Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.