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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Unabridged) | 
 enlarge | Author: Dubner, Steven, Stephen D., J. Levitt
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.73
You Save: $14.22 (47%)
Rating:  1581 reviews
Sales Rank: 6527568
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B0009FJKGG
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Amazon.com Review
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
Product Description
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 Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life-;from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing-;and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked 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 co-author Stephen J. 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 set out to 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 Ku Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, 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. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter. 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 1576 more reviews...
 An Entertaining Lesson on Breaking Out of the Mold May 6, 2005
M. JEFFREY MCMAHON (Torrance, CA USA)
49 out of 52 found this review helpful
This book succeeds at analyzing sociological developments in a way that is entertaining because Steven Levitt, an economist who strays from convention, has a knack for unpeeling layers and layers of assumptions and myth and showing the real causes behind trends. He shows, to name some examples, how our names affect our career paths; how abortion and the crime rate are related; how a man used his cunning to humiliate the Klu Klux Klan rather than rely on conventional methods; how easy it is to identify the role of public school teachers when they help their students cheat on standardized tests; why drug dealing is only lucrative for the dealers at the top of the pyramid; the myth that real estate agents are looking for our best interests.
The book, co-authored by Stephen J. Dubner, is breezy and anecdotal, which is an effective format for presenting a lot of sociological trends without being dry or losing the scintillating reportage in dense prose.
The lesson of this book is that we should be leery of trusting society's common assumptions or common wisdom. In other words, the book encourages us to keep our mind alert and break out of the mold in the way we see things. By looking at social trends with a fresh eye, the book succeeds at making economic trends a fun, adventurous endeavor.
If I were to criticize the book, it would be that it is too short. It's barely 200 pages and if you take out the blank chapter pages, the charts, the lists, and so on, it's really closer to 150 pages. Because the material is so current and topical, the method of "freakonomics" presented here would make a good format for a monthly magazine. My guess is that there will be many sequels.
The Power of Data in a Master Economist's Hands April 16, 2005
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
63 out of 72 found this review helpful
Having myself survived the economics program at the University of Chicago as a young graduate student twenty years ago, I know how decidedly eccentric their laurelled scholars can be. One of the most prestigious of the current crop there, Steven D. Levitt, along with journalist Stephen J. Dubner, has written a most intriguing and mind-bending book that uses Chicago-style econometric approaches and applies those to social and political issues that otherwise seem mundane and have no apparent basis in coherent theory which would support the behavior under study. In fact, this book of compelling case studies bears similarities to the approach taken by author Malcolm Gladwell in his recent best-selling book, "The Tipping Point", where he takes primarily historical events and analyzes them almost anecdotally as exercises in human behavior, in his case, making connections and how ideas become trends not by gradual insinuation but by a singular dramatic moment.
But Levitt's canvas is broader, his theories and findings are far more diverse, and his approach is far more quantitative in nature. For example, he challenges the perception that campaign spending determines elections. Levitt's analysis takes a fresh look by contrasting races in which the same two congressional candidates run repeatedly against each other. What he concludes is that a winning candidate can spend half as much as before and lose only one percent of the vote, while a losing candidate who doubles campaign spending picks up only one percent more. Basically they prove that no matter how much candidates spend on their campaigns, the results would not be marginally affected. In another example, the authors describe a seller's real estate agent, who lives on commission and has an incentive to sell a listed home for maximum dollar. Again, this is a misconception since the authors contend the small financial reward to an agent who sells a home for a few thousand more dollars is dwarfed by the greater money to be made by selling properties for less but quicker. Levitt's research into the sale of one hundred thousand Chicago homes found that agents keep their own homes on the market an average of ten days longer and sell them for more than three percent more than the homes they list and sell for clients.
The penetrating analyses provided by Levitt appear to have no bounds as he identifies Chicago teachers, who were proven to be changing their students' test answers and ultimately fired for their actions; sumo wrestlers who were found to be cheating as well; and even the alternative and more lucrative career options that crack dealers may have at McDonald's versus making sales. He even questions the impact of a good first name in a person's later life and if children become more literate if their parents read to them. The conclusions surprised me as they will you. But the most compelling study he presents is related to the impact of Roe vs. Wade. In a study he conducted with Stanford law Professor John Donohue, Levitt makes a seemingly broad-stroked conclusion in attributing much of the drop in the U.S. crime rate to legalized abortion. Their argument was based on the theory that abortion prevented the births of unwanted children who otherwise would have been statistically more likely to mature into criminals. The crime rate drop coincided with the time those aborted pregnancies would otherwise have hit their teen years, and the trend showed up earlier in states such as California that were the first to enact more liberal access to abortions. Through the data they gather, the correlation is startling, and the conclusion is hard to refute despite the naysayers who felt the stuffy to be politically motivated. But to Levitt's academically inclined credit, he never seems like he has an ideological agenda as he lets the numbers do the talking for him. His genius is to take those seemingly meaningless sets of numbers, ferret out the telltale pattern and recognize what it all means. A brilliant mind is at work, as he takes the most mundane open-ended questions and actually answers them. Strongly recommended.
