Over-hyped | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Good for thinking outside of the box, but not much else | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything | Stephen J. Dubner

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	• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Stephen J. Dubner William Morrow, 2005 - 242 pages average customer review:based on 1701 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fun

Whether you read Freakonomics or not, Superfreakonomics provides lots of entertaining facts as the economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner return with another quirky set of examples from the exciting world of behavioral economics. The prostitutes are back, along with terrorists, car seats, medical hand washing and a host of other explorations. The pace is jaunty, the facts delectable, and the result a story or two to pass along in conversation. Prepare to laugh and groan. Just don't let a friend walk home drunk. Read Superfreakonomics and find out why.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

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Over-hyped

I had been meaning to read this for ages, but I have to say, I was a bit disappointed (to be honest, anything with cover blurbs like "Genius... has you gasping in amazement" is pretty much asking to disappoint, but that's another issue).

The book consists of largely disconnected studies with surprising outcomes; for example, the legalization of abortion is given as the cause for a decline in the US crime rate: the people who were most likely to become criminals (unwanted, from low-income families with teenage mothers, etc.) just weren't born in the first place. I really enjoyed reading the individual stories and found that the pages went by very quickly, but at the end, I was left with the feeling that the whole was actually less than the sum of its parts. This may have been due to the fact that the treatment of the last issue was by far the weakest, or by the fact that the main book ended very abruptly and was followed by several related articles. Or it may have been due to the fact that the overarching theme (if it can be called that) that things aren't always what they appear and common knowledge can be deceiving isn't nearly as shocking and earth-shattering as it was apparently supposed to be.

At a more nit-picky level, I was also a bit irritated by the feeling that the reader was sometimes deliberately being misled in order to make for a better narrative. We're repeatedly told that the key to making interesting discoveries like the ones in Freakonomics is to ask interesting questions--but the silly questions that appear in the book were obviously made up after the fact. Somehow I'm just not convinced that Levitt started with the question of what do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common and worked from there to discover that both of them had incentives to cheat and did in fact do so. Especially in a book that purports to be about how the techniques of economics can be applied to real-life situations with surprising results, it seems a bit strange too that an actively misleading approach was taken.

Despite all my criticisms, though, this was definitely an enjoyable book overall, and I'm glad that I read it. It was an easy and interesting read, just not as important and amazing as it wanted to be.

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Good for thinking outside of the box, but not much else

Freakonomics was an enjoyable romp through seemingly random industries (sumo wrestling to drug dealing) that provided unique and fascinating insight into these social arenas.

While the knowledge contained in this book provides good dinnertime conversation (assuming your companions have an IQ higher than a walrus, no offense to walrus) the book lacks a decent single thesis. There is no ultimate point, it simply provides a different perspective on many disperate industries.

Also, apparently many of the studies and assertations that the authors make are inaccurate after scrutiny. This isn't to say the book is false, simply that the factoids provided should be taken with a grain of salt. The most obvious example being attributing the falling crime-rates of the 90's to abortion being legalised a generation earlier. (This probably had some effect, but the authors statement that roe vs wade was the only cause has been refuted.)

Overall I recommend Freakonomics to anyone open minded who likes to know wierd facts about random stuff, but if you want more robust work see Malcom Gladwell

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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? 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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