Hit 7 - Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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Manufacturer: William Morrow

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780061234002
ISBN: 0061234001
Label: William Morrow
Manufacturer: William Morrow
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2006-10-02
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: 2006-10-17
Studio: William Morrow

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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.

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Summary: Freakonomics Is Not Rigorous Enough
Comment: The basic premise of Freakonomics is that everything that happens leads to something else, or that one thing leads to another. It's a book about cause and effect from a social perspective. With this view, the author challenges our assumptions about the way things are or the way we actually perceive them to be. The book is written with a lighthearted tone, making its subjects and case studies seem more like fodder for a cocktail party than as questions for research. Such treatment makes Freakonomics accessible for a broader audience of readers, especially those who might not otherwise venture into learning about such a field. And what is that field exactly? The "freakier," less mathematical side of economics.

For all its great writing and its rather daring subjects, the book and the cause-and-effect relationshps the authors propose are a bit of a stretch. Abortion is heralded as being responsible for the dramatic dip in crime across America in the 1990's. It is supposed that abortion was responsible for ridding the nation of the young, lower income, less well-educated individuals who would no doubt have been responsible for perpetuating crime had they been born. Yet the author fails to account for the drop in deviance levels from other segments of the population that were around. The book makes arguments like this and others without also giving attention to plausible alternatives.

Another case in point is the authors' assumption that young people want to be dealers of narcotics because it is flashy and cool in spite of the risks and low pay associated with it. They compare it to the way a young person would want to enter a glamourous low-paying profession like publishing to have a one-in-a-million shot at becoming a super high-paid executive. (See my review for The Devil Wears Prada.) That the authors compare an industry of entertainment to the selling of narcotics is laughable, but then to also say that young people become sellers of narcotics because they want to seems even more absurd. The author points out that the sellers of narcotics in his book earn as little as $3 a day, much less than minimum wage.

It would seem to reason that a person interested in making money would try to find a job that paid more. In the face of minimum wage, selling narcotics isn't even an option ... unless you have no other place to find a job. In areas suffering from the proliferation of the trade of narcotics, one key issue in whether people decide to sell narcotics is their options for finding an honest job. How many corporations house their offices in the ghetto? How many people patron businesses housed in ghettos over those they find in a mall? How many malls are in the ghetto? And even if a person were to find a job outside the ghetto, how much more of a burden would it be to find transportation to that job, an additional cost, especially if that person is already working to earn extra money and the only ride that person has is the bus. Now, if that person is a child or a teen, the time that child spends traveling to and from that honest job miles away from his or her home then takes time away from studying. For adults, it takes time away from parenting. It takes time away from learning skills for a better job. Given the choice, thinking in real economical terms of opportunity cost and benefit, the reason people choose to sell narcotics is clear. It has nothing, or at least very little, to do with being cool.

Freakonomics is not a rigorous book. That is its major flaw. It attempts to explain some of our generation's most challenging questions, but it offers only simplified answers. The onus to dig deeper for the true causes of events falls on the reader, but the book does not actually encourage such thought. Nowhere do the authors even suggest that they could be wrong or that there could be other plausible reasons for various events. Such writing is the mark of poor scholarship and I do not recommend that it be read.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Surprisingly interesting
Comment: I have a new appreciation for the hidden side of economics! It read so quickly. Who knew economics could be a fun read!

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Summary: Open your eyes to a whole new world!
Comment: Levitt and Dubner really challenge conventional wisdom.It will open your eyes to how easily people just except things as fact without ever questioning the data behind them. Its a read that you really will not want to put down and definately a must read for anyone in the field of psychology, social work, or medicine.

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Summary: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
Comment: After reading this book I wasn't sure whether the author is a brilliant person, but a bad writer, or whether the author is knowingly dishonest and misleading.

The author is extremely bold and in a single sentence will discount or write off all competing theories to his ideas; he makes conclusions about topics that academics have likely spent thousands of pages and many years debating. And he does it all while providing very little data to support his views and even less data to address any competing viewpoints.

It is as if he is so supremely confident in his views that he doesn't feel the need to deal with nitty gritty details.

I am not saying that I think he is *wrong*. My problem is that I don't know that he is *right*. And, given the far reaching claims he makes, I think he needs to provide a lot more data before I am willing to believe what he says.

On top of this, there are a few points where I felt like he (or his co-author) are dangerously loose with the facts. They make the most basic of mistakes when analyzing the data. It makes you think that they are either amazingly sloppy or are intentionally ignoring the facts so they can support their argument.

For example, look at the chapter where they analyze the online dating site registrations of users from Boston and San Diego. They compare the self-reported incomes of these users with "typical Internet users" and conclude that the users must be lying since they are wealthier than the average user. But they never consider the fact that Boston and San Diego are both wealthy towns. Does this explain the data entirely? Maybe. Maybe not. But you simply can't brush off such an obvious factor that could explain the skew.

This sort of sloppiness would be unacceptable in a freshman statistics class and casts a pall over the credibility of the entire book.

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Summary: Lessons in lateral thinking
Comment: This book contains a bit more hype than some readers may be comfortable with, but it is worth reading for the lessons to be gained in lateral thinking, pulling together ideas and interconnections that are not immediately obvious.

I found the final chapter on name choice relatively weak, but the ones on abortion and crime, and the corporate structure of crack dealers, were food for thought. And I have seen for myself an example of a real estate agent trying to coerce a client into selling a home at below market value - here in Taiwan the same thing happens - and I think Levitt's logic on why this happens is sound.

The additional material at the end of the book, i.e. newspaper columns and blog entries, included some corrections, e.g. on doubts surrounding Stetson Kennedy's exposés of the Ku Klux Klan. It is here also that the reader learns that Levitt and his wife lost their first child when he was just a year old, and that somehow put the author in a new perspective for me; it also explains where he got the idea to compare the risks of gun ownership to having a home swimming pool. (He and his wife attended a support group for parents who had lost a child and learned there that many children die by drowning in a swimming pool.)

Elsewhere, the author gets his revenge on a restaurant that served him badly spoiled chicken and then compensated him only by not charging for two glasses of wine: he reveals the eatery's name and location - bringing out another, very human, aspect of the author's personality. You also learn that he likes to gamble - maybe not so surprising in someone so interested in interpreting statistics. I enjoyed the author's - very positive - description of a lecture visit to the Google headquarters. And as a teacher, his reminiscences of his student days and classroom behavior - "sleeping through about 90%" of his classes - gave me pause.

All in all, this book is an easy and worthwhile read. And knowing what's in it will put you a bit more in touch with popular reading culture.

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