Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. Levitt
![Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything](/images/Freakonomics-Revised-and-Expanded-A-Rogue-Economist-Explores-the-Hidden-Side-of-Everything-0061234001-L.jpg)
List Price:
Our Price: $5.39
You Save: $24.56 (82%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.84 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. LevittEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-02
ISBN: 0061234001
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: William Morrow
Book Reviews of Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Book Review: Much ado about nothing new
Summary: 3 Stars
'Freakonomics' bills itself as a revolutionary application of the principles of microeconomics to aspects of everyday life: some life-or-death, others trivial (or, in the authors' description, 'freakish'). Hence both the title, and the subtitle: 'A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything.' The dust-jacket blurb gushes, 'Through forceful storytelling and wry insight ... [the authors] '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.'
Their storytelling IS pretty good, so I hate to burst their bubble: In fact, the study of incentives ain't the hidden side of anything -- it's classic microeconomics. Good economics textbook writers and lecturers have always resorted to quirky (or 'freakish') everyday scenarios to elucidate difficult concepts. Are good, innovative lecturers and texts rare? Sure. Are they unknown? Hardly.
'Freakonomics' is very well-written and addresses many fascinating topics. But there is nothing really new about it. The conceit that there is derives, I suspect, from two main factors: [1] the youth and inexperience of wunderkind coauthor and economist Steven D Levitt, only 26 when work on the book began in 2003; and [2] the fact that his literary collaborator is a New York Times Magazine journalist, Stephen J Dubner.
Levitt clearly is a gifted economist. But I surmise that, during his ballistic rise to prominence, he simply wasn't exposed to good 'micro' teaching as an undergrad. I was luckier. My 12-year-old Econ 101 text doesn't skimp on graphs, or math: A responsible text just can't. But to cite just one example, in illustrating the key 'micro' concepts of total and marginal utility, it features a thirsty tennis player gulping glass after glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade at a sidewalk stand. As he grows less thirsty, the stand owner must sell each at a lower price than the one before ... until the tennis player is so waterlogged that the stan's owner would have to offer to pay HIM before he would consider another glass!
Regarding Dubner: The New York Times has long been a wellspring of political and economic disinformation. In recent years, columnist Paul Krugman, a crypto-Marxist charlatan, has been perhaps the worst offender. There is little question that the Times' newsroom, like the chattering class in general, is dominated by Krugman's socialist fellow-travelers. Dubner runs with that pack; but on the other hand, he's got free-thinking impulses. If he didn't, he wouldn't be so delighted at Levitt's politically incorrect demonstration that a backyard swimming pool is more dangerous to a home's inhabitants than a handgun in the bedside cabinet; or by Levitt's adroit debunking of campaign-finance-reform hokum. But then again, if Dubner weren't a mainstream media hack, he wouldn't be surprised, either. That is, if Dubner regularly read National Review, Reason magazine or the Wall Street Journal opinion pages, he wouldn't find those conclusions in the least remarkable. It's clear that, like most of the bicoastal pseudointelligentsia, Dubner has led a sheltered life of the mind. Hence his misplaced enthusiasm for Levitt's 'innovative' approach.
With palpable glee, the authors discuss the finding that legalizing abortion in 1973 resulted in the dramatic drop in violent crime during the 1990s. This is the centerpiece of the pair's occasional efforts to debunk conservative causes -- presumably so they will keep getting invited to parties on the Upper West Side, despite their swipes at 'progressive' orthodoxy. Levitt makes a sound case, as far as it goes. He argues, with impressive statistical backup, that among the 30 million or so babies aborted since 1973 were a statistically significant number of children who would have grown up to be vicious predators; and that their abortions resulted in a striking drop in violent crime. But he and Dubner very nearly miss the point altogether.
In a passage that shows every sign of having been tacked on as an afterthought, the glee evaporates. Levitt and Dubner hasten soberly to add: '[This finding] calls to mind a long-ago dart attributed to GK Chesterton: when there aren't enough hats to go around, the problem isn't solved by lopping off some heads ... Indeed, there are plenty of people who consider abortion itself to be a violent crime.' They conclude with a discussion noting that 'even for someone who considers a fetus to be worth only one-hundredth of a human being, the trade-off between higher abortion and lower crime ... is terribly inefficient.' One doubts the authors even know anyone who's strongly anti-abortion. If they did, they would have understood from the outset that no committed pro-life voter would balk at accepting higher street crime as a trade-off for ending a practice they detest as even more abhorrent ... especially since so many pro-lifers also happen to own guns for self-defense, and know how to use them.
