The undercover game-changers

Book review of 'Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy'

Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy

Tim Harford

Hachette

343 pages; Rs 599

In The Shipman’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer writes about a merchant too busy with business to notice that his wife is having an affair with the clergyman. The clergyman borrows money from the merchant which he uses to endear himself to the merchant’s wife, and then tells the merchant that he has repaid the debt.

Tim Harford, Britain’s answer to Malcolm Gladwell, recounts this story from The Canterbury Tales in the chapter on “Double-Entry Bookkeeping” in his latest book. Mr Harford, who writes the “Undercover Economist” column in