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Loading... FREAKONOMICS (zeta) (original 2005; edition 2007)by Steven Levitt (Author)
Work InformationFreakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt (2005)
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Books Read in 2016 (1,269) Unread books (250) » 19 more Top Five Books of 2019 (308) Books Read in 2019 (3,008) Books Read in 2018 (3,790) 2014 (4) 2000s decade (87) To Read List (1) My List (182) Unshelved Book Clubs (89) Libertarian Books (93) LT picks: Blue Books (189) No current Talk conversations about this book. Good point: This book turned out to be mostly about data mining. Bad point: I was hoping to read a book about economy for dummies. Good point: It was fun to read, with lots of silly factoids. Bad point: the factoids were not all that interesting for people outside of the USA. Good point: It gave me nice ideas for data mining projects. Bad point: the cheese. It was everywhere. Bad point: the ending of each chapter contained at least one paragraph singing praise of Mr. Levitt. Really. I don't care if he's child prodigy / genius / revolutionary. I'm interested in his work, not his person. It's not bloody Bertrand Russell. Let his brilliancy speak for itself.
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. Freakonomics is about unconventional wisdom, using the raw data of economics in imaginative ways to ask clever and diverting questions. Levitt even redefines his definition. If, as he says, economics is essentially about incentives and how people realise them, then economics is a prospecting tool, not a laboratory microscope. Is contained inFreakonomics Set - Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Signed Edition - Easton Press); Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance; Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt Has the (non-series) sequelInspiredHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
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? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask--but Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life--from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing--and his conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. 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. In this book, they set out to explore the hidden side of everything. If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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Levitt and Dubner put all their faith into a field usually called behavioral economics. It posits that humans are rational actors, and when they appear not to be, it's because the incentives that drive their choices aren't obvious. How much you go along with their theories depends on how much stock you put into behavioral economics, and for me, it's honestly a mixed bag. The most interesting portion of the book, in my eyes, was the chapter on abortion and crime. It's more of a purely statistical dive, and the underlying assumption that he uses, that women are good judges of when they shouldn't bring children into the world because they won't be able to devote sufficient resources (money, of course, but time and energy too) to their raising, is one that makes sense to me. The children that might otherwise have been brought into the kind of poor home environments that correlate with (but don't necessarily cause) criminality simply weren't born and therefore can't be in the world, committing crimes. It's a bold hypothesis, and unsurprisingly turned out to be one of the most controversial. Since I had the revised/expanded edition of the book, they actually included an appendix chapter doing a deep dive into their statistical analysis. I've got some very basic grounding in statistics, but it was beyond my ability to actually comprehend, so I just have to trust that they did their homework correctly.
There are some other interesting tidbits, including one about charter/magnet schools and their effect on student achievement, but I found myself often skeptical of their breezy assurance of their own correctness and faith in their data. After the massive statistical analysis failure of the 2016 election, it's more obvious than ever that data isn't always all-knowing...it needs careful parsing and tweaking to accurately reflect reality. (