Thoroughly engrossing! August 23, 2006
Sheetal Bahl (New Delhi, India)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
Disclaimer: given the number of reviews already available, this one is not going to describe the contents of the book, cite specific examples, or go into any great level of detail. My objective here is just to share my point that irrespective of the quality or accuracy of the content of the book (although personally I have no complaints on that front), this is a book definitely worth spending time on. A good testimony to that is the high frequency of reviews of this book, even though all of them are not favourable.
So on to the quick summary: Freakonomics is less of a novel and more of a collection of quasi-scientific articles linked by the unconventional methods, or rather explorations, of a brilliant thinker - Levitt. Levitt's ideas, experiments and conclusions have been deservedly converted into a lucid and gripping narrative by Dubner. Levitt's answers to unconventional questions are genuinely eye-opening; forcing one to think long after the book has been put down.
In short, a very good read.
What you want out of a non-fiction book: Tons of interesting facts. August 13, 2006
August Spies (Virginia)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
If I could i'd give this a 4.5 stars. It would lost half a star for its sometimes annoying writing style. The style isn't bad, but it isn't great and the recurring rhetorical questions are pretty silly. I'd rather just see the facts and what he is discussing that endure boring comparisons to why school teachers are like sumo wrestlers or whatever (the answer is always something simple like "they cheat" or "they lie")
My second minor quibble would be the title. Why not call this Freakstatistics? Virtually nothing discussed in this book falls into the realms of economics as normally defined. The book is a mixture of statistics and sociology. Stephen Levitt is a brillant guy and we dont' need to pin him down into the field of economics merely because he has a degree in it. His rational for discussing everything as economics is some general theme of "incentives," but that is too thin for me.
Those two quibbles aside, this book is infinitely interesting and entertaining. Levitt is a genius at tackling problems from unexpected angles and then backing up his surprise theories with enough stats you have to believe him. Who would have thought the fall in crime was due to abortions? Few people, though upon hearing it and a brief explanation it makes total sense. That section and the section on the world of small time crack dealers were the most interestng, though I also highly enjoyed the chapter on black vs. white baby names.
Highly recommended to anyone. Really, everyone would benefit from the info he imparts.
Great food for thought May 20, 2005
Angelmind (AR, USA)
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
As expected (and anticipated by the authors), this book is causing some polemic regarding some of the findings presented. Since this is a work written for the masses, the authors omitted much of the econ/stat rigorous talk that underlies any scientific research (confidence intervals anyone?). It cannot please everyone, but in the authors' defense I will say that
1) It presents its ideas in a clear and uncomplicated language;
2) It cites the sources of the points of view presented so that, if you are interested in a particular topic, you can research it further.
If you choose to consult the academic papers cited in the book (and many of them are online, so if you're smart enough to read this review, you're smart enough to find a way to access them), it will be much clearer to you that none of the results presented are truths. Scientific research is presented in such a way that there is always room for error. A person with no scientific background reading this book (as are many of the reviewers on this website), however, may get confused and assume that the authors of the studies mentioned have concluded that their findings are 100% true. You will do yourself a favor by assuming that these are merely points of view on how to interpret data. In fact, they are the authors' best guesses from what the data presents. If you disagree with their views, that is wonderful. You should consider following a career in academia.
I find the book very well written. I managed to read Freakonomics in less than three days, which is a big triumph for me. You see, I have a BS in Economics and an MS and a PhD in Agricultural Economics. I'd say I am well versed in statistics and econometrics (in fact I love them both) but it is rather boring to read journal articles. My life in academia has taught me that most people in academia write in a really boring tone. This book uses a light tone that makes it really easy to read (maybe economists and journalists should work together more often). And most importantly, if you have no clue about what research is being done in certain areas of economics/sociology today, this book will enlighten you.
The value of this book lies not in the findings presented but in the basic idea that is stressed throughout the book that one should think outside the box. And, as is often mentioned in this work, correlation does not imply causation. Finally, I also love that this book constantly stresses the idea that we should ask questions even if we do not have the answers. That, I think, is the essence of being a human being.
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