Vous voulez voir cette page en fran�ais ? Cliquez ici.

Quantity:

More Buying Choices

31 used & new from CDN$ 14.96

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Search inside another edition of this book

Freakonomics (Revised Edition) (Hardcover)

by Steven D 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)

List Price:	CDN$ 38.99
Price:	CDN$ 24.56 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 14.43 (37%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

16 new from CDN$ 18.25 14 used from CDN$ 14.96 1 collectible from CDN$ 59.99

Frequently Bought Together

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Total List Price: CDN$ 89.97
Price For All Three: CDN$ 53.15

Show availability and shipping details

This item: Freakonomics (Revised Edition) by Steven D Levitt
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

by Malcolm Gladwell

4.1 out of 5 stars (356) CDN$ 10.00

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

by Malcolm Gladwell

4.4 out of 5 stars (35) CDN$ 9.25

Superfreakonomics

by Steven D. Levitt

3.0 out of 5 stars (8) CDN$ 18.50

On Bullshit

by Harry G. Frankfurt

4.0 out of 5 stars (5) CDN$ 10.76

Outliers: The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell

4.1 out of 5 stars (32) CDN$ 18.59

› Explore similar items

Product Details

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: William Morrow; Revised edition (Oct 5 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061234001
ISBN-13: 978-0061234002
Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.5 x 3 cm
Shipping Weight: 567 g

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

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #1,101 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories:

#1 in	Books > Nonfiction > Economics > Econometrics
#1 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Econometrics
#1 in	Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Econometrics

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

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

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Though the idea of listening to an economics text may bring to mind nightmarish visions of incomprehensible facts, figures and graphs, this audiobook is refreshingly accessible and engrossing. Journalist Dubner reads with just the right mix of enthusiasm and awe, revealing juicy morsels of wisdom on everything from what sumo wrestlers and teachers have in common (a propensity to cheat) to whether parents can really push their kids to greatness by buying them Baby Einstein toys and enlisting them in numerous before- and after-school activities (not really). The only section that doesn't translate well to the format is the final one on naming conventions. The lists of "White Girl Names" and "Black Girl Names," and "Low-End" names and "High-End" names can be mind-numbing, though the text that breaks up these lists will intrigue. Overall, however, these unusual investigations by Levitt, the "rogue" of the subtitle, make for meaty—and entertaining—listening.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Product Description

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.

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

Explore More
Concordance

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

economics(1)

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?

	45% buy the item featured on this page: Freakonomics (Revised Edition) 4.1 out of 5 stars (49) CDN$ 24.56
	20% buy Freakonomics 5.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 10.00
	14% buy The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference 4.1 out of 5 stars (356) CDN$ 10.00
	11% buy Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking 4.4 out of 5 stars (35) CDN$ 9.25

Explore similar items

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)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

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

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

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)

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

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)

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 49 customer reviews...

Most recent customer reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Let Down
After reading the Undercover Economist, I thought that this would be just as good. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Y. Chen

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Read, but Cause and Effect May be a Little Misleading
I thought this book was fairly interesting and would actually give it a 3.5 to 4, but not over a 4. Read more

Published 25 days ago by Rocky Mountain Entrepreneur

5.0 out of 5 stars Freaking Excellent!
What an excellent book. Crammed with interesting insights, overflowing with surprising twists. I loved it. Read more

Published 7 months ago by LP

4.0 out of 5 stars Out of the ordinary
What a refreshing take on the application of statistics and economics in the so-called "real world". Read more

Published 8 months ago by Dyski