Lately, I really like economics (by which I mean the interesting insights and mathematical/game theoretical puzzles certain economists put in their blogs and magazine columns). Slate has long been doing occasional economics columns in this style, so when they added undercover economist Tim Harford as a columnist, I was happy. But whereas someone like Tyler Cowen or Steven Landsburg can explain and explore an idea just deeply enough to be interesting in a short post or article, Harford's columns all seem to end just as he is about to start saying anything.

His recent column on buying a used car is a perfect example. He introduces an intriguing economics puzzle: that a certain amount of economic insight seemed to suggest that the used car market should utterly fail. But, of course, the market thrives. Here, you would think, is an opportunity to explore further why it should fail and why it might actually succeed. Does Harford do this? no, he goes off on a tangent about how this same analysis can be applied to other things (e.g., the job market) but not far enough down that path to explain that one either. Aside from a hurried paragraph at the end, he makes no attempt at answering why people continue to buy used cars. Perhaps he's hoping people will buy his book to find out the rest, but if this is a sample of how he writes, I wouldn't bother.