visited recently. Anyway, the symposium's organisers Jack Vromen and Emrah Aydinonat hope to bring the papers together in a conference volume.

Meanwhile, Tim Harford has drawn my attention to the following list of accessible economics books. It's a great list (although I'd point out that my Sex, Drugs and Economics predates Freakonomics by three years, and the Armchair Economist does so by many more years).