Tim Harford OBE
Born	Timothy Douglas Harford (1973-09-27) 27 September 1973 (age 50)[1][2]
Citizenship	United Kingdom
Education	Aylesbury Grammar School
Alma mater	Brasenose College, Oxford[3]
Employer(s)	BBC Financial Times International Finance Corporation
Known for	"The Undercover Economist"[4] More or Less
Awards	Bastiat Prize
Website	TimHarford.com

Timothy Douglas Harford OBE (born 27 September 1973) is an English economic journalist who lives in Oxford.^[5]

Harford is the author of four economics books^[4][6][7][8] and writes his long-running Financial Times column, "The Undercover Economist", syndicated in Slate magazine, which explores the economic ideas behind everyday experiences. His column in the Financial Times, "Since You Asked", ran between 2011 and 2014 and offered a sceptical look at the news of the week.^[9]

Since October 2007 Harford has presented the BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less. The series segments are also available as podcasts. Subsequently Harford launched his own podcast on the podcast production network Pushkin Industries, called Cautionary Tales.^[10][11]

Education

Harford was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and then at Brasenose College, Oxford. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics^[3] and then a Master of Philosophy in Economics, in 1998.^[1] Harford said that he originally planned to drop economics when studying towards his undergraduate degree but that his Economics tutor Peter J. N. Sinclair convinced him otherwise.^[12]

Personal life

He lives in Oxford with his wife Fran Monks, a photographer, and their three children.^[13]

Career

Harford joined the Financial Times in 2003 on a fellowship in commemoration of business columnist Peter Martin. He continued to write his financial column after joining International Finance Corporation in 2004, and he rejoined the Financial Times as economics lead writer in April 2006. He is also a member of the newspaper's editorial board.

Tim has spoken at TED, PopTech and the Sydney Opera House. He is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.^[14][15]

In August 2007, he presented a television series on the BBC, Trust Me, I'm an Economist.^[16] In October 2007, Harford replaced Andrew Dilnot on the BBC Radio 4 series More or Less. From November 2016, he presented an economic history documentary radio and podcast series 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy. Since November 2019, he has been presenting the podcast series Cautionary Tales. On 13 November 2020 he started a new podcast series on COVID-19 Vaccination called How to Vaccinate the World.^[17]

Harford is managed by the agency Knight Ayton.^[13]

Awards

• More or Less won the Royal Statistical Society's 2010 award for statistical excellence in broadcast journalism.^[18] In 2017 Harford was made an Honorary Fellow of the society.^[19]
• More or Less won Mensa's award for promoting intelligence in public life.^[20]
• Harford was awarded the Bastiat Prize for economic journalism in 2007 (shared with Jamie Whyte).^[21] In 2010 he again drew with Whyte, in second place.
• He was awarded the OBE in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to Improving Economic Understanding ^[22]

Publications

• The Market for Aid (2005) with Michael Klein, ISBN 978-0-8213-6229-7
• The Undercover Economist (2005), ISBN 978-0-345-49401-6
• The Logic of Life (2008), ISBN 978-0-8129-7787-5
• Dear Undercover Economist: Priceless Advice on Money, Work, Sex, Kids, and Life's Other Challenges (2009). New York, Random House. 2009. ISBN 978-0-8129-8010-3
• Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure (2011). New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-10096-4
• The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run – or Ruin – an Economy (2014). Penguin Riverhead Books (US). ISBN 978-1594631405
• Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives (2016). Riverhead Books. ISBN 978-1594634796
• Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy (2017). Little, Brown. ISBN 978-1408709115
• The Next Fifty Things that Made the Modern Economy (2020). The Bridge Street Press. ISBN 978-1408712665
• How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers (2020). Little, Brown. ISBN 978-1408712245
  • Published in North America as: The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (2021). Riverhead Books. ISBN 978-0593084595