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Title: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
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Manufacturer: William Morrow
List Price: $25.95
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| Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow freakonomics economics | | Freakonomics was a great book that shares insight into how things that you would expect to not fit together, like schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers, actually have a lot in common. The book shows different correlations between unlikely things. It is a book on economics and shows the correlations in a easy way to understand and see how the world is changing. | | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow Redundance | | Attempts to prove that socio-economic status is much more a hindrance to advancement than race. | | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow Too much analysis....little common sense | A strange connection is made between a drop in violent criminals and the Roe v. Wade decision. It suggests these "criminals" were never born into the poverty that would have made them criminals in the first place.
This doesn't take into account 2 things:
1. The counter effect that could have been made by those born into abundance, had they not been aborted. Poor people (and who defines that anyway) are not the only ones who abort babies.
Who lives in "poverty", by itself, is a whole different mindset that can't be measured. I would go so far as to say that the majority (not all) of those living in so called "poverty" have a television, a DVD player and a microwave, sleep in a bed, use indoor plumbing, eat 3 meals a day, wear shoes, have access to some form of transportation and have a roof over their head.
This made them a criminal????
2. It assumes that the vast majority of invidiuals born into poverty would be destined to stay that way rather than make their own decisions to prosper.
It's cause/effect implication just can't be proven; conditions can only be observed, but there is no scientific way to attribute a definite cause. It's simply a poor comparision.
Then again, economics isn't exactly a science.
| | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow Freaky. | The book Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner skillfully interweaves economic analysis and everyday occurrences to make an interesting and enjoyable book. The authors set out to prove to the world that economics has to do with much more than just finance, and that statistics actually mean something in our lives. Along with economics, Freakonomics also touches on sociology as it explains how incentives drive human behavior. Levitt, an economist, shows the reader that economics relates to the real world by including a number of interesting examples in his book. Economics helps to answer the questions society faces today and explains why things work out the way that they do. The book aims to abolish common misperceptions about the world and to challenge the conventional thinking that is widely used (or misused) today.
The authors seem to complement each other perfectly. Steven Levitt is an Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He earned his B.A. from Harvard and PhD from M.I.T. In 2004, he won the John Bates Clark Medal, which is an award that recognizes the most influential economist in America under forty years of age. He was recently featured in Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape our World." Stephen J. Dubner is an award winning author and journalist. He taught English at Columbia University. His journalism appears mostly in "The New York Times" and "The New Yorker." These two combine forces to create a compelling economics book. (There's an oxymoron.)
The authors ultimately reach the reading audience because of the subjects that they focus their research on. There does not seem to be any unifying theme to the examples, except that they teach readers that familiar things are not always what they seem to be, and that open-minded thinking can lead to fascinating conclusions. The topics of the chapters range from real estate agents to sumo wrestlers to drug dealers. Levitt explains to readers how teachers cheat on standardized testing, how the secrets codes of the Klu Klux Klan were revealed, and how the drop in crime rates and the legalization of abortion are related. Levitt's conclusions can be considered astonishing, shocking even, but whether or not the reader agrees with them does not seem to be the point. The way Levitt's mind works is truly extraordinary. That is not to say the book is without flaws. It seems to be stuck in an awkward spot as it tries to balance reader appeal and an understanding of economics. Economists will argue that some of the methods used in the book are not really using economic analysis. They say that the book only lays down the very basics of economics, and that it needs to be longer and more in-depth to provide a truly comprehensive understanding of the subject. On the other side, readers will find their interest dwindling when reading pages and pages of statistics and economical details. Ultimately though, the book is well written in straightforward, clear, language and it manages to add some sparkle to economics and analysis in everyday life. When picking up this book, the reader will find an engaging and thought-provoking venture into the freakier side of economics. | | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow Very interesting take on the world around us | | I got this for my husband and ended up reading it as well. It's a fascinating take on the world around us. I enjoyed reading his theories and the data he uses to support his theories make sense. It certainly made me look at the field of Economics in a whole new light. | | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow Product Description | 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. | | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by William Morrow 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 inner-city 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 |
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