Economics is no longer the "dismal science" dreaded by college freshmen. In recent years, a band of economists has broken away from the charts and graphs of college textbooks, and begun to explain ordinary behavior in plain and often entertaining English. Steve Landsburg was one of the first of the new breed, in his book The Armchair Economist and long-running "Everyday Economics" column in Slate magazine. Now he is back, and more provocative than ever.

In More Sex is Safer Sex, Landsburg shows how the rational behavior of each one of us -- when combined together -- produces the often bizarre, seemingly irrational behavior of crowds. We all stand up at the ballpark, so none of us can see. We avoid casual sex, from fear of disease, and we thereby make sex more dangerous. Things really get interesting when Landsburg suggests ways to change the rules, and game the system. Why not charge juries if a convicted felon is exonerated? Why not have each member of Congress represent a national subset of voters, chosen alphabetically? Why not solve the ""overpopulation"" problem by having more children, who will help think of ways to improve our use of resources?

More Sex is Safer Sex will make you laugh and argue -- and it will make you think about the world around you in new and unforgettable ways.

Landsburg's latest effort is an OK attempt to cash in on the hipness of using economic analysis on real world problems a la Steven Levitt's FREAKONOMICS, but it lacks the depth of Levitt's classic and a lot of the topics are not covered in great detail or are all that interesting to begin with.

The opening essay attempting to demonstrate that having more sex means having safer sex is certainly provocative but struck me as a bit of a stretch made in an effort to create a little bit of sizzle. Other pieces are more lackluster. An essay on using economic analysis to reform the judicial system comes across as both naive and absurd showing once again how some academics are unable to separate raw theory from real-life application. An essay on how to make lines shorter makes no sense at all unless the object of the proposal is to ensure almost no one gets served. A final section that discusses the outcomes of various economic cost/benefit analysis create scenarios that make the author personally uncomfortable ends up being just silliness.

But while it is flawed and the writing is a bit weak, it can be a lot of fun to read as Landsburg rolls out the statistics and the data and attempts to draw unexpected conclusions. That is why pop economics is fun and this book can be entertaining. If you go into this understanding that this is not FREAKONOMICS 2, but is, instead, a watered-down step-child, you can still find it enjoyable. If nothing else, it is a very quick read. I suspect I burned through it in a three hours at most. Half-heartedly recommended.

A mad scientist's fantasies of what he would try if he suddenly was empowered to fix the world interspersed with random neat yet unsupported ideas is this book in a nutshell.

The author applies statistical models of economics to disciplines ruled by different equations. He is shocking. He ignores history. Calling for capital of punishment of defaulting mortgage holders ignores centuries of revolution from the middle ages which outlawed debtor's prisons (essentially capital punishment by slavery). No deep analysis is given with his anecdotes. For example, he is surprised blue collar workers, the ones whose jobs have signs like 'no accidents in 304 days', place a premium on safety compared to white collar workers.

I couldn't take this book seriously. An expert economist isn't an expert politician or lawyer, and ideas about those fields are silly. Also anyone who places a value on a statistical average human life ($10 million) isn't a person I want in charge of me. I did find his statistical person vs. identified person contrast relevant; too bad he couldn't apply the analogy in a general sense.

Pass on this and read Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, which had conclusions I found relevant and worthy of my attention.

This book is worth reading if for no other reason than the process of carrying out some thoughts to their logical conclusions.

Good points:

1. The book shows what could happen in some situations by trying to account for and measure every cost and every benefit. His example about using condoms (in the context of more sex= safer sex) was well thought out, but fell short of reality. For example: He assumes that the value of sex to each person is the same both with or without a condom. Since the purpose of the thought exercise was to reduce the number of HIV infections per encounter, I wonder if he would have come to a different conclusion if he'd assumed that focusing on making the cost of finding a person's HIV status as low as possible? To carry the idea a little further: If you could look at some person and know whether they had HIV, then there would be a LOT MORE bareback sex going on. And bareback sex might be an even greater benefit that covered sex-- and hence something that people are willing to disclose their HIV status in exchange for. And if that is so, then his analysis on subsidizing condoms is significantly vitiated.

2. "Go Figure" is a great chapter about coming up with explanations and separating the direction of causality between two quantities. (Does A cause B or does B cause A.) This was a very short piece, but it was also the center of the book (for me).

3. The discussion of the communal stream principle was great because it separated what was a cost borne by the communal stream vs. what was a cost borne by an individual player therein.

4. Again: The most important and best thing about this book was that it followed what happens when arguments are taken to their LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS.

Bad points:

1. The arguments were good, but in many places they seemed a bit too stretched.

This is one of those books that you can read and reread just to find something new in the reasoning each time.

Steven Landsburg is like the Howard Stern of economists. It's very obvious that, if an argument isn't shocking, he has no interest in advancing it. Reading such a fervent contrarian is consistently fun; however, his arguments are very hit or miss.

The "cover" argument in the book is perhaps the best. His explanation of adverse selection in the "market" for sex is initially absurd but pretty darn hard to quibble with. However, other shocking arguments he offers with similar gusto (ie a proposal for "last come, first served" drinking fountains) are absolutely idiotic.

If nothing else, he's extremely original--a rarity in academia nowadays. That alone makes him entertaining and worth reading. Overall: a few really bad arguments, but deserves a place alongside Freakonomics in the canon of contarian pop economics applied to a zillion topics--including sex.

A long, long time in a far, far away galaxy John Stuart Mills' parents sent the young boy to live and learn from the political philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, who fed the boy nothing but utilitarianism until at age twenty-one John Stuart Mills had a nervous breakdown. Reading "More Safe is Safer Sex" we need imagine that Steven Landsburg was born in the University of Chicago economics department, where he was nursed, parented, and fed by economic textbooks: there really is no other explanation on how he could have written "More Safe is Safer Sex," which is economics on steroids.

Take for example the first chapter and title argument: "More Safe is Safer Sex." Mr. Landsburg creates a thought experiment: shy and reserved Martin parties with co-worker Joan, and they're about to go to bed but Martin is reluctant, and Joan ends up going home with promiscuous Maxwell, who gives her AIDS. Mr. Landsburg reasons that it's Martin's fault that Joan got AIDS, and then reasons that it really wasn't Martin's fault because there wasn't enough of an economic incentive for him to have sex with Joan. So Mr. Landsburg's solution: free condoms. Yes, the economic allure of free condoms is enough to transform the shyest geek into the most daring Casanova.

Mr. Landsburg is trying to make a "communal stream" argument, that if more clean individuals like Martin were willing to have sex then they would help purify the common stream against dirty individuals like Maxwell, and the spread of AIDS could be halted. The problem with economics is that it treats humans as a mathematical algorithm, and, as I said earlier, this book is economics on steroids. Mr. Landsburg, let me tell you right now that, if he is a flesh and blood male, Martin wants to get laid, and if Joan offers herself Martin would be more than happy to jump into bed with her. But if Joan offers herself to Martin why wouldn't she offer herself to Maxwell? And then sleep with either of them as she likes? So instead of just Joan getting AIDS from Maxwell so would Martin. This is just simple human psychology (humans have personalities, and their personalities dictate their actions) combined with a little game theory (Joan having sex with Martin does not preclude her with having sex with Maxwell). Most people would call this conclusion "common sense."

Alas, psychology, game theory, "common sense," and just about everything else are what this book painfully lack, although University of Chicago economics majors would be happy to know that there's plenty of classical cost-benefit economics.