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Freakonomics Rev Ed

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Overview

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common Why do drug dealers still live with their moms How much do parents really matter How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime

These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life-from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives-how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and-if the right questions are asked is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

Editorial Reviews

Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base will find hard to resist. (May 1) Copyright 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Steven D. Levitt

Steven D. Levitt is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of The Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. In 2004, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which recognizes the most influential economist in America under the age of 40. More recently, he was named one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World." Levitt received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1989, his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1994, and has taught at the University of Chicago since 1997. He coauthored the bestselling book Freakonomics with Stephen J. Dubner.

Bio of Stephen J. Dubner

Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in New York City. He is the coauthor, with Steven D. Levitt, of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. He is also the author of Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family (1998), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper (2003), and a children's book, The Boy with Two Belly Buttons (2007). Freakonomics, published in April 2005, instantly became an international bestseller, with more than 1.5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone. It won the inaugural Quill Award for best business book; was short-listed for the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award; received a Visionary Award from the National Council on Economic Education; was a Book Sense Book of the Year; and was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the New York Times. Turbulent Souls was also named a Notable Book, and was a finalist for the Koret National Jewish Book Award. Turbulent Souls was reissued in late 2006 under a new title, Choosing My Religion. The eighth child of an upstate New York newspaperman, Dubner has been writing since he was a child. (His first published work appeared in Highlights magazine.) As an undergraduate at Appalachian State University, he started a rock band that was signed to Arista Records, which landed him in New York City. He ultimately quit playing music to earn an M.F.A. in writing at Columbia University, where he also taught in the English Department. From 1990to 1994, Dubner was an editor and writer at New York magazine. From 1994 to1999, he was an editor and writer for the New York Times magazine. He has also written for The New Yorker, Time, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. His journalism has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Crime Writing. He has also been a PBS correspondent, and is currently a regular contributor to ABC News, appearing monthly on Good Morning America and a segment of World News Tonight called "Freakonomics Friday." He and Steven Levitt also write a monthly "Freakonomics" column for the New York Times magazine, and they maintain a popular website, which has been called "the most readable economics blog in the universe." Dubner is now working on several book projects, including a second Freakonomics book with Steven Levitt as well as a book on Jewish ethics. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, the noted documentary photographer Ellen Binder, and their two children.

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5Really interesting and engaging

    Posted March 30, 2007 by Chris N, Los Angeles, CA

    This is a book that really makes you think. The authors use standard analysis techniques of economics to consider some really interesting questions with surprising results. Know why crime started dropping in the 90's? If you haven't read this book I'll bet you'll never guess the very interesting and persuasive conclusion reached here. By bringing together seemingly unrelated factors the authors get you to start thinking about the world in a new way. The writing style is very casual and easy to read without losing its credibility. One of the most interesting books I've read in a long time.

Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

2.41 MB

Number of Pages

336

eBook ISBN

9780061246937

Excerpt from: Freakonomics Rev Ed by Steven D. Levitt

Imagine for a moment that you are the manager of a day-care center. You have a clearly stated policy that children are supposed to be picked up by 4 p.m. But very often parents are late. The result: at day's end, you have some anxious children and at least one teacher who must wait around for the parents to arrive. What to do

A pair of economists who heard of this dilemma ' it turned out to be a rather common one ' offered a solution: fine the tardy parents. Why, after all, should the day-care center take care of these kids for free

The economists decided to test their solution by conducting a study of ten day-care centers in Haifa, Israel. The study lasted twenty weeks, but the fine was not introduced immediately. For the first four weeks, the economists simply kept track of the number of parents who came late; there were, on average, eight late pickups per week per day-care center. In the fifth week, the fine was enacted. It was announced that any parent arriving more than ten minutes late would pay $3 per child for each incident. The fee would be added to the parents' monthly bill, which was roughly $380.

After the fine was enacted, the number of late pickups promptly went ' up. Before long there were twenty late pickups per week, more than double the original average. The incentive had plainly backfired.

Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Economists love incentives. They love to dream them up and enact them, study them and tinker with them. The typical economist believes the world has not yet invented a problem that he cannot fix if given a free hand to design the proper incentive scheme. His solution may not always be pretty ' it may involve coercion or exorbitant penalties or the violation of civil liberties ' but the original problem, rest assured, will be fixed. An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.

We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive, from the outset of life. If you toddle over to the hot stove and touch it, you burn a finger. But if you bring home straight A's from school, you get a new bike. If you are spotted picking your nose in class, you get ridiculed. But if you make the basketball team, you move up the social ladder. If you break curfew, you get grounded. But if you ace your SATs, you get to go to a good college. If you flunk out of law school, you have to go to work at your father's insurance company. But if you perform so well that a rival company comes calling, you become a vice president and no longer have to work for your father. If you become so excited about your new vice president job that you drive home at eighty mph, you get pulled over by the police and fined $100. But if you hit your sales projections and collect a year-end bonus, you not only aren't worried about the $100 ticket but can also afford to buy that Viking range you've always wanted ' and on which your toddler can now burn her own finger.

An incentive is simply a means of urging people to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing. But most incentives don't come about organically. Someone ' an economist or a politician or a parent ' has to invent them. Your three-year-old eats all her vegetables for a week She wins a trip to the toy store. A big steelmaker belches too much smoke into the air The company is fined for each cubic foot of pollutants over the legal limit. Too many Americans aren't paying their share of income tax It was the economist Milton Friedman who helped come up with a solution to this one: automatic tax withholding from employees' paychecks.