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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Hardcover)

by Steven Levitt (Author), Stephen J. Dubner (Author) "Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper..." (more)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 242 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins Canada; 1 edition (Mar 31 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 006073132X
ISBN-13: 978-0060731328
Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 16 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 477 g

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (49 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #39,655 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#73 in Books > Nonfiction > Economics > Theory
#74 in Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Theory
#76 in Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Theory

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Product Description

Amazon.com

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 innercity 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

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner Answer The Amazon.com Significant Seven

Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, author and co-author of this season's bestselling quirky hit, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, graciously answered the Amazon.com Significant Seven questions that we like to run by every author.

Levitt and Dubner answer the Amazon.com Significant Seven questions

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. Levitt has a knack for making that principle relevant to our daily lives, which could make this book a hit. Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt "has the most interesting mind in America," an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base will find hard to resist. 50-city radio campaign. (May 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin. Read the first page

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Customer Reviews

49 Reviews

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (49 customer reviews)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A look at things through the eyes of an economist., Oct 17 2006

By	bookhound - See all my reviews

This book is a general interest book- and it certainly is interesting. The book, for anyone looking for an entertaining read, will like it. In a nutshell, the book takes a look at all sorts of things in society, from crack gangs to parenting, and then attempts to make sense of them by applying econonmic principles. According to the book, economics is really the study of incentives, and so using this kind of angle, the book comes up with answers to why things work the way they do.

A book that's hard to put down, I'm sure many readers will enjoy it. Also recommend The Sixty-Second Motivator for a more simplistic explanation of what motivates people and gives them incentives to do what they do.

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42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Luke Warm: Easy to read but to superficial to be very interesting., Feb 7 2007

By	E. Haensel (Toronto) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Freakonomics (Revised Edition) (Hardcover)

I approciated Freakonomics with a mixture of excitment and trepidation: the idea of an economist using their skills and thinking outside the box was enticing, yet, I was worried about how someone trained inside the reductive box of economics would deal with the complexity of social life.

Levitt and Dubner ask great questions in this book, and do some unique work digging up new possibilities to social problems, and quirky situations.

Unfortunately they either lack the ability to weigh their evidence against traditional explanaitons in a way that shows the true mixed causality of most situations, or, they suffer from a typical economists arrogance which supposes that mathematical reasoning can dig up enough parralel statistics as to show a causal analysis.

In a sense this book, while expanding upon the questions economists can tackle, fails to integrate economic statistics into a comprehensive whole by adaquately investigating other forms of inquiry. Thus, while this book is well written, mildly thought provoking, and somewhat entertaining, it does very little to bridge the quantitative and qualitative gap that exists in the social sciences.

For its part, Freakonomics serves to remind us that numerical tools are a powerful form of social analysis. Unfortunately it leaves us with the (false) impression that quantitative analysis can solve questions of social causes without recourse to qualitative information.

*note: I did not read the expanded edition. I am not sure how different it is.

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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not great, Jan 30 2007

By	Ben J. Serpa "Wineslob" (Hamilton, Ontario) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Freakonomics (Revised Edition) (Hardcover)

I bought this book after I saw the author on the Daily show. It looked interesting enough, a bunch of random statistics that I would likely not have read elsewhere.

I was anticipating hundreds of short brief interesting factoids instead I got a couple long winded stories about Sumo wrestler corruption and crack dealers living with their parents and working at mcdonalds to pay the bills. These were interesting stories but I would have prefered a lot more of them with less filler and more raw numbers.

The book is easy to read but I would reccomend checking it out at the library before commiting to own a copy. Im trying to figure out who I can give this book to now as once you know that sumo's are corrupt theres no sence reading it a second time.

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