Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Equally entertaining and irritating.I was convinced by their argument and their data that liberalizing abortion reduced crime 20 or so years later. It is an eye-opening observation, that seems responsive to subtle changes in the timing of when abortion was legalized on a state by state case. But changes in death sentence rates would be a better comparator than the actual execution rates on dr8ving down serious crime stats. They also think crimes with an obvious money motive (eg mugging) are distinct from car-theft - which some of us would also consider financially motivated. They blame some of the decline in attractiveness of drug-dealing on an increase in the supply of cheap, high quality cocaine: commoditization in other words - which many think increases, not decreases competition. Such selectiveness is deliberate (they're not stupid, right?), unappealing and undermines their better considered cases.They also make some silly mistakes - comparing dangers of driving and flying by the number of hours spent in cars and planes: and conclude on a per hour basis flying isn't much safer than driving. Now if they had looked at miles or kilometers driven vs flown, the clear-cut answer is flying is much safer (highly trained pilots, mostly sober and drug free pilots, properly maintained aircraft, strictly enforced separations, weather restrictions, well understood and controlled flight paths etc etc).Elsewhere they claim most of IQ is genetic, which is a such an old and thoroughly debunked idea I was surprised to see it included uncritically.If the book does no more than make people question the usual assumptions in newspapers or pub conversations, that is solid success.But the writers, whilst clever and funny, are not as clever as they are funny. Read this with a big bag of salt beside you...

Freakonomics, written by journalist Stephen J. Dubner and economist Steven D. Levitt, is a book on modern economics that provides key insight into our society as well as clarifying the difference between causation and connectivity, and discussing situations were people have confused the two. It covers six different topics through fun and amusing questions: cheating, and what a persons’ incentives to cheat are; the use of fear in an informational unbalance; the profitability of drug dealing; the most effective way to reduce crime; the effect of a parent’s actions on a child and how a name can change a persons’ conception of something. Despite being a debut novel, Freakonomics is written in an engaging and fun style that includes all the facts and figures necessary to support the arguments included within the novel. It was a style that I had not read before but thoroughly enjoyed along with the rest of the book. Two issues that I find when reading a non-fiction book are firstly the purely academic eye with which an author writes and secondly how much prior knowledge is needed to enjoy the novel. Fortunately, Freakonomics does not have either issue in the slightest. A person does not need to be an economist to enjoy Freakonomics and will find the novel intellectual but fun. The chapter titles, I found to be intriguing and amusing, for example, ‘What do school teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common?’ and made the reader genuinely curious about the novel. Furthermore, the majority of the novel then proceeded to live up to chapters’ interesting titles and kept the reader turning the page. The content was, overall, superb. The arguments themselves were cleverly written with thought experiments as well as actually facts and figures to support them and the novel also included the experiences of two separate men, one of whom infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and the other which got a close up, inside eye of how a gang works. These chapters were among my favourites. However, like every novel, Freakonomics is not perfect. Towards the end, the topics began to interest me less as they were discussed in far too much detail and, although it may have been necessary for proving the authors’ theory, I wasn’t that interested in the topic to start off with. Furthermore, the authors omit necessary information in at least one point during the novel. When discussing guns, they state that ‘On a per capita basis, Switzerland has more firearms than just about any other country, and yet is one of the safest’ to support their argument that guns do not cause violence. What they fail to mention are the strict laws about purchasing ammunition for guns in Switzerland, which essentially equates to the guns being unusable without the government’s permission. The exclusion of this information suggests that perhaps they are slightly changing the facts to benefit their arguments elsewhere in the novel. Finally, as a young British girl, parts of this book, whilst incredibly interesting, did not feel highly relevant to me because it was largely based around America. For example, I did not particularly relate to discussions around the Ku Klux Klan and real estate doesn’t interest me much; that said, it probably wasn’t written for my age group anyway. In spite of these shortcomings, Freakonomics is, overall, incredibly good, and the informative and interactive insight that it gives you in to certain aspects of the modern world is well worth the few issues.

Freakonomics will appeal to anyone who likes the QI style. The economic content is provided by Steven Levitt (Stephen Dubner is primarily a journalist) and his interest is more in the area of economics that focuses on choices and decisions. In particular his interest is in mining data to cut it such that it reveals some often surprising, and sometimes contentious, results. The book is a lot of fun (which is not a phrase always associated with economics books) and sometimes controversial.Levitt likes to take seemingly random questions - like why drug dealers live with their mothers - to begin investigations into areas that are often hidden from view. So he will look at cheating (in Sumo wrestling and teaching), drug dealing, crime and the choice that a child's name may, or may not have on their chances in life.He emphasizes the positive econometric approach - that he is looking only for facts and not commenting on how the world should be which is the realm of normative economists. This allows him some leeway into some potentially controversial comments relating to, for example, abortion and adoption. This is one of my slight reservations about the book - some of the examples appear to have been selected more for shock value than for genuine insight.That said, it is also at times laugh out loud funny - some of the examples in the names of Californian kids are both terribly sad and absolutely hilarious!It's well worth reading but it had a lot of hype when it was published and that might be too heavy a burden for the book to carry, not least as some of the examples are now well known as a result of the book. Interesting and entertaining though.

Recommended by a work colleague this is a really different book about economics...In fact if they had used Freakanomics in the university economics curriculum, I may have studied more. This book is a fascinating ride through cause and correlation, facts and fiction and rather than teaching me any particular economic method, has encouraged me to question what I believe to be true, to question what others tell me - to pretty much question all of the questions. I mean how else would I ever have learnt why drug dealers live with their mothers? Read this and enjoy an alternative take on the world you think you know.

While I was initially amused by some of the observations in here ("Poor people give their children aspirational names, but because they're ill-educated, spell them wrong! How funny!") this is a book that leaves a sour taste in my mouth. The authors spend a long time telling you to avoid falling into pedestrian thinking but to challenge orthodoxies, and then at the end of the book come out and say that you should think like them, because they are incredibly smart.It also seems to assume that the data being used is beautifully curated and could never be subject to error ... giving rather the impression of some ivory-tower academics postulating about the oddities of the outside world. (Consider stories on their NYT blog where they point out how terrible New York taxis are ... based on an experience they had 15 years ago.)Or perhaps the whole thing is an exercise in knowing irony. It really isn't an exploration of "the hidden side of everything" so much as an exploration of "all the things we could obtain data for and then produce correlations between, hopefully irritating people and generating hype along the way". Although that's a bit long to fit on the cover as a tag-line. But if you'd like to read a book that feels like you're trapped in a lift with an economist who'd really, really like to be Jerry Seinfeld, read on. Amirite?????!!!