Author applies economics to life and dating

By Eddie Evans

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Economics professor Tyler Cowen delights in using his expertise to get the best out of life. In his new book, he says anyone can.

From choosing a restaurant to persuading a child to wash the dishes, "Discover Your Inner Economist" (Dutton, $25.95) follows in the footsteps of the best-selling "Freaknomics" by showing how to put economic thinking to work in almost every area of life.

"Small improvements in understanding can bring a much better use of incentives, leading to much better decisions and much better lives," writes Cowen, who teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

In a restaurant, he will order the most elaborate dishes rather than plainer fare on the assumption that, having invested in going out, there's no point eating food that you can cook at home.

By the same token, Cowen will order several dishes -- more than he can eat -- to sample as much as possible and maximize his return on the cost of the outing. What he doesn't finish, he takes home.

For good value, he will seek restaurants in less-expensive parts of town because, he says, those in high-rent areas are either for the masses or very expensive.

"There are better food buys in East Hollywood than West Hollywood, where the movie stars live," he writes. In the midtown district of New York, "we can do better on Ninth Avenue (the far West Side), or First Avenue (the far East Side), than on Fifth Avenue."

He sees dating as a good place to apply the economic principle of signaling -- the idea that, for example, people study for an MBA degree at Harvard more for what it says about them than for what they learn.