That brings us to Levitt and Dubner's dishonest dismissal of economist John Lott and his book 'More Guns, Less Crime.' In the brief passage in which they discuss his work, they misrepresent his findings and air ad hominem attacks: baseless charges that Lott 'faked' survey data, and an incident in which Lott defended himself in an online forum by posing as an adoring former student. The latter strikes me at worst as an amusing prank -- unless, like most gun-control activists, you're a humorless harridan. The former results from a claim Lott made in print several years ago to the effect that 'national survey data' show 98 percent of defensive handgun uses involve no shots fired, that merely brandishing a gun is enough to stop the crime. While the percentage is undoubtedly quite high, Lott when challenged was unable convincingly to show where he got the '98 percent' figure. His enemies, who now include Levitt and Dubner, immediately aired the ad hominem charge that he 'faked' it, deliberately ignoring the possibility that he was merely confused.
Regardless, the precise figure is utterly peripehral to Lott's central argument: He demonstrates that liberal handgun laws in general - especially, but not only concealed carry laws - restrain rising crime, or result in marginal reductions. He does not claim they 'drive crime down' dramatically, as Levitt and Dubner insinuate he does. Here, too, 'Freakonomics' misses the point: Government crime statistics show that firearms are used about 2.5 million times a year to deter potential or attempted crimes. That means that firearms deter a great many individual burglaries, batteries, rapes and murders. There is at most an indirect relationship between the 2.5 million almost-crimes and the ones that actually wind up being committed ... whose incidence may rise or fall, from year to year, based on many other factors. Regardless of the incidence of violent crimes, it would be absurd to argue that stopping 2.5 million of them in any given year is not a desirable outcome. Shame on Levitt and Dubner for slandering a scholar who makes exactly that point.
Another major 'Freakonomics' shortcoming is one of omission. The authors should have addressed the agitprop generated since the 1990s by proponents of a 'single-payer' (ie socialist) health care system. I, for one, would like to hear an honest, detailed discussion of 'moral hazard,' in the context of health-insurance premium costs and deductibles. The ballyhooed 'plight of the uninsured' and the allure of 'free' health care are desperately vulnerable to the blowtorch of microeconomic analysis. One suspects Dubner, at least, shied from the discussion, perhaps realizing that 'single-payer' proponents (who likely include his friends, colleagues and/or political icons) have strayed into a minefield.
By far the most engaging chapter is 'Drug dealers living with their moms.' The mastermind behind this investigation of the of inner-city drug trade is not Levitt but Sudhir Venkatesh, an Indian-American graduate student in sociology. Venkatesh gambled his life for his studies by befriending trigger-happy gangstas. He exposes drug gangs as 'corporate' enterprise, with highly paid CEOs and street-level flunkies earning less than minimum wage. By itself, this chapter is worth the price of 'Freakonomics.'
More Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything reviews:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Summary of Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
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.
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe
Economics Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Economics Books
The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terrorby Beverly Gage
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-01-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.33
Price in other shops:
Coal: A Human Historyby Barbara Freese
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2004-01-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Econometric Models and Economic Forecastsby Robert Pindyck, Daniel Rubinfeld, Robert S. Pindyck, Daniel L. Rubinfeld
McGraw-Hill/Irwin; Published: 1997-07-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $88.50
Elements of Dynamic Optimizationby Alpha C. Chiang
Mcgraw-Hill College; Published: 1992-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $375.84
Macroeconomicsby Campbell McConnell, Stanley Brue
McGraw-Hill/Irwin; Published: 2006-10-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $30.00
Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power (P.S.)by John Steele Gordon
Harper Perennial; Published: 2005-10-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.73
Price in other shops:
A Term at the Fed: An Insider's Viewby Laurence H. Meyer
HarperBusiness; Published: 2006-01-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.24
Price in other shops:
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)by Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras
HarperBusiness; Published: 2002-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.86
Price in other shops:
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisionsby Dan Ariely
Harper; Published: 2009-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.48
Price in other shops:
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000by Paul Kennedy
Harper Collins Publishers; Published: 1989-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.08
Similar Books and other products
Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Doby Kaiser Fung
McGraw-Hill; Published: 2010-01-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.32
Price in other shops:
The Radical Center: The Future of American Politicsby Ted Halstead, Michael Lind
Anchor; Published: 2002-10-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.35
Price in other shops:
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logicby Madsen Pirie
Continuum; Published: 2007-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.90
Price in other shops:
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinkingby Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2005-01-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Outliers: The Story of Successby Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2008-11-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.84
Price in other shops:
Economics of Social Issues (McGraw-Hill Economics)by Ansel Sharp, Charles Register, Paul Grimes
McGraw-Hill/Irwin; Published: 2009-09-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $107.49
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differenceby Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2000-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.95
Price in other shops:
SuperFreakonomics, Illustrated edition: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insuranceby Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
William Morrow; Published: 2010-10-19; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.21
Price in other shops:
Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insuranceby Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
William Morrow; Published: 2009-10-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.70
Price in other shops:
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insuranceby Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2011-05-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops: