Archimedes’ Lever A collection of Ideas that could move the world

Review: Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes

Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes by Paula Szuchman

My rating:
Read from Aug 16 to 26, 2011

A novel exploration of relationships and economics. While not a deep scholarly paper, it was an amusing read. If I were to teach an economics 101 class I would use this book because it introduces economic theories in ways that are very accessible using relationships as the example.

The ideas presented are not going to make or break your relationship. It will, however, help you understand how you act better by framing the context in terms of economic theories such as sunk cost, game theory and aversion of loss. In many ways it helps illustrate the illogical way that we behave and offers a better response in order to maximize our results.

Sometimes the editorial comments on economic policy were presented as straw men arguments. One example was with the negative commentary on the use of government spending to stimulate an economy. Thus downplaying GDP economic theory (GDP = C+G+i+(X-M)). That aside, these straw men appeared to be more soap boxes but were rare enough to not get you riled up and frothing at the mouth because, well, you can't argue with the conclusions - just have more sex.