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Loading... Freakonomicsby Steven D. Levitt
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Meh. After all the buzz around Levitt, I am so not impressed. (  ) Kuiperdolin | Nov 7, 2009 |  For someone like me who hated economics throughout my late high school life, and early uni life, this book taught me something different - that economics is everywhere around me AND fun! It's funny, intuitive, sobering and quite an eye-opener. Don't let economics as its subject deter you - it is better than your bearded lecturer ^_^ (  ) anivyl | Nov 6, 2009 | An interesting read that provides fodder for thinking about all the other ways in which cause and effect can work in life, for instance, how does my misbehavior or sin affect those around me and for how long? ( ) ThorneStaff | Oct 28, 2009 | I don't have a lot to say about this book. The discussions of unusual economic questions, such as why drug dealers live with their moms or how abortion is related to the crime rate, were thought-provoking but I was hard-pressed to take them all at face value. Perhaps that's the idea, but without a more detailed explanation of the data used, it's hard to do anything but take the authors at their word. Which is fine for such a shallow treatment of the subject, but I found this book wanting by the end. All the same, it's a decent book for introducing the layperson to the surprisingly not-boring world of economics. I guess this just tells me I need to read further on the subject - and such motivation is certainly not a bad thing. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 | BTRIPP | Oct 28, 2009 | 
 Economists can seem a little arrogant at times. They have a set of techniques and habits of thought that they regard as more ''rigorous'' than those of other social scientists. When they are successful -- one thinks of Amartya Sen's important work on the causes of famines, or Gary Becker's theory of marriage and rational behavior -- the result gets called economics. It might appear presumptuous of Steven Levitt to see himself as an all-purpose intellectual detective, fit to take on whatever puzzle of human behavior grabs his fancy. But on the evidence of ''Freakonomics,'' the presumption is earned. The book, unfortunately titled Freakonomics, is broken into six chapters, each posing a different social question. Levitt and Dubner answer them using empirical research and statistical analysis. And unlike academics who usually address these matters, they don't clutter the prose with a lot of caveats. They just show you the goods.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0061234001, Hardcover)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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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