Freakonomics

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

320 pages

English language

Published Dec. 25, 2006

ISBN:: 978-0-06-123400-2
Goodreads:: 1202

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(239 reviews)

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of 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 riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head.

Freakonomics is a ground-breaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin 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 …

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and 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 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 great deal of complexity 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 at things.

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. ButFreakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

First published in the U.S. in 2005, Freakonomics went on to sell more than 4 million copies around the world, in 35 languages. It also inspired a follow-up book, SuperFreakonomics; a high-profile documentary film; a radio program, and an award-winning blog, which has been called “the most readable economics blog in the universe.”

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2 editions

drizzy reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book has been on my list for a while, many people recommended it and I see why. The authors are an interesting match - and economist and a writer. Asking weird questions, getting even weirder answers.

The book makes several compelling points for reevaluating how we view our lives. It is written with the idea that incentives shape many aspects of modern lives and I can’t argue with this premise. I have seen too many people “gaming the system” when the incentives are set badly. Typical example might be to reward programmers based on number of lines of code they produce. That specific example was not part of the book but it might as well have been.

Among other things - conventional wisdom is often wrong. We should not always accept it blindly but look at incentives of people who peddle these wisdoms. Experts touting this or that often have vested interest in you believing whatever they are selling. Internet has made experts much less needed in many cases because it largely eliminates information asymmetry. It makes it much harder for experts to play on fears when the other side has access to the right information and can interpret it correctly.

Book makes a case that knowing what to measure and how can make a complicated world seem much less so. That said - information can be a beacon, a cudgel, olive branch or a deterrent. All based on who wields it and how.

It is a fun short read which for me boils down to one recommendation - question what incentives people have for doing or saying things. It will give you insights into their behaviors.

Hugh reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I am optimistic that this book was just a poor representation of good ideas. It seems to pick a different definition of causality for each example, in order to sensationalize the story. It reduces large scale correlations in the aggregate to stories with individual characters. This makes each concept come across as someones uninformed opinion based on anecdote, rather than thoroughly researched science. They don't attempt to convince the reader that they're motivated by anything other than an engaging story. I don't feel that I can take any of the facts they presented as true without further reading.

Fionnáin reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'GoodReads'

2 stars

Sorry to those who feel that this book is "ground-breaking", but really I feel that this is a series of interesting stories that are corroborated with interesting data analysis, that hold an America-centric point of view and offer little in terms of valuable information or alternative methods of thought. There were moments that I really enjoyed (observations on the KKK and drug dealers in America were quite fascinating) but others that I felt argued premeditated points that apply very much to a money-guided American system (the idea of incentive as the only human motivator, or parenting data being compared to test scores alone, disregarding other forms of development outside of standardised testing, a system that is problematic enough in itself).

I think that if you are interested in data analysis presented in a journalistic fashion with an interesting and "ground-breaking" theory behind it, you would do better to look at …

settingshadow reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was fun. Most of his points were interesting and by and large well-researched, albeit some better than others. The main positive characteristic of Freakonomics is the way that he goes through his methodology. By and large, it is really a book about encouraging the lay public to question and to think quantitatively and that's a really, really positive characteristic.

The next most positive thing to say about Freakonomics is that it's well written. Having a co-author that is a writer was a major boon. Although each chapter was adapted from work published in peer-reviewed journals, the chapters have similar voices and lengths and flow into the next chapter.

The detractors are the unevenness of evidence for some claims versus others (for instance, the entire chapter on names, while interesting, lacks the evidence to reach any sort of conclusion.) The other major problem with Freakonomics is the excerpts of the …

Dennis A V Dittrich reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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Mark Anderson reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Fun book to give you the ground level view of the application of economics. I felt like it lost some of it's "wow" factor when it got mired in the nature v. nurture statistics, as well as racial educational statistics. None of that stuff was very thought-provoking (to me), but I did enjoy the sumo wrestler and cheating teacher revelations.

otrops reviewed Freakonomics

Review of 'Freakonomics' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

I don't think any of the conclusions that Levitt reached are particularly shocking, though I'm sure that his ideas on the reduction of crime rates are upsetting to some.

I do think that this book is a good introduction to a few key concepts, such as what economists are on about when they talk about incentives and the difference between correlation and cause.

A worthwhile read, and an interesting followup book if you've read The Tipping Point.